Miscellaneous Extracts.

Hastings Standard, Issue 280, 25 March 1897, Page 4

Miscellaneous Extracts.

A USEFUL INSTITUTION. A useful and interesting experiment is being made in Kent by Miss Stoddart, one of the teachers under the County Council. A large house has been taken at Maidstone for the reception of girls of 18 and thereabouts who have passed the sixth standard, and are willing to go through a course of training which will fit them for their duties, whether as the wives of working men or as domestic servants. The girls, who are enabled to come by scholarships of £lO, board at the school from Monday to Friday, and consequently take a practical part in the functions of a well-conducted home. They are taught cookery and dressmaking, and simple sick nursing as well, all the apparatus used being of the simplest possible kind.

DEATH OF AN ECCENTRIC WOMAN.

The Neue Freie Presse learns from Berlin that a Miss Giffard, an elderlylady, has been found burnt to death in her bed, with a burnt-out lamp in a basin near her. She lived quite alone, admitted no one, kept her blinds down all day, and read by lamplight. Half a herring and a loaf of bread were all the eatables in her lodging, and the body showed the lady to have been half starved. Among her effects papers were found worth £4250, oft which the coupons had not been taken for years. The unfortunate lady was the daughter of the dramatic poet and critic Dr. Julius Leopold Klein, who left his daughter a considerable fortune.

THE SMOKER'S TURN NEXT

The company of the elect is gradually being thinned down by Mr Isitt, says the Auckland Observer, and, now that the publicans and the other sinners who will gamble in a small way have been cast forth from the Wesleyan Church into outer darkness, the smokers had better look to themselves. It is their turn next. The fiat has not yet gone forth, and the door of Wesleyan salvation is still ajar for them to sneak through, but it wont be for long. Mr Isitt is gradually feeling his way to the publication of another edict, and when the propitious time arrives the smoker, like the publican, the wine and spirit merchant, and the man who gambles in a small and pettifogging way, will have a wanner place prepared for him, where a good deal of smoking is going an. At present it is only requisite to drink nothing but water and to do all your gambling on a large and magnificent scale in order to qualify yourself for a reserved seat in Mr Isitt's improved and re-constructed heaven.

LAND FOR SETTLEMENT

The Arowhenua estate, South Canterbury, consisting of two blocks, aggregating 4047 acres, which was purchased some time ago by the Government from the Assets Realisation Board, has been cut up into farm lots, which will be offered to the public on Monday week. One of the blocks, consisting of 1124 acres, which was bought for £8 per acre, is situated about two miles from Temuka, and the other block, which has an area of 3Z23 acres purchased for £5 10s per acre, is about ten miles from that township. The Survey Department is also about to put into the market in small lots the Albury estate, of 20,000 acres, which lies about <3O miles from Timaru along the Fairlie Creek Railway, and which was purchased from the Assets Board for £'6 5s per acre. The Poupari Block of 836 acres, seven miles out of Gisborne, formerly the property of Mrs Donner, has been cut up into dairy farms, and will be offered to the public on the ?lst April.

A PROLIFIC WOMAN. If any woman ever deserved well of her country it is a Viennese lady, who has just been described by I)r Alois Valenta. Her merits consist in her having given many more subjects and soldiers to the Emperor than any one of his female subjects. It goes without saying that she is poor. As a matter of fact she is the wife of a needy linen-weaver of Neuercheufeld, in Vienna, and, if she did not give her husband a big marriage portion, she presented him with no less than 82 children, and she is still comparatively young, being only in her fortieth year. She has been the mother of twenty-six boys and sixgirls. The births of the H2 children occurred in this wise, ami in the following order :—At the first birtb were born four ; at the second, three ; at tlie third, four ; at thefourth, two ; at the lifth, three; at the sixth, two; at the ,-eventh, three ; at the eighth, three; at the ninth, two; at the tenth, three; and at the eleventh, three. The mother nursed all her children herself. Another strange feature of the case is that the mother suffered from her Kith year, weekly, and sometimes daily, from epileptic tits, which so far have not been inherited by the children. She herself, too, was one of four at a birth, and her maternal parent in her time succeeded in presenting her spouse with on less than ;sy children.

I NOCCtTiEI) LANDS. Nearly half the land area of the world is still tmosplort'd. Of Kurop<\ it i.s true, no part is unknown, but «t great portion of Asia .mil iirjily thw quarters of Africa, in -pi ! < »f recent tra\cll«-rv, still reman)-. Pr u tcaliy a wuli d book. In A-ii I Iwi > t. and Turke-tan, and in Africa the great rt of Sahara are still to I** ix plored. We know almost nothing of Borneo. Papua, or not to uienti.m thommnda of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Nearly the whole of South America, within the coast linta, u known only by bear»«j &u«l tradition.

Central America and Mexico offer fertile fields to the adventurous traveller, while Lower California has never been thoroughly explored. In the far north are Greenland. Baffin Land, the great Hudson Bay region, all British America north of latitude GOdeg., and the great territory of Alaska. The natives of Northern Alaska also report that further north is another land, not down on the maps —an inhabited land, with a comparatively mild climate. Even in the State of Washington there is an unknown land of 2500 square miles shut in by the Olympic mountains, which, acoording to Indian traditions, is inhabited by a very fierce tribe, whom none of the coast tribes dared molest. Finally, great tracks of Australia have never been trodden by the foot of a white man.