MISCELLANEOUS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume V, Issue 766, 5 April 1884, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

" Tears of joy," says the Troy Times, fell copiously in a residence on the hill when a thirteen-year-old boy, who had gone out into the world, and whose relatives had expended considerable money in searching for him, returned. The little runaway, probably , expecting a dnev welcome, took courage, and drawing himself up to his full height, waved back his weeping relatives, who during his four days' absence, imagined the fugitive suffering all manner of privation, and in the most unconcerned fashion exclaimed : " There ain't no use of all this crying. I only {came back after my overcoat!"

Too Inquisitive.— He blew into his gun fco see, if loading up it needed ; the jury to a man agree, the gun blew after he did.

Before a young woman can become a schoolmistress in Russia she must display an acquaintance with, and show proficiency in, branches of knowledge the mere list of which is calculated to appal. At least, two languages, acquaintance with the laws of consonantal interchange, elementary, ecclesiastical, Slavonic, Russian, and universal literature, logic, the science of pedagogy, theology — the?e are among the subjects that have been made cle rigeur by the conditions imposed upon young women who seek spheres of usefulness in the national schools. And as a rule these girlish aspirants are as successful in the requirement as they show themselves eager in the pursuit of knowledge. As students of medicine and the sciences they betray the possession of remarkable qualities. Why Russians and all other women should bend with such remarkable aptitude and unmistakeable penchant towards the " natural sciences " might be explained in several ways. It has been squarely asserted, as an anthropological fact, that the brain of the Russian woman is masculine in both size and capacity — that in fact here the sexes have interchanged mental qualities, the man becoming pliant, domestic, unenterprising; the woman growing more intellectually active, daring, and resourceful.