MISCELLANEOUS.

Lake County Press, Issue 79, 6 December 1872, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

G is is now freely used on board ship during long voyages. Tramways are being laid through Greenock, at a cost of £20,000. Gold, from a seam recently discovered in Ballymony, has been sold in Derry. It is stated in the West End Clubs that Mr Ayrton has joined the Spiritualists. Diamonds of the first quality are now dearer than ever before in all parts of the world. An American Judge was obliged to sleep with an Irishman in a crowded hotel, when the following conversation ensued : “ Pat, you would have remained a long time in the old country before you could have slept with a judge, would you not ?” “ Yes yer honour,” said Pat; “ and I think yer honour would have been a long time in the old country belore ye’d been a judge too.” A curious scene occurred a short time ago in the Harbor Master’s Court at Hong Kong. An engineer was brought up two days in succession for being drunk on board ship His plea on the second was, “ Same old drunk ; can’t fine a fellow twice for the same offence ’’ The plea was of no avail, and the inexorable magistrate fined him 5 dols. A boy about fifteen years old was put in the Tombs at New York, recently, for drunkenness. He protested to the keeper lie had been boru drunk. His speech and staggering indicated intoxication, but it appeared on examination that this is the normal condition. His father was a confirmed inebriate, and since he was three years old the boy has manifested these symptoms. Under the heading of “ Kacing upcountry,” a writer in the Bruce Herald gives the following very lively sketch : —The hotel where I boarded was their very head-quarters. The landlord, as jolly a leilow as ever lived, was their “ head centre ” ; he had, or has, a fine taste for fun and general devilment, and so far as Bells Life and the spurting articles in the Australasian went, a taste for literature ; in fact, I believe it to be his honest opinion that the sporting editor of the Australasian is the greatest character of ancient or modern times ; a sporting butcher, a sporting baker, and a sporting blacksmith, with two sporting agriculturists, were the lesser - lights that revolved round the central sun of mine host. They were each and all pre-eminently conspicuous members of the raping "’“■•la ow.,cio .a« norses, and possessed of vast knowledge in racing matters. They could out-dnuk, out-swear, out-bounee, and, to the extent of twenty shillings, out-bet all my previous acquaintances; and for general filthy conversation, could far and away lick the heads off anything anywhere, Each one of those secondary suns had an assortment of private planets, from the ages of six to sixteen—apprentices to the noble art of horse racing. Little grooms and jockeys in different stages of “ horse ” and blasphemy. Featherweights who could discourse horses and women in a way to make the bones of their ancestors rattle—perennial little fountains ot awful profanity, where the freshness and vigor of flow, compared to the size of the orifice, was tremendous. They talked Her by winners, strains of blood, Melbourne, Dunedin, Christchurch Cups, Consolations, and handicaps ; smooth little chubby faces smoking tobacco pipes, and talking the talk of hoary iniquity, was not nn! reS^U ° a * ; ® but I got used to it. 1 he sporting baker owned a trotting horse, the sporting blacksmith a hurdle racer, the sporting butcher, the two agriculturists, and my friend of the Jehu hotel made up an assorted lot of eight or nine, and their “spinning,” “staying,” and weightcarrying powers were discussed with a quantity of fancy blasphemy that must have smelt to any wandering Satanic angei nke a whifi from his own plains.