TRAVELLER.

Lake County Press, Issue 2159, 7 March 1907, Page 7

TRAVELLER.

SIBERIA'S L.A.W COURTS. Siberia, by a receut ukase, is to have a new system of law courts, removing the inhabitants from the arbitrary rulo of Government officials. Justices of the peace will be appointed by the Crown; there will be superior court 3 .v Tomsk, Tobolsk, Chita, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Blagovestchensk, and Vladivosto.-k, and a court of appeals at Irkutsk. The change is made, the decree state:', on account of the development of the life brought about 07 the Siberian railroad. A GHOST IS BUSINESS. An amusing case of spiritualistic iuapostturo has lately been tried baforo the landsgerichl at Hamburg. The accused, who >vas an apprentice 19 years old aud an adept in ' spiritualism,' hsid a friend of the name of Kaiser, who informed him that he was 70 marks to the good in his recipts, and how this money got into the safe ho had no meaus of divining. The accused at once explained this surplus by his own dealings with the spirit world. It was Onkei Ernst, hia deceased relation, who had cojjured the 70 marks into the safe, and who would shortly require them back, spirits being apparently leudors rather than givers, but being generoua enough to forego the interest. Kaiser, who also played with spiritualism, accepted the explanation, and his. belief was confirmed later on when he received a document written professedly by Onkel Ernst. It said : ' Repay at once the 70 marks I advanced. My faithful medium to reoeivo them:' Kaiser complied—and fonnd a few weeks later that the surplus had no ghostly source but was simply due to an item he had overlooked in his accounts. The firm took tho matter up, and the prosecution proved that the writing of Onkel Ernst was exactly the same as that of his faithful medium. The Court decided to protect tho nephew from the influence of his business-like uncle by Eentencing the faithful medium to six months' imprisonment. the"gipsies. Surrey, with its six hundred open tracts, continues to be a favourite camping grouiid of the gipsies, who cling to their iudepsndent ways in tho most tenacious manner; and, in fact, this county may be looked upon as the last English stronghold of natural freedom. The pure Romany Rye people are eaid to be of Egyptian descent, though many have joinnd their ranks who have nothing in common with them savo their lova of vagrancy ; and did not one of the police-courts tho other day present the amusing spectacle of a Scotsman who had set up as au 'amiteur vagrant' from pure love of the life? But it is a curious thing that in estimating the ethnological elements which have gone to the making of tho present conglomerate British race—Celt, Romau, Saxon, Dane, Norman, and Jew—none of our historians have ever thought it worth while to make any reference to the gipsy elotnent in our national composition. Ido not refer to thoso gipsies who have continued to lead an existence as separate from tho great mass of our people as oil from water, but to thoso who have become absorbed into our mixed race, and mingled their blood with ours. 11. Yet there might bo made a very considerable Hat of distinguished Englishmen of gipsy origin—the Bucklands, for example, ' Christopher North,' and many others. Mrs. Oirlyle, too, was of gipsy extraction on one .side of tho house—at least, I have read so somewhere — and this accounted for much of that pocuiiarioy of temperament which was not always soothing to tho Sago of Chelsea. I fancy that Mrs. Cariyle was referriug .to her Romany origin when, in writing to a friend abont tho personal appearance oi Tennyson, she said :—'Beg.de.i, he is a very handsome man, and a uoblu-lieaited o:ie, with something of the gipsy in his appearance, whjch, for m.e is poi> fectly unarming.'