BRIEF MENTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVII, Issue 142, 20 June 1903, Page 2

BRIEF MENTION.

Shortest day to-morrow. Magnificent winter weather, so far. A heavy sea was running off Cape Campbell this morning. The oldest inhabitant is taxing his memory for Wairau massacre incidents. •'Pa, whatis the oldest inhabitant?" 11A liar, in most instances, my son." The dental examinations, in which there are twerity-five candidates, were begun in Wellington yesterday. The Income Tax Bill has been introduced in the House of Commons. "Love levels all things," sighed the sad-eyed swain, with a pang of pain, as his sweetheart sat on his new, high silk hat and smashed it flat. Judge Adams, the County Court judge at Limerick, has described the motorcar as "the greatest curse known since the first batch of English who landed in Ireland," Mrs Fancourt, wife of the Archdeacon of Wellington, died at the family residence on Thorndon Quay on Thursday morning. A Bill that will receive a great deal of consideration this session is that providing for the abolition of the totalisator. Jurymen for an inquest may not be summoned by telephone, was the decision of a Hull coroner. Suffering from toothache a Keighley tailor has killed himself by thrusting a red-hot poker down his throat. St. Paul's Cathedral is heavily insured. The policies held by 10 different offices amount to about £95,000. The boy cigarette-smoker is in danger of interference in Wellington. The City Council is going to ask the City Solicitor if there is any by-law under which the sale of cigarettes to boys under sixteen or seventeen years of age could be prevented. The principal milliners' shops in Southport have, at the instance of the Society for the Protection of Birds, been used for the exhibition of plumeless millinery. Cows in Belgium wear earrings. It is the law that when a cow attains the age of three months it must have in its ear a ring to which is attached a numbered metal tag for taxation purposes. A writer in the Ohronique.Medical© has dug up some amusing examination papers set to aspiring medicos of past centuries. The questions are amusing, and the replies have often a brevity which must have been gratifying to the examiners. One of the questions set for an M.D. degree in the reign of Henry IV. was: " Is it allowable to dance immediately aftet meals?" Answer: "Yes." The following are choice specimens: —" May a physician treat persons in love and mad persons with the same drugs?" Answer: "Yes." Question: "Is the exclusive use of water as a beverage more hurtful for old people than for young?" Answer: "Yes." Question: "Is it allowed to mix a poison to accomplish death at a given time?" Answer: "No." Question: " Are women physically more perfect than men ?" We are not told the answer. A favorite problem to set to a student was to ask him to imagine a patient with a number of complicated disorders which he was to cure without blood letting. The Tips.—'An Auckland paper states that the stewards of the s.s. Mapourika were able to open a banking account with the tips they got from the picnicking legislators. It was in the penny savings hank though. Pago Pago is described as the finest harbor in the Pacific, with the possible exception of Vavau. A distinguished R.A. was making a sketch of a picturesque farmhouse, when the farmer, coming up, inspected the picture. Highly delighted at its accuracy, he inquired of the artist what he would charge for it, or one like it. "Oh," said the R.A., "I won't charge you anything. But I tell you what: You give me, instead of money, one of those nice-looking little sucking pigs I see yonder," pointing as he spoke to a fins litter running about with their maternal relative. "Efa, man," exclaimed the farmer, "do you know what they pigs be worth? Why, they be worth ten shillin apiece 1" Among the patients at the Grey town Hospital is one of the Valdares, who received a severe spinal injury whilst thrilling a Greytown audience with the cycle whizz" at the time Fitzgerald Bros, were last in the district. The young ladies of the Wesleyan Church, Kumara, formed themselves into a "working beo," and devoted the holiday on the Prince of Wales's Birthday to painting the chapel fence, under the direction of a skilled lady chaperon, From the Daily Mail we ouU the following:—"Afc Amsterdam ' Sohuitenvervoarderspatroonsvereeniging' is the name of a new body. It means Society of Employers of Bargemen." One «oight hava thought it something far more deadly. Is this really double Dutch ? Marriage is to be taxed in South Africa, celibacy is taxed in parts of America, an impost on divorce is now to be proposed in Roumania ; so it is difficult to pleaso everybody. The tax on divorce is presumably one on a luxury chiefly enjoyed by the leisured classes. "I carried off all the prizes in mathematics in my ilnal yaar at tho University. I afterwards tanght mathematics for tsn years, but was obliged to give ifc tip becaus3 I was not receiving tho wages of a workman."— From the evidence of Mr John Sutherland, M.A,, before the Melbourne University Commission.