GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7222, 10 January 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

GENERAL NEWS.

Sleepless people (says the Health and Home') should court the sun. The veryworst soporific is laudanum, and the very best is hunshiue. Therefore it is plain that the poor sleepers should pass as many hours of the day in the sunshine as possible. ihg injurious effect of the shade is very noticeable in plants growing in ' secluded places and ladies who are accustomed to carry sqq, shades. The invigorating power of sunlight is infinite, and he whose skin is tawny seldom re-quires a pill. The extraordinary proficiency of the Dutch Boers of South Africa in markunanship make them dreaded enemies. An Englishman who lias been hunting among them lately a ya that he saw one fire, hastily at a bustard which wa3 flying about two hundred yards distant, and send a rifle ball through itj body; but as this did not wholly stop the bird, which flapped rapidly along the ground, the Boer fired a second time and cut off itj head. British soldiers dread, with good reason, therefore, to lace these sharp :ing bush-fighters, animated by the idea that they are deiending their firesides. At a vegetarian banquet recently held ia England, after the usual amount of disten. sive food had been consumed, a malcontent had the courage to observe that if we left off rearing animals for .food it would interfere with clothes. He was instantly confronted in the most practical manner by a trus vegetarian, who arose and asserted that he was completely dressed in materials which had involved no blood-guiltiness whatever. A cotton velveteen coat, a dark linen drill waiseoat, corduroy trousers, and lawn tennis shoes constituted the array of this animals' friend. He also committed himself to the statement that " he had never tasted animal food in hi 3 life."

" The Civilizing Influence of England" was the subject, of a recent lecture delivered in London by tne Rev. G. A. Shaw, of Tamatar celebrity. " England," he said, "is respon. sible for the introdbction of 10,000 barrels of ruin to the east coast of Madagascar yearly. The Government having forbidden the intra, duction of spirits into the interior, it is not surpri-.ing to hear that on this east coast, the drink question is one of the greatest difficcl. ties the missionaries have to meet. That is to say, in Madagascar, as in most other places, the chief work of the missionary is to undo the work of the trader." Labouchere remarks "It would be a thousand limea better for the wretched native it he had never heard of either."

An amusing episode, says the Jewish World, occurred during the manoeuvre of the Austrian army. The chief of the regiment garrisoned near Vienna wrote to a gentleman he knew in Anger, Dr. Neuwirth, asking if he would kindly find him quarters in the town during the manoeuvres, in which he had to take part. " I hava only one stipulation to make," he wrote, " don't lodge me in the house of a Jew." The following is the answer received by the doughty warrior :—" Honoured Sie, —The chance of your being quartered with Jews baa already been removed by circumstances. There are only two Jewish families in Anger, The Archduke Albrecfc is lodging with one, the Archduke Wilhelm with the other. The latter is the family of, yours sincerely, Db, Neuwirth."

Mme. Cailhava is dead. A few years ago she created quite a sensation in France through her attempt to discover hidden treasures. She had come to believe on 'the strength of a dream, that vast treasures were buried somewhere in the crypt of the ancient cathedral cf Notre Dame, and she professed to be able to discover the ex-act spot by means of a magic wand in her possession. The excavations that she proposed were authorised by the French authorities. Mme. Cailhava went to work with a will, and in a short time she had seriously imperilled a portion- of the foundation of the building without discovering anything. The dean of the chapter at length interfered, and th» silly proceedings of the sorceress were put an end to, but not till a great deal of money had been spent and a great deal of mischief had been done.

Among the American fashions adopted in England is that of Turkish bath establishments open all night for the purpose of "sobering up" the dissipated. It is known that a few hours' treatment in a Turkish bath sobers even the man who is brought in dead drunk. The festive Britons can now, on discovering their complaint, at once trt off for the Turkish bath in place of going home. After " treatment" and a good breakfast they will saunter off to business just a3 if nothing had happened and just as some of us do in this country. Another alleged American institution has become very popular in London, where it is now considered quite correct, and in out-of-the-season fashion for gentlemen not to wear waistcoats, but to saunter along with their short coats flying open and displaying a huge front of shirt. The patterns of some coloured shirts are so curious as to be well worth displaying. " Facts come to light now and then," says the Pall Mall Gazette, "which seem to conflict strangely with the theories of the doctors, For instance, at Howden, adirty, desoia;e villlage on Tyneside, a boy was born who, at the time of his birth, had four grandparents and five great-grandparents alive, each of whom was in active work, earning his or her own livelihood. Set the village where these hale and hearty grandsirea and grand dames lire and flourish is one of the most unsanitary in England. Open sewers run down the centre of some of the streets. Until a few years ago the water supply was from one shallow well. Only one solitary scavenger is employed on half-time for cleansing, repair* ing, and maintaining all the streets. Houses have been condemned wholesale as unfit for human habitation, to the intense disgust of the people. Yet, notwithstanding all these adverse conditions, these families live and thrive vigorously." "If you love the man of letters," writes the elder Disraeli, very quaintly, " seek him in the privacies of the study ; or if he be a man of virtue, take him to your bosom. It is in tfco hour of confidence and tranquillity thatjhis genius shall elicit a ray of intelligence." Cornielle did not even speak correctly the language of which he was such a master, and it was when remonstrated with at refusing to be bound by the limits of grammar in conversation that he made the pompous answer, " I am not the less Pierre Cornielle." Addison was proverbially dull in conversation, and probably of the many who knew " Mr. Spectator," few knew anything of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, one of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Secretary of State to His Majesty King George I. The Countess of Pembroke used to rally Chaucer by saying that his silence was mors agreeable to her than his conversation. La Fontaine, who, when he wrote was the model of poetry, could not speak or describe what he had just seen ; and Isocrates, who excelled all in writing speeches, was so shy and nervous that he never had the courage to get on his legs and speak in public. He compares himself to the whetstone, which will not cut, but enables other things to do so. The power of the Press as a factor of public opinion in all parts of the world In which free institutions prevail, must be growing apace, if its circulation offers any criterion of its influence. Some recent statistics show that the. two most widely circulated newspapers in Europe are the ultra-Radical Lloyd's Weekly News, issued in London, and the Petit Journal, published in Paris The former sells to the extent of 012,902 copies, and the latter commands a sale of COO, Next to these comes Reynold's Weekly News, also advocating extreme views in politics, which issues 350,000 copies. Close upon its heels follows the Police News, an illustrated broad-sheet, which panders to the popular love of the horrible and repulsive, and is full of blood-curdling narratives of murders, criminal assaults, and crimes of atrocious violence, accompanied by woodcuts as vile in art as in subject. This literary and pictorial garbage finds 300,000 purchasers every week. The Weekly Despatch, which is very popular with the English working man, sells to the extent of 220,000 copies. The Family Herald has a circulation of 200,000, and the Referee of 120,000. Then come the great London dailios. At the head of the list stands the Daily Telegraph, which was taken over by its present proprietors for a bad debt, its founder, Colonel Sleigh, having been unable to pay Messrs. Lawson and Levy for the printers' ink he had bought of them. This sends out 2 0,000 copies daily, and yields a princely income to its fortunats owners. The Standard, with 242,000 copied runs it very closely ; the Daily News has» circulation of 100,000 ; the Daily Chronicle formerly a more periodical paper, 120,0005 and the Times, 100,000. In Paris', the only daily papers which have a really large circulation are the Orleanist Soleil and the Ra<*i* cal Lanterne, each of which issues 100,000 copies. The Temps, which enjoys almost sJ much influence a3 its London namesake, sells only 35,000 copies, and the Journal del Debats, once the leading journal in Franc 6, has dropped down to 12,000 copies.