ITEMS OF SOCIAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 3 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF SOCIAL NEWS.

[from the society papers.] Some morbidly interesting details have transpired as to the wounds produced by the new French Lebel bullet, fired, of course,' from the magazine rifle, on which our neighbours so pride themselves. A number of actual human corpses were used for the series of experiments, and the result tends to show that the Lebel bullet, though its calibre is only eight millimetres, produces consequences quite as serious as the old rifle bullets with a calibre of eleven millimetres used to effect. Doctors who examined the wounds made in the corpses used as targets assert that they are of an especially dangerous kind and most difficult to treat surgically, by reason of the very orifices made by the entry of the bullets. It was also found that in many cases the bullets had completely perforated the bones they struck, and that it was only when the bones were struck at a tangent that they were shattered. So great is the velocity of the bullet when fired that it drives before it as it goes a certain quantity of air, which can be clearly distinguished in some instan* taneous photographs which have been taken.

A well-known paper published in Boston, which recently offered Mr. Gladstone £100 for an article not exceeding the length of a leader in a morning newspaper, has just (writes a correspondent of the Liverpool Mercury) offered Mr. Browning £250 for a short poem. Mr. Browning has declined, in a characteristic letter. "If I could write in that way for anyone," he says, " I would consider this request from Boston. But I simply can't. An English magazine offered me a large price, which I refused, and then a still larger, which I again refused. Then they sent me a blank cheque and asked me to fill it out to my own satisfaction, but I returned that also. I cannot bring myself to write for periodicals. If I publish a book, and people choose to buy it, that proves they want to read my work. But to have them turn over the pages of a magazine and find me, that is to be an uninvited guest ! My wife liked it. She liked to be with the others, but I have steadfastly refused that kind of thing from first to last."

The following story of a leading physician is on the books:—The great and worthy practitioner invariably prescribes for his patients one dish and one glass of wine. The other evening he chanced to find himself dining with a patient on one hand and a staunch teetotaller upon the other. The patient, who through many weary weeks had followed the dreary curriculum of a dish and a glass, watched his physician to see in what manner he dined, but was highly incensed to find that th? doctor ate and drank heartily of everything that came before him. At last he burst forth—" Well 4 sir, you certainly do not practice what yotpreach. Why, you have eaten of everything on the menu." " Yes, yes," said the doctor, testily ; "but what is a man to do who runs about all day, and comes home at night with thirty or forty letters to answer ? He must have a bottle of champagne." Hert the teetotaller burst in angrily, saying, " But, doctor, do you mean to tell me that a man is better able to answer thirty or forty letters when he has had a bottle of champagne?" "No," the doctor, " but when he lias had a bottle of champagne he does not care a d—n whether they are answered or not."

Peculiar interest will now be felt about the portrait of the Emperor Frederick which the well-known Austrian painter Angeli is engaged in finishing. This portrait shows the late monarch with his Imperial crown on his head, the sceptre of State in his hand, and the Imperial mantle upon his shoulders. The picture was commenced at the special request of the late Emperor himself ; and, in spite .of his great weakness and well nigh in defiance of his doctor's advice, he gave Herr Angeli two sittings, the last he gave whilst alive to any artist. As to the Imperial crown, the sceptre, &c., they were freely placed at the disposal of the artist, who made a finished sketch of each accessory of State, and it may be imagined with what anxiety the completion of the only portrait painted from life of the Emperor Frederick during his short reign is awaited • by the Empress Victoria and the family.

A " curious impertinent" has been raking out the acte de naissance of Madame Sarah Bernhardt. The great actress was born, it appears, at Havre on Saturday.. April 12, 1843, her mother being Julie Bernhardt, artiste musicienne, stated in the document to be the daughter of a Berlin oculist, and to have been born in that city. Mdme. Bernhardt was named not Sarah, but Rosalie, and her twin sister Lucie. The father is said by the Journal da Havre to have been a Government official, known as " le beau X ," who afterwards committed suicide under " dramatic " circumstances. If all this be true, the legend of two young Dutch Jewesses running away from their home in Amsterdam and finding themselves penniless one morning in the Tuileries gardens must be dismissed to the limbo of biographical fantasies. Mdme. Bernhardt, according to this statement, is five or six years older than Mrs. Kendal, and has probably by some years the advantage (or disadvantage) of Miss Ellen Terry.

Too much courtesy is always better than too little; but the Queen, perhaps, carried international amenity a little too far in requesting the sanction of Spain before becoming patroness of the Armada Tercentenary celebration. It is almost an insult to a nation to suppose that any such wound should rankle for three hundred years. Did we feel any national humiliation when the Americans celebrated not the tercentenary, but the centenary of their independence? Rather we rejoiced with them ; yet the American war was a far more disgraceful disaster to England than the Armada fiasco to the Spanish people. " Where are the galleons of Spain ?" sings • Mr. Austin Dobson in his stirring ballad ; but surely; we may also ask where are the resentments of three centuries ago ? The Romans conquered Britain —yet we should scarcely expect King Humbert to apologise to us for. unveiling a statue of Julius Caesar.