INTERESTING READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12860, 8 May 1905, Page 3

INTERESTING READING.

ANOTHER LESE-MAJESTE STORY. Max Perlewitz, . an upholsterer, of Rixdorf, was travelling between Gross Liehterfeldo and Berlin, and during the journey fell into conversation with an affable stranger. The topio was military service, and Perlewitz gave his views on the army as it was when ho was a young man, under tho Emperors Wilhelur I. and Frederick. This led to comparisons between these Sovereigns and the present Kaiser, and Perlewitz's remarks were not over-complimentary to Wilbean 11. When he got to the journey's end the affable stranger informed the police of the rank treason to which ho had been listening. And now poor Perlewitz is undergoing three months' imprisonment for Majestatsbeleidigung, A GRUESOME EXPERIMENT. A French vivisectionisfc once carried out a ghastly experiment in order to prove the connuection between the brain and the physiological process by which thought is generated in that medium. The brain, which is a kind of mental workshop, must be, supplied with suitable materials for the accomplishment of its functions; and these materials, as most of us know, consist of nutritive blood containing a good supply of oxygen fresh from the lungs. The vivisectionist, therefore, T.P.'s Weekly relates, cut off the head of a dog and pumped into the main artery of its brain fresh blood from the lungs of another animal. The dog's head, although severed from its body, lived, and when its name was called the eyes in the decapitated head turned towards the person who hailed it. The dog was completely conscious, JJtif directly the flow of blood was stopped consciousness ceased. WHAT IMAGINATION CAN DO. Dr. Buckland one day gave a dinner, after dissecting a Mississippi alligator, having asked a good many of the most distinguished of his classes to dine with him. His house and all his establishment were in good style and taste. His guests congregated the dinner table showed splendidly, with glass, china, and plate, and the meal commented with excellent soup. " How do you like the soup?" asked the doctor, after having finished his own plate, addressing a famous gourmand of the day. " Very good, indeed," answered the other. "Turtle, is it not? "1 only ask because I do not find any green fat." The doctor shook his head. "I think it has somewhat of a musky taste," said another; "not unpleasant, but peculiar." "All alligators have," replied Buckland; "the cayman peculiarly so. The fellow whom I dissected this morning, and whom you have just been eating ' ! There was ai general rout of the whole, guests. Every one turned pale. Half-a-dozen stalled up from the table. Two or three of them ran out of the room, and only those who had stout stomachs remained "to the close of an excellent entertainment. "See what imagination is," (said Buekland. "If 1 told them it was turtle, or terrapin, or birdnest soup —salt water amphibia or fresh, or the gluten of a fish from the maw of a. sea bird, they would have pronounced it excellent, anil their digestion been none the worse. Such is prejudice." But was it really aw alligator?" asked a lady. "As good a 1 call's head ad ever wore a coronet,' 1 answered Buekland.

THE GREATEST BATTLE. In a letter to the London Express, Mr. A. ; Mullet says:—"On March 15 one of your 1 correspondents referred t< a" battle under . Charlemagne against the Moors. I think he.must be under a misapprehension, or, no doubt, he lias in his mind the battle of Tours and Poitiers (A.D. 732), fought by Charlemagne's grandfather, Charles Mattel", when 575,000 Moors alone are supposed to have been slain. At Ohalons-sur-Marne, in 451, between Aetius and Attila 162,000 dead covered the battlefield, and if it had, among others, been possible to keep statistics of the campaigns of Genghis Khan (thirteenth century), and of Tamerlane (fourteenth century), the death-roll in many battles would no doubt have been much greater. At the siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70)), when two million Jews were crowded into Jerusalem, the deaths must have amounted to many hundred thousands, and in the consequent threeyears' war (132-5* half-a-million Jews were slaughtered by the Romans. Tho terrible slaughter in the campaigns of olden times was only the natural consequence of man fighting against man. It was a case of "You die or I must die.' If immediate death did rot ensue, the wounds were of such a terrible nature that only an exceedingly .small ! percentage of wounded would eventually'survive. I wonder how many of the 1.700.000 men Xerxes took into Greece returned to Asia. Altogether the losses of the present war, though terrible enough, are insignificant compared with those of previous "wars. HOW FRENCH MEN OF LETTERS WORK. " M. Pierre Lalitte has succeeded in persuading a. score of French men and women of letters to unveil the secrets of their workrooms. For those who like these confessions of method, here are a few of the must- interesting. M. Anatole France wakes at live or six in the morning and : works in bed. He has a peculiar, habit of sticking down on his original .MS. little pieces of paper bearing his corrections. .M. Francois Coppeo writes his poems with the speed of the lightning and his stories with that of the snail. As for M. Paul Hervicu, he paces up and down amid piles of books and papers, sounding and resounding his phrases in an undertone. M. Paul . liourget has also the passion of a multi- ; tude of documents, and is always making searches when not. writing. And the brothers Marguerittc work assiduously, their father's sword hanging above their desk; so perfect is their collaboration that when a work is complete, neither brother can determine his own precise part in it.— Academy, — - *» ■ HISTORY REPEATS. History repealed itself in a way in the career of the Marquis of Anglesey which closed a few weeks ago. He married, in th' daughter of Sir George Clie.twynd, a lady whose mother was a participant in one of the wildest romances of the Victorian era. Lady Florence Paget, as the present Lady,Chetwynd then was, was en- , gaged to many Mr. Henry Chaplin. She drove one day with him and her chaperon© to Swan and Edgar's, left him standing in the shop, and popped out by a back door to where the Marquis of Hastings awaited her in a hansom. And while Mr. Chaplin wailed, the young lady and the Marquis went off and got married. Mr. Chaplin's revenge came with Hermit's Derby. At ! 40 to 1 the non-favourite started, and the ! Marquis stood to lose £100,000 when the nag fell. Mr. Chaplin's horse, won, and the Marquis died a, ruined man, as did Lord Anglesey. But he met his losses pluckily; there was no question of bankruptcy with him. "Hermit fairly broke my heart; but 1 did not show it, did IV he said before he died. WHAT A WRONG COMMA COST. The varieties of usage in the matter of punctuation are amazing, ranging from the refusal of an eminent Cambridge scholar to recognise full stops to the free distribution of semicolons in which the New Testament revisers indulged. On the whole it is better, perhaps, to be generous rather than stingy with one's punctuation marks. In Washington the lax use of commas is doubtless discouraged after the painful blunder which cost, the United States Government a. matter of £400,000 sterling. About. 30 years ago the United States Congress, iu drafting the Tariff Bill, enumerated in one section the articles to be admitted on the free list. Among these were " all foreign fruit-plants." The copying clerk, in his superior wisdom, omitted the hyphen and inserted a comma after " fruit," so that, tho clause read, " all foreign fruit, plants, etc." The mistake could not be rectified for about a year, and during this tint-; all oranges, lemons, bananas, grapes, and other foreign fruits ! were admitted free of duty, with a loss to I the Government of at least £400,000 fori that year. J