THINGS IN GENERAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15155, 20 November 1912, Page 10

THINGS IN GENERAL.

HEALTH AND THE BARBER. "A little friend o' mine come over from Sydney on Sunday," said tho barber. " Though I do say it, che was anxious to f.eo me, and she come over in the Mabono, because eho had an idea that steamers with turbines got along quicker than them that's only got the old kind of works. I suppose there's something in that, and eh© got hero in time to get ashore and have a clean-up before dinner. Why don't they let tho passengers get ashore as soon as the steamer's alongside the wharf ?"

" Because everyone on board has to pass a medical examination."

"So they tell me; but that ain't no answer. The Maheno was tied up about a hour before they'd let anyone come off, and I had to wait for another half-hour or so, till tho girl come ashore, before I could speak to her without yellin', because I wasn't allowed to go on board. I want to know why they can't go through the medical performance hoforo the ship comes alongside. Mo, I'd have been glad of a trip out to meet the Maheno somewhere up the gulf. There's everybody on beard bored .to death with the trip, wonderin' what they'ro goin' to do with themselves. Course, there's the scenery to admire, but you take- it from me, tho last hour of a trip on a steamer is the one that drags most. Then when they get to tho wharf, all them people sees their friends waitin* for them, lookm' liko galoots : and they stand in rows along the rail, and looks like more galoots— I felt a3 if I looked like one, and the girl did, too. . . . Oh, she won't mind me sayin' that. She ain't one of theso thin-skinned peopSe that's scared of facts. Everybody grins and waves their hands : and there's a sort of mournful procession goin' on all the time. The doctor, he goes aboard when the steamer comes alongside, and goes down below; and everybody marches past and puts out their tongues. After it's all over the doctor, he's' had enough of it, and the crowd's had more than enough. Then they sort of cuts away the barriers, and there's a general Tush and kissin' match. I ain't got any, objection to. the medical examination. I ain't a medical expert, and it's probably all right, although I'm told that there's a good many pretty serious things can get past the average medical exam, en a steamer. But 1 do object to holdin' up five hundred people for over an hour because it happens to be handier for one or two people. Nice sort of fuss there'd be if Mr. Massey was to be busy writ in' a letter when the express was ready to go out, and the train had to wait a hour for him to get it finished. I don't know how many of these passenger ships has doctors on board; but I reckon that when they have, they oughtn't to need any medical examination at all. One good doctor's as good as another. I had a big impression made on me by seem" all them people standin' waitin' and all wonderin' and swearin' inBide."

H.M.S. TORCH. The little man-of-war which has lain in. the Waitemata, Harbour lately H.M.S. Torch— one of very few survivors of a type of fighting chip doomed to rapid extinction. The British navy contains no " sloops" that are not obsolete. • Although the Torch is not very old, having been built' in 1894, and is younger than other vessels still in service, she is no more than a police boat, a carrier of the flag, and a training ground. When she left Fiji for Auckland the other day, the people of the island became greatly excited because they thought her sudden movement was part of a general mobilisation scheme. Britain was surely about to lay a heavy hand on the situation in the Balkans. Doubtless the Torch-was to hurry to the seat of war and lay the oppressor low. But this is the day of big ships, big guns, and big tactic*. When a 12-in -shell __ can plunge through a foot of the best Krupp cemented armour plate at a range of seven miles, and emerge unbroken and only deeply scored, a trifling little vessel can but run messages, unless she is equipped as a sort of naval wasp. The only small vessels that count now are those that can run like a coyote and sting like a serpent, shooting destruction in a steel box under water, and tackling the enemy below as a black swimmer disembowels a shark. The small gun and the armoured ship can no longer fight civilised nations, for the civilised peoples have made for themselves great coats of mail. Nothing tiny can sail against them on the face of the water and in the open. But it may yet be that a single man, soaring in the air, shall drop something through an unguarded chink in a Dreadnought's deck, and turn the navies of the world into /uiu.

DREAMS AND THE TIME. When one talks of dreams one talks of a subject which has no end. Everyone dreams; nobody understands dreams. Some blame suppers for their sleeping visions; some say that dreams are inevitable. Some declare dreams to be utterly irrational; others hold that they "go by contraries;" others again will stake a week's wages upon some hint acquired in sleep, and will back an issue which now and then induces them to continue in their belief. The last is almost peculiarly a belief of the racegoer. Men seldom let dreams interfere in their business, which seems after all a sort of test of the reality of their trust. There are some very interesting problems connected with dreaming waiting for further investigation. Some observers have stated very positively that if a person, dreaming, sees a clock, the clock shows the actual time. Thus, in a dream occurring at, say, six o'clock in the morning, a sleeper thought he stood in a public square at noon. For him it certainly was noon, by all tho ordinary signs cf that time of day. Yet the big clock in a building before him said it was six o'clock, and ho dreamed that lie made a complaint to the people in charge of the clock, and there was quite a little row about it. A* friend of mine tells me that ho conducted a series of experiments to test the power of a sleeping man to tell the time. He is one of the' many who have the gift of being able to wake infallibly at a given hour, and habitually exercised the gift. A'friend with whom he lived consented to alter this man's watch on odd nights without his knowledge, to tho extent of an hour or more in either direction. This, my friend says, was always done without his knowing upon what nights the alteration was to be made, or whether it was to be great or small, ahead or backwards. Yet, almost without exception, he woke when the hour he had decided upon was indicated by the watch at his bedside. The watch had an open face. A very valuable contribution to the limited knowledge of this subject would be made if someone made a series of. similar observations and recorded them The tiling wants doing properlv, with closed as well as open watches, and with other variations which readily surest themselves. J fab

HOW FAST DO WE DREAM? Another phase of tho dream problem and one upon which there is great difference of opinion, is the rate at which the process of thought takes place Thought of_ any kind is, of course, ex'. fcamoly rapid, if we consider it in terms of mere time ; and speed of thought is an accomplishment that can bo trained. There are men who can grasp a long series of ideas and make them into a collective scheme at once, instead of having to take up one point at a time and «tudy it. Just so there are mon who can ' see and record a vast number of details in some scene or event before them, whilp others have only the ability to watch p. < few items, and in goring them jn tta, memory, overlook all the rest. Anyon^

with experience of the evidence of witnesses knows that in dream, no doubt, a host of ideas may be ill train all together, be realised altogether, and worked out with rational connections, even though they relate to such events as might occupy years. Hence the phenomenon so often* heard of, that a drowning man "sees his whole life pass before him." He may or he may nut; but something of the sort lias certainly given rise to the assertion that he sometimes does. I can quote a very interesting dream-story out of my own experience, and it may he considered a good example of a rapid dream. I was much interested in naval ordnance at tho time, and I dreamed that I had charge of tho construction of a new gun. I left New Zealand with the drawings of the weapon, and supervised the whole construction of the gun at a big American engineering works. Tho voyage to New York was full of incident ; but%ny mind made a "hop of expediency" from the steamer to the works, probably because. I knew little or nothing - of America. The gun was long in building; hut. it was finished at last; and about three months after I left home (every day of which three months was worked out)* it was set up on a proving ground to he tested. It hurst with a terrific report. I have never forgiven that dream for the poor testimonial it gave'me. as a builder of guns.

Tho report woke me, and I started up to hear a peculiar noise in tho room. I lit a match, and found on the floor tho pieces of a large broken jar. One vi them, when rocked, gave exactly the noise I had heard when I woke. It would only rock for a second or two, so that, assuming that the jar had fallen and broken, I must have been completely awake very quickly after the smashing of the vessel 4 which had been left on a table on its side,, and had been rolled off by a gust of wind. I believe that tho crash which the jar made, and the explosion of the gun which woke me, were the same. I also believe that my dream was either instantaneous or so nearly instantaneous that it was all over before I woke to hear the shard rocking on the floor. I believe, too, that tho dream was a series of ideas all hung upon the noise as a starting point. Coincidences happen, of course: but the theory of instantaneous dreaming is more easily adopted than a belief that the jar fell at the moment whe J the button was pressed to fire the gun.