MISCELLANEOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 116, 5 July 1873, Page 17

MISCELLANEOUS.

News has reached the “Jewish Chronicle” of the commission of a fearful outrage upon a Jewish family in Russia in the district of Miehaelow. A Jew is landlord of an inn which is solitarily situated on the border of a wood. The family consisted of husband, wife, brother, and four children. On the 15th inst, at about six in the evening, two laborers came into the inn and called for some brandy, for which they refused to pay, and jeeringly asked in addition for the loan of a few roubles. As the landlord refused to lend them any money and demanded payment for the brandy, the laborers became abusive, and ultimately were turned out of the house, the landlord detaining the caps of the men, so that they might be afterwards identified when he complained of their conduct. The laborers went away muttering ominous threats. When the innkeeper and his family had been asleep but a short time, they were awoke by loud cries of “ Fire !” and on rushing out of the house they were attacked by eight men, among whom were the two laborers who had come to the house in the early part of the evening. The landlord and his family were thrown to the ground and bound. The men set to plundering the house. When they had ransacked the place, they caught hold of the poor landlord, his wife, brother, and three youngest children, and threw them into the midst of the burning building. Only the eldest son of the landlord, about: twelve years of age, managed to escape into the neighboring wood. The othersperished in the flames. One of the laborers has been arrested, and the police are in active pursuit of the other murderers.

The following samples of PortugueseEnglish are proverbs taken from a “ Manual of the English Tongue,” designed to teach our language in its most correct form to the Portuguese youth:— So many heads, so many opinion?. The necessity don’t knew the low. Everyone for him, and God for all. The stone as roll not heap up not foam. Help thy, that God will aid thee. Spoken of the wolf, one see the tail. In the country of blinds the one-eyed menare kings.

“ Singing Mice” are being exhibited at Paris, and favour spectators with very comic songs. A few evenings ago 1 a notice was placed over the ticket office, that the rodent concert was postponed, the prima donna being ill. Infact, her warbling had attracted a cat having no taste for the harmony, but much for the artiste.

Professor Tyndall has succeeded, by the aid of a column of water twohundred and sixty feet high, in compressing air to one-eighth its original volume. When allowed to escape it rushed out so violently as to cause so intense a cold that the moisture in theroom was congealed to a shower of snow, whilst the pipe whence the air issued was edged with icicles.