OLLA PODRIDA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 741, 14 May 1886, Page 5

OLLA PODRIDA.

CLASSICAL PROFANITY.

For persons who object to profanity in English the following description of a quarrel in Latin, furnished by the Litchfield Enquirer, may suggest a substitute : We now have two high schools in this village beside the village district, school, and it s getting to be as it was in ancient Rome when Cicero travelled its streets ; the very boys quarrel in the Latin tongue. We happened to pass along in front of the shoe-shop recently just in time to hear the consummation of a quarrel over a couple of quarts of chestnuts. And we heard one boy say, ‘ You lie !’ rather emphatically. That being pure English, we understood it perfectly. The other fellow returned fire something after this fashion as Dear as we could catch on. * I never stole your dura chestnuts, and I don’t cari damnati fortem jubet jure juste dum litem eus !’ shaking his fist in the other youngster’s face. Then a boy who stood looking on, with his hands thrust into his pockets up to his elbows, shouted, Soc et tuum dum heim !’ which, not being able to understand, we suppose was also Latin. At this the youthful disputants pitched into each other, pulling hair and rolling m the dust at a great rate, while chestnuts flew m all directions in a manner that would have greatly alarmed the celebrated Virgil could he have.been present. There s nothing like a classical education; We ve often felt the want of it ourselves.

TK3 OVER-LUXURY OF AMERICANS. No foreigner who spends a season in New York and who assists at our social entertainments, ever fails to remark on the profusion and the rarity of the floral display at a fashionable dinner. When he attempts to buy a bouquet for his partner in the German, he also feels it in a different way in his pensive pockets. He thinks with regret of the roses and heliotropes of Nice, the violets and the anemones of Rome, the lilacs of Paris- as he puts down a twentydollar bill, when he has been wont to spend ten francs for a similar luxury. The flowers are fine—he is forced to admit that—-and they are also forced ; if he wishes daises, anemones and grasses, dandelions, clover and lilies-of the-valley, he learns that he can have them by giving his orders three months in advance. Suck is the demand for this particular luxury of flowers, out of season, that the florists of Broadway, now, can supply every pretty whming Lady Teazle with her roses in January, and her white lilacs in the most blustering snowclad March. Strawberries grace many a dinner when the blizzard roars outside, and peaches and the freckled apricot ripen over the hotwater register, as they did on the old south wall at Haddon Hall m the days of Dorothy Vernon. The luxury of an American dinner-table is unknown m Europe, even at the tables of kings. They may have better cooks, but they have not our markets. They cannot command the canvas-back or the terrapin, the oyster or the Spanish mackerel, the venison or the wild turkey. The tremendous reach of this Continent, with its network of railroads, and with its fruit-gardens of California, like the fabled gardens of Armida, ready to yield anybody’s favorite fruit at a moment’s notice —all this is unknown in Europe, where delicacies are local, and where neither fruits nor flowers are forced. Perhaps their luxury is the best. It is less crude than ours. The asparagus of France, used in season, is unapproachable for its delicacy of flavor. We sacrifice the best part our luxury, that of flavor, when we eat forced fruit. But although these good things are to be had, and roses can be bought at a dollar apiece, it is doubtful if it is a wise way of spending money. We are all under the influence of the great ‘ Too Much.’ We all want to do what our neighbors do, and we are therefore hurried on to an extravagance which but few can afford. If the Wall Street broker, who has made a million in a week, gives a dinner with a quarter of it represented in his porcelain, glass, roses, and Johanmsberger —if his hospitality is like the Prince Rupert drop, distilled chemically at an immense cost —he must be entertained m the same style, with great inconvenience to his entertainer, whose income is perhaps fifteen thousand a year, and uncertain at that. The enormous increase in luxury m the internal decoration of houses, where every square inch is a mosaic of artistic fancy, and whose portiferes, and cushions and couches must be fashioned by the laborious needlework of hundreds of embroiderers, has this recommendation : it excites commendable emulation as to taste. It employs most deserving artists. It gives an honest living to the reduced gentleman, that sufferer of the nineteenth century for whom no eleemosynary institution has been built as yet. But it ruins many a railroad king who builds himself a palace which the Prince of Wales or the Emperor of Austria would consider magniScant and regal. No wonder that our bishops and other clergy are preaching against this fearful, this demoralizing tendency of American over-

luxury which is so much greater than can be afforded by our industries, and which euds often in leaving written over the deserted portals, ’Ye build, ye build, but ye enter not in.’—Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

A PEEP AT A WAKE. Having served as juryman at numerous coronor’s inquests, I have often felt disposed to denounce the pefunctory style of conducting these inquiries more particularly in the case of the death of infants by overlaying, which generally follow upon the drinking bouts of the members of the lowest grade of society. I very much fear that many of these awful fatalities arc premeditated, iu order to outahi. what is commonly knowu as club benefit, and to thus enable the perpetrators to indulge in the diabolical orgy which precedes the burial of the victim. In order to illustrate my meaning, l will give a trite picture of one of these events which occur with especial frequency when the adult or the poor suffering child has been enrolled as * subscribing member of some burial club.. When in business some years ago and connected with shipping at one of our great seaports, my yard and premises were situated near the dooks, and ofttimes during the winter months my men were engaged working throughout the night on pressing contracts for shipment. My dwelling-house was situated in the outskirts of the city, but on going to and from my business place I had to pass through a perfect wilderness of narrow, dark streets, where the houses and courts teemed full to overflowing with the wretched poor. I never pass through thislocality, particularly in theearly, but dark hours of the morning when returning home, without a feeiing of insu'ierable pain at the thought of all the acuimutated misery, want, and despair whico had living existence there. Sights and sou.ids have passed before my vision and hearing tnat would make the sympathetic shudder to think that such was the experience of myriads of our fellow-creatures day and night, present and onward iu o the distant future. I was returning home one morning about three o’clock, tired and weary, through one of these dark and narrow streets, courts branched off each side, the silence of the night held all their dark and dreadful mysteries secret from the world, anct tne foghun<* over their entrances like funeral , palls. The street way was covered with snow which like a win ling sheet concealed the unclean and pestiferous surface beneath. As I advanced craping towirds the opening which led into a wider throughfare, I noticed a briliunt tight sinning out in ibis horrible oasis, and I hurried towards the house from which it proceeded, wondering what the occasion could be of suc.i an illumination at that hour. I soon found the cause. It was a very simple, a very ordinary, and, alas, too frequent one It was a ‘ wake ’ being held on the ground floor o. a cottage—God save the mark !In advancing to look in at the window, speculating as to the cause of the silence winch reigned, I stumbled over an old woman clothed m filthv rags who had fallen m tie stree. and lay helpless and alone in the gutter, her poor old gray head bleeding, and u ig.i,.y grasped in her hand was a bottle I raised her head from the gutter and ;> c.u so that she vvou’a ue wua t-.ic ■- on- or her pillow. I then advance! and looked through the window into the room. On a round table in the centre of the r..orn the “-daring of six candles shed a flood ol light over the scene of this horrible carnival. On a sofa near the wiudow a man lay. unkempt, dirty and repulsive. He haa evidently tried to raise himself from his recumbent position and failed. He had got hold of the first thing within his reach which was the window curtain, bearing it_ down, and it was in his grasp as he lay with his head hanging towards the floor. Three men of similar repulsive appearance were lying near him on the floor, as well as several ragged and dishevelled women. All the evidences of a violent fray were visible m the broken articles of furniture lying about. One woman was sitting on a chair with her elbow resting on a table, with distended eyes as though looking at the candle light, while the disengaged hand was stretched towards a bottle just out of her reach. Another woman was lying at full length on the floor, her bosom exposed ; a starving and famishing child was tugging with its mouth at her breast, its little eyes gleaming with animal ferocity, so preternatural was its effort .to drink the poisoned nutriment from its mother’s bosom. This child .was the only living thing in that room which gave evidence of wakefulness, but yet how insensible to the horrors which surrounded it ! And the dead—what of the dead ? In a coffin m an almost upright position in a corner against the wall, placed there, f ■•-•sume to make more room for the sat.io o ; ev-.-iry, was the body clothed in the cer meats of death, while' the head and sho yders. leaned out of the upper part of the coffin, with the face partly turned towards the window. On its right temple was a huge dark stain, probably the cause of the death, and the face seemed to be leering. With a horrible grimace over the scene in this charnel house. The dazzling light brought every object into bold relief, and the sight filled me with indescribable loathing. I turned and fled, yet that scene remains clean cut in my memory, never to be forgotten. Can you wonder that I should point the. finger of warning to the direct tendency of some of the operations of these so called burial chibs (a good thing in themselves if properly used)? Is it not clearly the duty of coroners and jurymen to insist upon more searching inquiries being made into the circumstances of deaths resulting from violence and overlaying in order to prevent criminals escaping their just meed of punishment by the usual pro forma verdict of ‘Accidental Death ? Liverpool Porcupine

TELEPHONING FROMLIGHTSHIPS. An experiment of the greatest importance to the commercial world is made on the east coast of England by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company. For the last eight months the Company has had several, of its bast operatives located iu the neighborhood of tha Nazs, off which the most dangerous sands round England are to be found. These gentlemen are hourly in communication

by telephone with a lightship which is anchored ten miles out in the vicinity of the Swin passage. An ordinary telegraph cable has been laid from Walton-on-the-Naze to the Sank Lightship, and telephone and appartus have been affixed to boSPends. It was considered improbable that the human voice would be conducted ten miles’, especially in rough weather ; but this has been now proved to be thoroughly practicable. A conversation was carried on with Mr Stevenson, one of the Telegraph Maintenance Company’s officials (who was on board the Sunk Lightship) by telephone fora considerable time. Mr Stevenson had been a month upon the boat, and had experienced all kinds of weather, during which time he had kept Mr Lewis and Mr Pinkerton, his colleagues on shore, fully informed of the weather, roughness of the sea, passing craft, adding frequently forecasts of weather, which usually turned out to be correct. A month upon the Lightship is a trying ordeal ; but Mr Stevenson was so satisfied with the success that attended the experiment, and knowing, if the advantage of telephonic communication with lightships was understood and generally adopted, what a boon it would be to mariners and merchants, that he spent his time busily in collecting information and watching the working of his electrical machines. INFLUENCE OF HOT DRINKS ON DIGESTION. Various opinions are held by the public, and we believe by medical men also, on the effect of hot drinks on the digestion of food This matter has lately been investigated by Dr V. F. Nyeshel of St. Petersburg. The plan he adopted was to make use of twenty patient in the surgical wards of the Obukoff Hospital suffering from fracture of the fibula, contusion of the foot, and such-like affections, and dividing them into two sets of ten each, to find out first by a three days’ experiment the length of time an ordinary meal of soup, meat, potatoes, and black bread required for digestion. For this purpose the stomach-tube was employed at periods varying from five to seven hours and a half after the meal, and the condition of the contents of the stomach examined. In all the cases complete breaking down appeared to have taken place in about six hours and a half. The exact time required by each individual for the digestion of the specified meal being noted, further observations were made on a subsequent day, the patients in the first group being given after the meal hot tea at a temperature of from 40deg. to 75 deg. C., the quantity taken varying from two to eight tumberfuls. The contents of the stomach were drawn off at the time when, as former experiments had shown, digestion would under ordinary conditions have been complete. The result was that, when not more than three tumberfuls of hot tea had been swallowed, it was found that digestion had progressed just as well as without it, but a larger quantity of hot tea appeared distinctly to retard the digestive process. The second group of patients were given a meal similar to what they had had before, but hot. On examining" the contents of their stomachs no difference could be detected between the rate of digestion of hot and cold food. The author found that by painting the pharynx with a 5 per cent, solution of hydrochlorate of cocaine the tube passed easity and quickly. —Lancet.