OLLA PODRIDA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 759, 17 September 1886, Page 5

OLLA PODRIDA.

A FORTUNE LIKE THE IRISH-

MANS FLEA.’

A financial reporter, on the staff of a New York daily journal, got into the councils of a ring of speculators and cleared 120,000 dols in a single transaction. In another transaction a few days later he lost every cent of it. —Harper’s Weekly. ANTIQUITY OF THE BANG. There is nothing new under the sun, and even the fashion of banging the hair, whioh has been supposed to be a piodern invention for young ladies and gentlemen, is very ancient. Herodotus says of the Arabians : ‘They acknowledge no other gods than Bacchus and Urania, and they say that fcbeir hair is cut in the same way as Bacchus is cut, in a circular form, banged round the temples.’ Bangs, then, denotes a fondness for the god of wine and revelry. GRAINS OF GOLD. There is nothing so valuable, and yet so cheap, as civility.—Century. Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft hands.—Lowell. Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some more by listening than by talking.—Colton. The great beauty of charity is privacy ; there is a sweet force even in an anonymous penny. —Century. For drunkenness, use cold water; for health, rise early ; to be happy, be honest; to please all, mind you own business,— Foster. Independence is a name for what no man possesses ; nothing, in the animated or inanimate world, is more dependent than man. Century. , , . , The powers of monarchs are lessening, ana the influence of the aristocracy is fading away, while the power of the people is increasing.—John Bright. _ ‘How,’ said one to Sir Water Raleigh, * do you accomplish so much and in so short a time T ‘ When I have anything to do I go and do it,’ was the reply. Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converee ; whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company.—Swift. Like a blind spinner in the sun, I treads my ways ; I know that all the threads will run Appointed ways. Helen Hunt A BURMESE FAIRY STORYFairy tales are popular among them, and there is one which comes from over the border in Siam, which was told us by a Siamese. The exaggerations all hung together artistically, and are in the same key, as it were : ‘ There was once a king who heard that there was an enormous giant in a far country, and he decided that he should never rest until he got a hair of the giant s heal. So he sent his fleet, and they sailed and they sailed, and they sailed for weeks and weeks and weeks, and at last one day in the afternoon, it became suddenly dark, and they stuck fast, and they could neither go forward nor backward. Now the xact was that they had got inside of a hole in a sort of carrot, the smallest vegetable in the giant’s kingdom. And behold the next morning the giant’s children went out to nsh, and as they went they picked up two or three elephant’s on their way for bait, but they were only able to catch a few of the very smallest fishes in the country—“ something equivalent to your minnows ” said the narrator. And as they were going back they saw the carrot growing np by the water’s edge, and pulled it up to put in into the curry, and inside it was the whole fleet. After they got home the giant threw the fish and carrot into the pot in order to boil them, when the fleet rose out of the root to the top of the water with all the men in it. “ What are those curious insects ?” said the giant, peering down into the pot.’ Then came a good deal more which the narrator had forgotten. ‘ The men tried to shout to the giant and tell him what it was they wanted, but their voices were too weak, and he could not hear a word they said. At length he lifted them up to his ear in his hand, and a whole boat’s crew marched in at the hole, and went ever such a long way up inside, and they all shouted together and told him they had come from theii king to him for a

hair of his head. So at last he wa3 able to hear what only then seemed to him a whisper. Unlike his kind, the giant was apparently as good-natured as he was big—he gave them the hair, lifted them hack to the sea, where the hair, when put aboard the fleet, nearly sunk it, “ afier which he puffed out his cheeks and gave a tremendous blow, which carried the fleet straight home, hundreds of miles at one go.’ A SPIDER’S WEDDING. Autumn is the time of the year to take notes on the courtship of the common spider. On their own garden walks novv awaits—all who care to investigate the subject such an episode of patience, love and tragedy as is only to be found in Spideiland. The bridegroom may he found lurking somewhere near the object of his devotion, and is distinguished from the bride-elect by the comparative smallness of his body. . Now, 1 have never seen a male spider weaving a flynet, though he posesses the essential viscious fluid, and spins his single lines ; but I have seen him helping himself to the stores of his lady-love when her web has secured mere prey than she could look after at the monent. The patience of the observer will be tried, perhaps, by reason of the length of the courtship, The affection is solely on the side of the gentlemen. He has to use the utmost caution, not only in the manner in which he presents his petition,: but in providing a safe and rapid retreat should his suit be rejected. He selects a branch, holding one of the main lines of the lady’s web ; he attaches a cord of his own. spinning to the branch, and then, Blondmlike, he walks the tight-rope of his lady-love. Generally he is able to reach the spiral work of her abode before she is aware of his presence. If she moves towards him he drops, and is seen dangling at the end of his thread, up which he nimbly runs, to repeat the performance perhaps many times. But as the importunity of lovemaking creates an interest towards the wooer, he succeeds, at last, like some of the observers, in gaining audience. Miss Spider confronts the intruder ; his best dislomatic powers are now brought into play. Generally the interview is in favor of the suitor, yet you may witness his ignominious retreat, in which case it will be managed by his escape line ; the pursued in his fall describes the arc of a quadrant, whilst the pursuer would have o traverse to two radii to capture him. If his proposal is entertained, he proceeds by some mystic art of voice and touch to throw a spell of mesmerism over his bride, and by skilful manipulation of his fresh-spun web he binds her eight limbs tightly, to her sides. His triumph is of short duration ; soon retribution overtakes him. She awakes from the spell ; he is within her very claws ; the next instant he is enwrapped, by the deadly folds of her web. The wedding breakfast is spread, and the lone bride, like Gray S'fcshe Wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, feasts on the writhing body of her devoted husband.

GATHERING ROSES. Oh. the deliciousness Of the fresh season : Red roses, white rose 3,

Roses past reason. Out of my gardenful, Sweetheart, the sweetest call — Sweetest for posies, Oh, the unspeakable, Untold deliciousness, Gathering roses ! Where shall she stoop to cull, See where she lingers, Now over this one with Wavering fingers ; Now over that one—ah, All are so beautiful! Which shall my sweetheart cull, Sweetest for posies ? Oh, the undreamable, Undreamt deliciousnes3, Gathering roses ! Frail, odoriferous, Sweet-briared roses : Thorn-studded, cluster-leaved, Pink ottar roses ! Nay, sweetheart, have a care ! Touch not the eglantiere, Touch not the witching snare, Pluck not that rose for me ; It will be pricking thee, Making my posies, All are so beautiful, Which shall my sweetheart cull, Sweetest for posies ? O, the untunable, Unsung deliciousness, Gathering roses 1 Gold hearted, plush-petalled Marshal Ned roses, Sharply upon your stem The hard scissor closes ; Moss-crested, moon-colored Nonpareil roses, Fair as the day couch Where Cynthia reposes } "Virgins, immaculate " Pale-climbing roses, There the tired butterfly Thoughtlessly dozes ; „ Passionate, deep-centred Jacqueminot roses, No sweeter, no crueller, Blossom uncloses. Nay, little sweetheart mine ! Not with the scissor tips Pluck we the sweetest rose ; Dear, it blooms upon your lips— Sweetest rose in Paradise, Cruellest rose in Paradise ; And this moment stooping down, Lo ! I cull it for my own, Spite of thorns within your eyes— Cull me a whole heartful, Life’s sweetest posies ! Oh, the ineffable Eden deliciousness Gathering roses. —N.Y. Sun. THE GERMAN CENSUS. The census of the German Empire, which has just been taken, establishes the fact that the preponderance of the female over the male sex is increasing in Prussia. While the male population numbered 13,893,658, the female population was 14,420,145. an excess

of 526,457 females on a total of 28,313,833 persons. Since the census of 1880 the excess of female has increased 77,078, and since 1867 the increase has been no less than 297,000, or 129.46 per cent. Out of every 100 persons who were enumerated in the census of Prussia in 1867, 49.52 were males and 50.48 were females, but now the proportion is 49,07 and 50.93 per cent repectively, the excess of females having increased from .96 to 1.86 per cent in eighteen years. Of all the provinces of Prussia only Rhineland and Schleswig-Holstein show a small preponderance of the male sex, while in East

Prussia, Posen and Berlin the greatest prepoderance of females is to.be found. In Berlin alone, with its population of roughly 1,300,000, there ore 52,419 more females than malss.—Hartford Courier.

WOOD POWDER.

Sawdust, Treated with Acids, Becomes

More Powerful than Dynamite.

Antwerp, Feb. 6. —Dynamite, long used as an explosive in the Engineering Corps of the Belgian Army, has lately, on account of the numerous difficulties attending its use, been replaced by wood powder, made at Canbille, near Peer, in the Province of Limburg. The powder is simply sawdust, treated with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids, and afterward formed under powerful pressure into cylindrical or prismatic cartridges. These cartridges are prepared for commercial use by covering them with paraffined paper, which protects them from moisture.

The instantaneous production of the gases arising from the primer and the explosive, and the simultaneous action of these gases in every direction, causes the air in contact with the face surface of the cartridge to act to some extent as a light tamping, and the power of the explosion is directed to Jthe other face.

In comparative experiments made upon a rail with wood powder and dynamite with cellulose, it was ascertained that for equal weights charges of the first substance were at least as powerful as those of the second, and that the results were more constant, more regular. In the experiment for rupturing double-T beams, the maximum effects were produced when the cartridges were placed in the angles upon one face of the beam. Below are the results of the different experiments in the rupture of double-T beams of wrought iron, with equal weights of wood powder, of dynamite with cellulose, or gun cotton, and of paleine, of 40 per cent :

*One wholly failed to explode. But it is especially with reference to transportation with an army that wood Jowder possesses remarkable advantages. b is well-known what precautions are essential in order to protect dynamite cartridges in pack-trains from projectiles which might strike them and cause explosion. "With cartridges of wood powder this danger need not be feared, since when they are placed against iron plates, and struck by bullets fired a distance of fifty meters, they do not explode.—Quarterly Journal of the United States Military Service Institution for June.

Falguiere has made a great hit this year at the Paris Salon with a plaster group of two young Bacchantes fighting. Its conception is splendidly audacious and its execution intensely realistic. It causes a sensation. It represents two beautiful young girls, quite naked, trying to strangle each other. They are upright, but seem just about to be falling one on top of the other. One girl has seized her opponent by the hair, and is tearing at the silken tresses with both hands. The other girl has clutched the first one by the throat and her finger-nails are piercing through the skin. Their legs are twisted about. In the convulsions of the death struggle both faces gleam with tigerlike ferocity. Hundreds of visitors—including a dozen of the most charming balletdancers in Paris—stood fully twenty minutes gazing at these fascinating though ferocious Bacchantes. The work is very powerful and very audacious. The streets of London are, thanks to Lord Shrewsbury, and other capitalists who follow his example, now filled with the most luxurious hansom cabs. In this respect the town has undergone a very great change. At first, when the premier earl put out his smart hansoms, the trade conspired against him. He managed, however, to hold his own. A few weeks ago he put a hundred new hansoms .on to the ranks. These have still further irnprovements. They are indiarubbertyred; they are swung on * C’ springa; the doors can be opened by the driver; and by a pneumatic tube the ‘ fare ’ can instruct the driver without leaving his seat. But Lord Shrewsbury is not the only reformer. The venture has proved remunerative, other capitalists have entered the field, and the consequence is that the old cabs and the untidy drivers have all been driven away. One cannot but feel sorry for the smaller men who have been crushed. But all interests are subject to competition. An attempt to improve the supply of four-wheelers has, by the way, broken down. People who engage carriages of that kind are evidently not fastidious. At least they show no preference for the luxurious landaulettes that were put on to the ranks for their comfort.

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Nature of explosives.

Wood powder .. 3-50 10 8 2 • Dynamite with cellulose 4.50 8 4 1 3 Gun cotton 6.00 5* 1 , . 3 Paleino 6.25 6 3 2 1