GLEANINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 764, 22 October 1886, Page 5

GLEANINGS.

AN ABUSED WORD.

The word ‘ brat,’ which is now applied to -an ugly, ill favored, ill-behaved dirty child, -originally simply meant offspring.. Archbishop Drench mentions this, and gives the ■following quotation from Gascoigne s De TProfundis :’ o, Israel, 0, household of the Xiord, •O, Abraham s brats, O, brood of blessed seed, •O, chosen sheep that loved the Lord indeed. The word brat was the Anglo-Saxon for •cloak, rag.

The voung Princesses of Wales are expert riders of tricycles. Over a thousand ladies are members of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, many of whom are able to ride t heir forty to sixty miles a day without experiencing much ■fatigue.

Women in Holland act as apothecaries, watchmakers, clerks in the post-offices, in railroad offices and/as telegraphers.

Miss Isabella Oates has been appointed vaccination officer at Fordingbridge, England.

A woman has asked the Belgian .Jockey Club to let her ride her own horse in their races.

Sixteen years’ experience in charge of one of the largest institutions in Great Britain has convinced a teacher of industrial training that boys who will have to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow ought to be taught some handicraft alternately, with t their school work, and that the brain and hands ought to be taught to work in unison with each other.

A little girl, aged four, was sitting with a <Joll iu her lap and a basin of water by her side. ‘ What are you going to do with the dolly ?’ said her mother. * Christen her,’ replied the child. ‘Oh ! you must not play at christening,’ returned her mother, ‘ it is a sacred subject.’ ‘ Then I'll vaccinate her, mamma ; that is not a sacred subject.’

The harmony of the royal family is seriously threatened by the curious complications of fetes and functions, H.R.H. deeply deplores his mother’s appearance at the Egham celebrations, and her Majesty views with equal displeasure the Sunday soirees and her son’s patronage of Mrs Mackay,