GLEANINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 5

GLEANINGS.

PHYSIQUE OF THE WELL-FED CLASSES.

A remarkable fact, says the London Court Journal, that comes out from recent tables is that the boys at the public schools and young men at the universities, and entering the public service, average about three inches taller and from six pounds to twenty pounds heavier than boys in the Board schools aud young apprentices and workmen.

He who would see his sons and daughters thoroughly and truly gentle must forbid selfishness of action, rudeness of speech, carelessness of forms, impoliteness of conduct from the first, and demand that in childhood and the nursery shall be laid the foundation of that good breeding which is as a jewel of price to the mature man and woman.

In the little town of Araudas, Mexico, during the performance of a drama called ‘After Death,’ the actor who was to feign death, fell to the floor., and really expired. When this last fact was announced, intense excitement prevailed in the audience, and people rushed from the place pell-mell, tramping ever each other in their efforts to reach the street.

Princess Wilhelmine, the heiress to the Dutch throne, is being eduoated in a very democratic way. Her teachers are forbidden, during school hours, to address her as * Your Royal Highness,’ or even ‘Princess,’ and she is sometimes allowed to play with ‘street children.’ She is eight years old.

Lessons in cooking seem to be extremely popular in England. One school has had 35,000 pupils since 1574, and another school has been teaching cookery to 10,000 persons each year.

A London dealer in birds prepared for the adornment of ladies’ hornets makes the statement that last year he sold 2,000,000 of them, ranging in variety from the robin and the wood-pigeon to the splendid tropical bird.

The seedless raisin is pro laced by simply arresting one of the processes of nature. When the grape is about one-balf ripe the end of the vine is bent down and buried in the ground. This prevents the formation of seed, and the full development of the fruit, but it ripen 3 all the same and has a delicious flavor.

The practice of softening food for children is decried by dentists. ‘lt is at the bottom of many a bad set of grinders,’ one scientist declares.

A Salvation Army private in Derbyshire, Eugland, has been bound over to keep the peace for threatening to kill his Captain— Eliza Elliott—if she would not marry him.

It is a new idea to most persons that edgetools not infrequently got ‘tired’ and will not hold a keen edge until they have a rest. This is the testimony of carpenters, barbers, and wood-choppers. Locomotive engineers notice the same result in their eogines. Possibly constant and hard usage may cause changes in the crystallization that would account for this peculiarity in inanimate things.

Oscar Wilde and his wife are a very ordinary looking pair of mortals, according to a London correspondent. He has grown so stout as to he absolutely unpicturesque, and the latter, while she drosses with a degree of individuality, is by no moans the picture of artistic loveliness that one might reasonably demand that the wife of the Apostle of the Sunflower should be.