GLEANINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 873, 23 November 1888, Page 5

GLEANINGS.

A NEW SCARE. - There is a new scare for the sufferers of that last trouble—writer’s cramp. We are assured that the cramp is contagious by sympathy. Mrs Humphry Ward has now given it to her husband, who is an equal, sufferer. * GOD SAVE THE QUEEN ’ IN AMERICA. ‘ God Save the Queen 1 has been coolly ap. propriated in the United States as a true American ‘national air.’ Transatlantic Republican bauds frequently play the Royal Anthem under the title of ‘ America.’ THE LATEST PARISIAN SPORT. ‘La Cascade de I’Amour ’ ib the latest Parisian sport. Two people are squeezed into a tub, with their hands folded on their chest, and with as muoh play for their limbs as sardines in a tin. They are then, for safety, made fast to certain projections in the tub, which under more favourable circumstances, might be called seats, and, with the signal, ‘Are you ready ?’ the whole is started down a rugged and precipitous incline. ‘ OUIDA’S LATER YEARS. London, September 6.— ‘ Ouida,’ the novelist has really become religious. It is learned that she spends her days in reading pious books find making long prayers. She even refuses to associate with worldly people. She is not devoted to any special denomination, but seem 3 to be slowly forming a cult of her own. OLD STYLE. In the seventeenth century, in Spain, the wearing of spectacles by both the sexes was a mark of social eminence. For this reason they were worn by many who by right of birth were not entitled to them. It was then the custom that no one carried on a conversation until these brain illuminators were first fixed on the nose and adjusted carefully by the dainty pink-nailed fingers of their fair wearers. POLYGLOT WISDOM. We learn by teaching.—ltalian proverb. Dress slowly when you are in a hurry.— French proverb. The hasty man was never a traitor.—German proverb. Jest so that it may not turn to earnest.— Spanish proverb. ■ He has a head, and so has a pin.—Portm guese proverb. . / To do nothing tencheth to do evil. —Dutch proverb. It is said that caterpillars and other pests of trees-and shrubbery may be destroyed by boiling the stems and leaves of tomato plants and pouring the liquid upon the afflicted vegetables. It may be worth knowing that water in whioh three or four onions havei been boiled, applied with a gilding brush to the frames of piotures and ohiinney glasses will prevent flies from lighting on them. In Florida, and in many other parts of the country, the orange is cut in halves, and its juice and pulp are passed to the mouth with a teaspoon. In Havana tho orange is served whole on the table, peeled down to the juicy * meat of the fruit,’ and you present the golden ball to your lips on the prongs of a fork.

Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physio, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind ; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been

at certain times universally received, and at other times universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.—Fielding.

The third-class passenger is beooming more and more conspicuous in England. According to a report of the Great Northern Rail- 1 way for one-half of the year, first-class passengers were 3J per cent of the traffio; second-class, 5J per cent; and third-class, 91 per cent. Miss Leona Dare, the famous athlete, recently made a balloon ascension in England, hanging by her feet from a trapeze. On alighting, six miles away, she found that she had forgotten her clothing, and had to ride back: to town in an open waggon, olad only in tights. A nuibber of English-made tramway cars have been returned to London from Paris, as the municipality of that city will not allow cars made in England to be run on the Parisian lines.