NEWSY NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 3262, 20 October 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWSY NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE.

Oue of the tests of popularity is the sale obtained for the cartoons in Vanity Fair. An article in Cassell's Magazine lor August gives information obtained from Mr Fry, the editor of that journal:— “It is absolutely impossible to say what the sale of a portrait is going to be. ■ At one time wa sell it right out; at other dines, as in the Jameson case, we have thousands left on our hands." “ As in the Jameson case ?“ “ 'Ve irul him out," said Mr Fry, “just as he was committed for trial, and it was the worst sale for five years."

In face of such a fact as that, it was m.nifest that to forecast the success of a new cartoon was profitless sj eculation.

“And whose picture goes best?" *'Uh, that of the Prince of Wales. Ills Poyal Highness heads the list. We have published three cartoons of the Prince, and they align well." “And who comes next in the list after the Prince ?" “Fred Archer. There's been a great demand for his portrait. Indeed, it's getting scarce, and we’ve only some twenty-seven left. Yes, Fred Archer is far ahead of all the rest. After him come jockeys generally, and next Lord Charles Boresford." “ And after Lord Charles Berea ford."

“ Judges —of the High Court—always sell very well. You see, there are so many barristers and solicitors who want their rooms to look legal." “And next ?"

“ Well, Eton masters, I think, like Mr Mitchell. We have his portrait here on the wall. Who buy Eton masters? Well, i suppose old boys rather like to hove them. For the same reason Oxford and Cambridge heads of houses go pretty well. One of the first of them I had done after I came here was Dr Bellamy, of St. John’s. Then there was the present master of Balliol. Altogether, I’ve had about a dozen dons in Vaiiiiy Faif.

“Wa offered a prize of £25 for tho best five subjects for Vanity Fair. It was a plebiscite, you know, and Jameson was third in the list. Curiously enough, too, Sir Henry Irving and the Archishop of Canterbury tied for the fifth place ; got the same number of votes."

Harry Perkins, nine, was ordered to receive siz strokes with the birch rod by the Bedford magistrates recently for diverting the points of the London and North-Western Eiilway Station. The brakesman and shunter on a goods train had to jump from the van for their lives ; two engines were damaged, and a third thrown off the line.

To defeat the scientific burglar and safe breaker who comes provided with a spirit lamp and blow pipe, safes aio made of metal that becomes soft only while it is hot, and on going cold becomes as ha'd as ever ; so that if the drill bo applied while tho plate is hot, the drill itself is softened by tho heat. An apparatus, however, has been contrived for using compressed oxygen in connection with a new kind of blowpipe. This is designed for fusing the metal of the safe—melting it, in short, so that it will flow like molten lava, and when directed against sheet iron or ordinary boiler plates will bo irresistible, When a burglar wishes to break open a safe he frequently uses a drill. Drilling (says Cassel's Family Magazine ) depends upon the principle that any substance can be cut by a harder substance. Safe-makers could, no doubt, make their plates of metal as hard as any drill. The harder the metal, however, the more brittle it is. Thus, if a safe were made of metal hard enough to resist drills, it would then be easy to smash with a crowbar or sledge hammer. To meet this difficulty a safe is made of double steel plates sufficiently soft to resist the hammer, and then hard steel bolts are riveted through the inner plates hard enough to destroy any drill which touches them. In thus combining hard and soft metal, a plate is produced that resists the drill, and at the same time is proof against the hammer. There are other ways of producing undrillable and unbreakable plates for safes ; they all involve, however, the combining of hard and soft metals—the hard to resist the drill, the soft to resist the hammer.

Mrs Tweedie, who has written a book on Finland, telis us that the bathing-dress is unknown in that part of the world, such is the primitive simplicity of the people. When, however, she herself desired to go a-bathing she was entirely conventional. She bought the raw material, made a fine bathing-dress, and wont forth to woo the Finnish waters. A minute later a fisherman, passing by, caught sight of her, and was filled with alarm. The unwonted spectacle brought him the certain idea that the English lady had fallen into the sea with her clothes on, and was in imminent danger of drowning. Without hesitation, ha kicked off his boots, dived in, and pulled her out.

Our bravest,native troops in India are without doubt the Gurkhas. No instance (says a writer in Blackwood) exists on record of Gurkha soldiers having been overtaken by panic, or, however trying the circumstances in which they have been placed, of their having failed in their duty against any enemy. The pugnacity and love of fighting for fighting’s sake which is inherent in a Gurkha is coupled with a very remarkable coolness in a sudden emergency, readiness to act, and complete disregard and indifference to personal danger. A sudden and unexpected attack will often cause the best of troops to seek cover until a counterstroke can be organised ; but the impulse of a Gurkha under such circumstances is to get at the aggressor, (o come to close quarters for choice, cr at hast to reach his enemy with a bullet. It is noticeable, too, that tbe staunch qualities of the Gurkhas have never been more o nspicuous (ban in the hour of disaster. In the unfortunate Afghan War of 1839 42 the town of Ghazni, then occupied by a Gurkha regiment, was beset by a very superior force of Afghans, and the garrison being reduced to great straits, the officers determined to capitulate. One . only of the latter (he was a boy named. John -Nicholson) protested against this disgraceful-measure, until at last he was constrained with tears in biseyes to surrender his. sword. But the Gurkha soldiery entirely refused to comply, and though deserted by their officers, preferred the forlorn hope of cutting their way through the ranks of their enemies to the dishonour of surrender.

The enterprising Yankee again. A transatlantic company recently made an offer to buy the Eiffel Tower. They intended to take it down, and ship the pieces to the States, where it would be utilised as a lighthouse on the -Pacific Coast. But owing to the contract made by the Eiffel Tower Company when it was erected, the structure will become the property of the City of Paris after twenty years. The company had not, therefore, the right to dispose of it.

The Grand Banka of Newfoundland are the great fishing-ground on the American aide of the Atlantic (saya the St. Nicholas' for August). All the year round you will see veaaela -on the Grand Banks. ,It is usually cold and foggy there, and in winter frequent gales and snowstorms add to the dreariness and danger. Western Bank is near Sable Island, a long sand bar off the coast of Nova Scotia, and an ocean graveyard, literally strewn with wrecks. The English Government placed a flack of sheep there, because there bad been instances of sailors wrecked on the island starving to death ; but the sheep died. The island was too barren even for them. - A herd of ponies was tried, and these hardy creatures flourished, but became in time so wild as to be unapproachable ; and a shipwrecked sailor hardly has the strength to scamper after a'wild pony. Now, however, there are several lighthouses and lifesaving Stations on the island, and in the spring

innumerable gulls nest in the sand and lay their eggs. In May it is not unusual for dories (or rowing boats) belonging to the Western Bank fleet to get lost—a least for a while ; for the gulls’ eggs are good eating during that month. I asked an old fisherman if he had ever been on Sable Island. He told me he had landed there when he'd been lost in a dory. 11 How did you get lost ?" I asked. “On purpose, I guess," he answered. Heedless to say it had been in May.

How a mosaic map of the Holy Land of some value came to be destroyed through the ignorance and indifference of the p raons who might have preserved it, is told in the “ Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund " : “Thirteen years ago Monsignor Nicodemus, the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, received a letter from one of his monks who was dwelling beyond Jordan. The monk said that at Madeba there was a large and fine roosiac pavement covered with the names of cities such as Jerusalem, Gaza, &o, and asked for instructions as to what steps he was to take in the matter. The Patriarch made no answer. Subsequently he was exiled to Constantinople, and Mmsiguor Gerasimos put in his place. Gerasimos found the letter from the Madeba monk in 1899 ; he guessed that this was an important arcbajological discovery, and straightway sent off a master-mason, graced with the title of architect, with orders, if the mosaic were a fine one, to include it in the church which was about to bo built at Madeba for the use of the Greek population. Alas 1 the intentions of Monsignor Gerasimos were quite misunderstood. The mosaic, which by file testimony of four monks was until then almost complete, was partly destroyed in order to lay the foundations of the church, &c. . .

The architect came back and reported that the mosaic did not possess the importance which had been attributed to it." The mosaic is supposed to bo of seventh century date.

When President Fauro went on his visit to the Czar ho took with him to St. Petersburg six trunks and three dress coats, three “re lingotos," three hats, three complete suits, three “ smokings," thirty shirts, eighteen handkerchiefs, two-and-twenty pair of socks, twenty white and six coloured cravats, eight pairs of dress boots, and two pairs of shoes. “It is not a great lot," calmly observed M. Etienne, tho valet who gave the information to a reporter, “ but the President will only be ashore four days, and during the four days of the voyage he will not dress."

The New York correspondent of the Standard soys that discovery has been made in New York _on the shelves of the Examination Historical Society of what is believed to be an original copy of the journal of the clerk of the House of Commons during Cromwtl’s period, ranging from 1650 to 1675. The entries are well written in single columns, with broad margins, but many pages are missing. One tradition is that during the revolutionary war in the American colonies the orders r f tho generals were written upon such paper. Possibly they were brought over by some of the judges who sentenced Charles 1., and who are known to have died as fugitives in New England. On the other hand, the Order of the House of Commons on May 31, 1742, to print its journals, which wasduly complied with, seems to indicate that these manuscripts were brought over after that da'e, otherwise there must have been duplicate manuscripts, which seems to be unlikely. Nothing appears to be known with certainty about the volumes before 1860, when they were in the possession of Colonel Da Hart.

Admiral Colotnb has an article in the National Review, in which he predicts a revolution in the navy. He considers that the great speed of torpedo-boats will render it practically impossible for them to work with battleships. It follows that

if we have two hostile mixed fleets of battleships and torpedo-vessels, they must either work for long range with their guns, or short range with their torpedoes. It they choose the former, the torpedovessels are of no use ; if they choose the latter, they are a work,of supererogation, a danger, and an element of confusion.

If Admiral Colomb is right, the battleship will soon be a thing of the past. A comparison drawn by the Admiral between the Magnificent and Hornet seems to settle the question beyond a doubt.

“The Magnificent was stated to cost £910,600, and the Hornet £34,300. That is to say, twenty-six Hornets could be put afloat for the cost of one Magnificent. The oompleleuieut of the Magnificent was 757 men, and that of the Hornet 42. That is to say, it would take eighteen Hornets , to expose the lives ol as many men as were exposed in one Magnificent. The speed of the Magnificent was 17£ knots, that of the Hornet was 28 knots The Hornet was to carry five torpedo tubes! The Magnificent could bring, perhaps, twenty three guns, small and great, to bear upon her at the same time, and as the excess of speed on the part of the Hornet was knots, it followed that, if the Magnificent was to avoid being torpedoed by the Hornet any fine day in broad daylight in the open sea, she must be able to shop her by gun-fire in less, perhaps, than seven minutes; because, if she turned her stern to the Hornet and ran with all her might, the Hornet, 2000 yards distant at noon, would be alongside her at six minutes and eighteen seconds after noon. But then, no one would think of attacking a Magnificent with one Hornet when there weuld be financial gain and no more exposure of life in attacking her with eighteen. Would twenty-three guns slop eighteen Hornets in seven minutes ? Would four guns stop three Hornets in seven minutes 1

The boy of to day, reports Mr Max Pemberton, who has written books for boys, “ Will not have anything newfangled or idiotic. He has only one word of criticism for that rot. The same bullies, the same fags, the same islands, the same manliness, the same courage as father loved he loves. He likes a Jules Verne book—X think he liked “The Iron Pirate"—but the old puppets must be there. For style he cares nothing ; be reads Stevenson for the story. He must have incident, excitement—a hero. He does not care a snap for theory, but revels in practice. Perhaps be is just a grade above “Jack Harksway,’ but I hazard the opinion doubtingly. The main thing is that he loves an honest man, adores courage, despises a liar and a coward, and compels the author to point some sort of a moral."

The dynamite factory at Ardeer, in Scotland, is thus described in the August number of McClure's :— Nitroglycerine, a teaspoonful of which would blow you to fragments, surrounds you in hundreds and thousands of gallons. It is making itself in huge tanks, gargling merrily along open leaden gutters, falling ten feet in brown waterfalls, so to apeak.

into tanks of soda solution, and bubbling so furiously in other cylinders, through the in-rush of cold air from below, that it seems to be boiling. It is being drawn off from large porcelain taps like ale, poured into boxes, and rattled

along tramways. In the form of dynamite, it is being rubbed with great force through brass sieves, jammed into cartridge*, and flung into boxes ; and in the form of blasting gelatin, it is being torn by metal rods, forced through smsage machines, and cut, wrapped, and tossed into hoppers—all these processes proceeding as rapidly as if it were ordinary olive-oil, instead of the deadliest explosive known to man. All round you are big cotton mills and storehouses as full of fleecy, white cotton as ordinary cotton mills and storehouses, but every pinch of the cotton, still white and fleecy, has been nitrated into gun-cotton, and would suffice, it exploded,’ to cut you off in the beauty of your youth. Death, instantaneous and pulverising, encircles you, in fact, by the ton ; but the man and the thermometer surround you also. The man’s eyes never leave the instrument. Both are chosen for their perfect reliability; and endless precautions, innumerable rules, and the strictestducipliue maintain Ardeer in a state of busy and peaceful security.