CHOICE EXTRACTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 238, 26 January 1877, Page 2

CHOICE EXTRACTS.

AN OBSCURE CLAIMANT FOR A MARQUISATE.

The Marquis of Tweeddale is succeeded in his Marquisate by his eldest surviving son, Lord Walden, and as the present Earl has no chiMen, and has been twice married, the heir presumptive to the title is Lord William Hay. Oddly enough, none of the late Earl's five sons have any children —indeed, only two of them are married. Indeed, if report is true, there is a question whether any of these succeed to the title. The late Marquis did not marry until he was close upon thirty. It is rumored that before that he had formed a Scotch marriage, "by verbal contract" with some woman of low station. It seems that, with or without reason, a claimant professing to be the the son of the Marquis by a first marriage has for years past formally communicated to the family his intention of asserting his right to the title and estates on the Earl's decease. The family, on the other hand, contend that no such marriage ever took place, or if it did, it was void by reason of informality. If the suit comes up for trial, another glaring example of the evil arising from the Scotch laws of marriage being out of harmony with those of the rest of the United Kingdom will be furnished.

LIFE OF A REPORTER. The peculiar habits of the reporter of a daily newspaper—one of the busiest of animals—are worth making a note of. Tell the reporter that a horrible murder has been committed in the next street, and the victim lies there " bathed in gore," and he utters a hearty " God bless you !" and dashes away at higli-pressure speed to make a full report of the happy circumstance. Inform him there is a fire in town, in which a woman and five children are consumed alive, and he hurries off in the highest glee, impatient to get the full particulars with the latest embellishments. If he knew that an assassination was to be committed, in a certain corner at a given hour in the night, he'd be sure to be on the spot—not to prevent murder — oh, no—but to be able to give " a reliable version by an eye-witness," with a minute and particular account of the surroundings, and a heart-rending description of each dying groan. He'd take all this down in a kind of penmanship peculiar to his class, which looks like warped rainbows and spoiled flashes of chain-liglit-ning. If his highly-respectable father should be hung for piracy on the high seas, the enterprising reporter would be at the gallows, pencil in hand, and in the interval of his grief and tears, would have ample time to take full short-hand notes of his parent's last speech and dying confession.

A BOY LIVING ELEVEN MONTHS IN THE WATER. [Auckland Star.]

A physiological phenomenon, of an unprecedented character has attracted considerable notice from tourists in the Rotorua country. At the outlet of the small warm stream flowing from Lake Eotomahana into Tarawea, several hot water springs occur. In a bath which receives the overflow from cne of these springs, a Maori boy about thirteen years old, has lived uninterruptedly for eleven months, the whole of his body up to the neck being immersed. The poor little fellow was suffering from disease of the knee, attended with acute pain, and was brought to this bath by his parents in the hope of effecting cure. He found almost instant relief, but upon leaving the bath the pains returned with greater intensity. He then exhibited the strongest reluctance to get out of the water, and was permitted to remain in it continuously, sitting on the bottom with a support of fern for his head. After a month or two, removal became impossible. When the lad was taken out of the bath, he suffered the most excruciating agony, and became rigid. Upon returning to the bath, his pain ceased, and he was able to move about in the water with freedom and ease. He has now remained in this position eleven months. A roof of thatch has been built over him, and his parents supply him with food. The little fellow can

speak a few disjointed words of English, and asks visitors for bread. He is free from pain, but has wasted away until his body has become reduced to skin and bone—a living skeleton, his face, however, preserving fair proportions. He can move his limbs with freedom, and holds up his swollen and blistered knee, which formed the original cause of his trouble for the inspection of visitors. The water in the bath is as hot as can comfortably bs borne by a healthy hand, and though remaining stagnant, except so far as it has been purified by the small overflew, has become of a dark green color. The skin of the boy's hands, and other portions of his body, lias turned a whitish water-worn hue, resembling that produced by soda in warm water. The case is one calculated to excite curiosity among medical men. A FARMER'S SHIP. The New York Forest and Stream writes :—We have examined a queer craft now lying at the foot of Beekman-street, in this city, built and owned by James Draper, who lives at St. John, N.B. He formed a desire to go to Australia, and try cattle-farming, but his means were limited. Some of the neighbors wished to go too, and he conceived the idea of building a vessel which would accommodate about twenty persons on the voyage. Although he had never seen a vessel on the stocks, six years ago he commenced building his boat. His farm was on the river about one hundred and forty miles above St. John's, and there he began to work. He felled the trees himself, shaped them, put them together, and completed the buat alone. We take the following quaint description from the Sun : On the outside she looks like something between Noah's Ark and a log-house. The bow is fairly sharp, but the stern looks, as one of the sailors expressed it, "as if she had been made by the mile, and cut off in lengths to suit." She is schooner-rigged, fifty-five feet ksel, thirteen feet depth of hold. Rough wooden steps lead below, and the hatchway is almost large enough to drive a horse and waggon through. She registers sixty-one tons, but her timbers are strong enough for a vessel of five hundred tons. She is built entirely of juniper wood ; her sides are twenty-two inches thick at the keel, tapering off gradually to twelve inches at the rail. The mainmast is forty feet high, the foremast thirty-eight feet, and she carries no topmasts. Her main boom is thirty feet, and her bowsprit twelve feet. She carries a house on deck which looks like a sportsman's cabin in the woods, and is fitted up inside in a manner to correspond. Coming from Providence here, with everything in her favor, the vessel made five knots an hour. Captain W. H. Moody, an old seamen, has charge of her as sailing master. He says that she is the queerest craft he ever managed, but that she is one of the strongest boats he ever saw. On board one is puzzled to know whether lie is in an old-fashioned farm house or in a vessel, so curiously are the peculiarities of the two mixed. She will go to Philadelphia for exhibition. From thence she will return to New Brunswick, there take in stores, and then start for Australia.

EXTRAORDINARY PRESERVATIVE OF FEMALE BEAUTY.

The fair Queen of Scots bathed in wine ; and the Earl of Shrewsbury, when acting as her custodian, complained bitterly of the expense she entailed upon him by the luxurious custom. It was white wine the ladies thus employed for the purpose of the toilet, and was mainly used by those of " a certain age," who desired to remove their wrinkles ; young beauty contented itself with a bath of milk. A wine bath was assuredly much to be preferred to the flesh of capons fed with vipers, by which the beautiful Venetia Digby, wife of the eccentric Sir Kenelm, endeavored to improve her complexion. Sir Kenelm (of Stoke Dry, Rutland) is also supposed to have made his lady feed upon the great snail, or helix promatia, washing down the unsavory repast with a draught of viper wine, for the preservation of her beauty. No wonder she died in her thirty-third year, and that only "a small quantity of brains " was found in her head !

CLIPPING AND MINCING OF WORDS.

Mr. Jennings writes from London to the New York World :—"I can imagine anyone coming over here for the first time and puzzling himself to account for the ' improvements ' in the English language which he will notice in common conversation, especially among the ladies. It is difficult to describe pronunciation by written signs, and the style of talk which is fashionable now cannot be explained to anyone who has not heard it. It seems

to consist in a general clipping and mincing of words, mixed with a curious drawl, the effect produced upon the ear being that of a new language. It is a fact that I often find difficulty in understanding what I hear said, and am obliged to ask to have remarks repeated. The word ' here,' is pronounced very much as 1 have heard negroes pronounce it in the South, 'five,' becomes lfce 'fave,' 'pleasure ' is turned into e pfeashaw,' ' later' into ' latar,' and so forth. No example, however, can give an intelligible idea—or idee-aw —of the affectation and the desire to be fine which are working such curious transformations in our mother tongue on this side of the water." LIEBIG'S BOYHOOD. Liebig was distinguished at school as " booby," the only talent then cultivated in German schools being verbal memory. On one occasion, being sneeringly asked by the master what he proposed to become, since he was so bad a scholar, and answering that he would be a chemist, the whole school burst into a laugh of derision. Not long ago Liebig saw his old schoolmaster, who feelingly lamented his own former blindness. The only boy in the same school who ever disputed with Liebig the station of " booby " was one whonever could learn his lesson by heart, but was continually composing music, and writing it down by stealth in school. The same individual Liebig lately found at Vienna, distinguished as a composer, and conductor of the Imperial Opera House. I think his name is Reuling. It is to be? hoped that a more rational system of school instruction is gaining ground. Cam anything be more absurd or detestable than a system which made Walter Scott and Justus Liebeg "boobies" at school, and so effectually concealed their natural talents, that, for example, Liebig was often lectured before the whole school on. his being sure to cause misery and broken hearts to his parents, while he was all the time conscious, as the above anecdote proves, of the possession of talents similar in kind to those he has since displayed.— Dr. Gregory.