Here and There.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXI, Issue 8830, 10 July 1905, Page 4

Here and There.

Mrs George Engel, a well-known resident of Uniontown, a suburb of Pittsburg, was recently presented with a pair of shoes, the heels of which were charged with dynamite. A maid brought in the shoes to Mrs Engel, and suggested that she should try them on. At first it was thought that they were a gift from Mr Engel, but Mrs Engel declared that she never wore highheeled shoes, and declined to put them on. Just then Mr Engel entered, and said he had no idea who had sent the shoes. He proceeded to examine them, when he rubbed a piece of rubber from one of the heels, disolosing a hollow containing percussion caps and dynamite enough to kill several people. For some time past the smart women of the town had been receiving anonymous letters threatening with death all leaders of local society.

The Grand Vesour, once the most famous restaurant in Paris, closed its doors on January 24th after an unbroken existence of 136 years. Its superb cooking was the joy of generations of epicures, and it made the fortune of many successive proprietors. Of late years it has been more of a show place, and no Englishman or American thought a visit to Paris complete without going to the restaurant in the Palais Royal to sit iii the seats of emperors and marshals and reflect cin the brilliant traditions connected with the place. It was established in 1769, but did not become a great resort of fashion until the years preceding the Revolution. Then Vesour took oyer the place, and the excellence of its cooking attracted all that was gay and brilliant in the French capital. Napoleon, before he became Emperor, was often seen there. Wellington was a frequent diner at the place when he was at Paris after Waterloo. Prince Murat, Marshal Ney, and many of Napoleon's distinguished officers were also among the customers, and scratched their names on the mirrors which hung round the walls. Another name that can still be deciphered is that of Thackeray.

A patriotic Hessian, Johann Lewalter, contributes to the publication Hessenland an article in which he declares that the name "Yankee Doodle" was originally a country dance in a district of the former province of Kur-Hesse known as the Schwalm. He begins by asserting that no one disputes the fact o£ "Yankee Doodle" having been derived from a military march played by the Hessian troops during the American revolution. While studying over the dances of the Schwalm, Mr Lewalter was impressed by the similarity in form and rhythm of "Yankee Doodle" to the music of these dances. Last year, at a kirmess in one of the villages, when "Yankee Doode was played the young men and girls swung out into one of the real Scliwalmer dances as though this music had bec-n composed for it. Mr Lewalter recalls the fact that the chief recruiting office for the enlistment of Hessian soldiers during the American revolution was the town of Ziegenhain, in Kur-Hesse. It- seems probable, therefore, he concludes, that the Hessian Tecruits from the Schwalm, who were in the pay of Great Britain during our Revolutionary War, and whose bands had only bugles, drums, and fifes, carried over with them the tune with which they had been familiar from childhood, and played it as a march.

A swallow has been used by a prisoner confined on the island of Pore Longone to carry a petition to the Minister of Justice. Signor Jachola, keeper of the Campe lighthouse on the island of Elba, captured the bird. Noticing a scrap of paper which was attached to one of its feet, he removed it, and found it was a letter written by Bruno Oataldo, who stated that he had been wrongfully convicted of murder, and had been in prison since. 1885. It added that, the swallow having entered through the grating of his cell, Cataldo had attached his appeal to its foot, hoping that it might be forwarded to the Minister of Justice or the King. The letter has been transmitted by Signor Jachola to the Department of Justice.