ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1190, 19 September 1874, Page 20

ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

An acute Liverpool firm, foreseeing the inevitable necessities of the case, during the late Ashantee war, shipped off two caseß of gravestones to Sierra Leone. On New Year's day our forefathers used to bribe the magistrate with presents. This custom was abolished by law in 1290. A year and a day is a favourite legal expression, and many acts are ruled by it. If a wounded person does not die in this space, the culprit cannot be tried for murder. New Year's gifts in France are called Etrennes from the Latin Strenia, the Roman goddess who presided over the Ist of January, and whose feast was ordered to be thus observed by Tatius the Emperor. The sum spent in strong drink in 1872 was £120,000,000, or £73,000,000 more than tho total railway receipts. These aro certainly startling figures. History makes out that the height of the great Napoleon was only five feet two and seven-tenth inches. In Ceylon the marriage ceremony is performed by tying the couple together by the thumbs. A Woman stated to a London magistrate recently, that during her five years of married life her husband had knocked her down 115 times. The manner of advertising for a husband in Java is by placing an empty flowerpot on the portico roof — which is as much as to say, "Young lady here — Husband wanted. ' Polygamy is fading out in Turkey by the gradual imitation o? European customs, and a conviction that a single wife is less expensive and jnakes a happier home. Many of the higher classes of ofti- 1 cials now keep but one wife. The Persian poet Saadi says that in a certain region in Armenia, where he traded, people never died the natural death. JiJuc once a year they met on a certain plain, and occupied themselves with recreation, in the midst cf which individuals of every age and rank would suddenly stop, make a reverence to the west, and, setting out at full speed toward that part of the desert, be seen no more. The word "panic" arose out of the battle of Marathon. *n that immortal fight a mere handful of Greeks encountered an infinite host of Persians and put them to utter rout. How did they do it? The Persians were smitten by the god Pan with a sudden causeless and extreme fright. They lost their wits, and that state of things took its name from the god who prod\iced it. CoaL was discovered near Newcastle, in 1234, and first dug at that place under a charter granted the town by Henry 111. It was first used about 1280. Dyers, brewers, &c. , began to consume it extensively in 1350. in consequence of an application from the nobility and gentry, Edward 1., 1398, published a proolamation against it as a public nuisance. It was imported from Newcastle to London ill 1350, and was in general use in the metropolis in 1400. Upon the "coronation day" of the young prince, 'in the year 1170, old King Henry 11. carried in the boar's head himself, as "sewer," or master waiter, and put it upon the table before his son, "with trumpets before him and a song, according to the manner. " This story is found in old Hollinshead, and if not true it ought to be ; for a boar's head— though it needs a good appetite and n, strong digestion—is in truth a fit dish for a king to set before a prince. Among the feathered creation the eagle, the^ raven, the swan, and the parrot are flaid to be centenarians. An eagle in Vienna died after a confinement of 114 years, and a pair of ravens in Shelborne | h*ve faed $ejr «w<fc»ce inwMfanr.

oak for more than ninety years. Swans in the river Thames, whose bills have been annually marked by the Vintner's Company, have been known to survive 150 years and more. Guy's Hospital is in Southwark, on the south side of St. Thomas street, and was built as long ago as 1722 by Thomas Guy, who made his fortune as a bookseller. The annual income is about £25,000 to £30,000, arising from estates in Essex, Hereford, and Lincoln. A museum, library, chapel, and botanic garden are attached to it. In the first court is a statue of Guy in his livery gown, and there is another in the chapel, where is buried the great Sir Astley Cooper. A wealthy London firm of four brassfounders has just dissolved partnership. Three of them could not sign their names, and have always put their cross to the firm's documents. If they could have used their pens well they might have become clerks at fifteen shillings a week. Some newspapers still insist that people who wear full beards are to a great extent exempt from colds and sure throat. They claim that nature provides this arrangement as a protection from just such ills. But why has not nature made a similar provision for women and children ? Must we believe that nature is partial to the male sex 1 The wedding ring is put upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand, because, in the original formulary of marriage it was placed first on the top of the thumb, with the words, "In the name of the Father," then on the next finger, with "And of the Son," then on the middle finger, with ' ' And of the Holy Gbtfst, " and finally on the fourth, with " ASien." On being received into Mormonism the women wear a long robe, which is placed on the right shoulder, is gathered at the waist with strings, and flows t». the floor ; there is an apron of lihen covered with green silk and embroidered with fig-leaves —the nearest approach to the paradisaical apron that is consistent with our climate. The men wear a cap of linen similar to those worn by stonemasons. The ladies' caps are of a pretty Swiss muslin, with a veil of the same, which has a pretty effect. The intensely funy appearance of the men in this costume is irresistible. This ia the costume in which the Mormons are prepared for the grave. A stone, at Grossmoringen, close by Stendal, tells where an assistant bellcaster was stabbed by his master because he succeeded in casting a bell after the" latter had failed in the attempt. It is a tradition of Rouen that the two rose windows of its cathedral were the work of the master architect and his pupil, who strove which of the two should produce the finer window. Again the man beat the master, and again the master murdered the man in revenge for his triumph. The transept window of Lincoln Cathedral was the product of a similar contest, but in this instance the defeated artist killedhimself instead of his successful rival. In the same century that the Prince of Orkney founded the chapel at Roslin, the good people of Stendal employed an architect of repute to build them one new gate, and entrusted tho erection of a second to his principal pupil. In this case, too, the aspiring youth ])roved the bettor craftsman, and paid the same penally ; the spot whereon ho fell beneath his master's hammer being marked to thia day by a stone commemorating the event j and the story goes that yei", upon moonlight nights, the ghost of the murdered youth may bo seen contemplating the work that brought him to an untimely end, while a wtird skeleton 1 eats with a hammer at the stone he wrought into beauty. Bird-catchino in the Faroe Islands, in the North Atlantic, is attended with some peril. The fowlers are experienced men, but even they are sometimes alarmed for their safety. One of them describing the catching process says : " Facing you is the steep bare rock, the blue sky above you, and below you the still bluer tumbling sea ; between the two you swing to and fro like a pendulum." The craftf* man is fastened to a rope by bands Avhich go down his thighs, and by shoulderstraps ; his hands and feet are free, and with them he must keep himself ' facing the cliff, while his companions above lower him down to the ledge where the birds breed. There he unbinds himself from the rope, makes it fast, and creeps along the ledge, catching the birdß in a net at the end of a pole as they fly out of their holes, killing them, and hanging them in pairs to the rope. Guillemots and puffins are taken thus, and the practised fowler will make a bag of nine hundred or a thousand in a day, though he can only take up about a hundred with him on the rope at one time. According to a recent authority, mourn* ing in the South Pacific is carried on in a manner which to us would seem very curious. A widow will lay aside her bon* net and wear the hat of her late husband } sometimes a widower will go about in a loose gown of his departed wife, worn over 1 his own proper dress. Instead of a shawl, a mother will place on her back a pair of trousers belonging to a little boy just laid in his grave. In these hard times quite an economical revolution might be effected in thia way, and although the appearance of a portly widower in one of the dear departed's silks, seated beside a lady over whose shoulders dangled the legs of her loßt darling's evening trousers, might at first have a funny effect, we should Boon get used to it, and there would be the consolation of reflecting that Christmas would bring no odious bill for dress-coat or lace or cashmere shawl, and thus the wind would in the most practical mmvtSV jjf temymti to the eberu lamb.