Round the Sanctums.

Otago Witness, Issue 1581, 4 March 1882, Page 28

Round the Sanctums.

Books. Books are men of higher stature, And the only ones that speak | Aloud for future times to hear ! In the long, pleasant winter evening, when the curtains are dropped and the lamps lit, and the fire goes roaring cheerily upward, how pleasant to sink down in a cozy arm-chair, and by the magic of the book we hold, wander and lose oar way in Fancy's realm ! . No home can afford to dispense with books— books that, without cost or trouble, give us, in the wealth of their abundance, the pleasure of travel, the history of old worlds and races, and the society of famous men and women, which, otherwise we could hardly hope to enjoy, They bear grand names, those quiet friends of mine, And yet they scorn no lowly household nest, They care but for appreciation, love : To him who gives them these, they give their best. They stag grand songs, they paint me pictures fair ; Tell of heroic deeds by land and sea ; Of lofty castles, whose now crumbling walls Were once the pride of ancient chivalry. From the little child spelling out the highly sensational story of ' Bed Riding-Hood,' to the silver-haired man bending over the family Bible, who, does not love books for the lessons they inculcate and the joys they give? Many long hours have we spent with Tennyson, whose passionate verse gives pleasure so exquisite that it is akin to pain ; with Longfellow, whose metre is the music of a calm, strong river ; with Whittier, the simple Quaker with the soul of a revolutionist ; with Barns, whose words are breezes wafted from the Scot tiah heath j with Shakespeare, whose genius is equalled only by his broad, deep love of human ity j with innumerable others— bnfc surely they are not strangers, so they need no iotroduo tlon* They are friends Indeed, those men and women who live between pasteboard covers. Into our lives grdw the light, the pathos, the grandeur of their own. , A pretty pioture does Bret Harte draw of the miners stretched about the camp-fire, and listening in solemn silence, while one of their number reads the history of Little Nell : And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken, . As by some'spell divine, Their cares dropped from them ltke the needles shaken . From out the gusty pine. i The tribute to Dickens oalls up before us a little group destined to fill centuries with laughter and with tears : Jolly Mark Tapley, sweet little Dora, unfortunate Mantalini, Oliver Twist, Mr Pickwick (whose big waistcoat covered a big heart), little Paul Dombey, Mr Squeera (whose respectable sohool affords great inducements to boys), and all the rest. ! Thackeray must not be forgotten, through whose suave satire kindness breaks like rifts of sunshine, nor George Eliot, nor Hugo; but where would the list end, did not the vision of an editor's sharp scissors loom up in the dis< taace ? 'Put money in your purse,' said crafty Iago; but broader and better wisdom suggests— Put books upon your Bhelvea, A Phililogical Problem. Tho following problem is given for some be ginner in arithmetic to solve. The English ianguaga has one 't ' and f our substitutes for 111 1 '—namely, ct aa in ' ctesiphon,' pt as in 'ptisan,' phth as in 'phthisic/ th as in \ Thomas.' It has also 'a ' and ten substitutes for * a '—namely, ai as in ' vain,' ay as in • ray,' eigh as in ' eight,' eig as in ' reign,' ey as in ' they,' aig as in ' campaign,' c as in the second syllable of 'AUeghanny,'au as in 'gauge,' ao as in. ' gaol/ aigh as in 'straight.' Combining i the above, how many different ways are there \ of spelling the first syllable of the word ; ' tailor, 9 and then writing the second with lar, ler, lir, lor, lor, lyr, larr, lerr, lirr, lorr, lorr, lyr, llarr, llerr, Uirr, llorr, Hurr, llyrr, lour, leur, laer, how many different ways are there of Spelling the word ' tailor T The Valley of Death :— The Fate of Immigrants on its Burning Sanaa. The Valley of Death, a spot almost as terrible as the prophet's valley of dry bones, lies just north of the old Mormon road to California—a region 30 miles long by 30 broad, and surrounded, except at two points, by inaccessible' mountains. It is totally devoid of water and vegetation, and the shadow of a bird or wild beast never darkens its white, glaring I sands. The Kansas Pacific railroad engineers discovered it, and some papers, which show the fate of the ' lost Montgomery train,' which came from south Salt Lake in 1850, guided by a Mormon. When near Death valley, some came | to the conclusion that the Mormon knew ! nothing of the country, so they appointed one 'of their number a leader, and broke off from their party. The leader turned due weat, and so, with the people and wagons and the flocks, ,he travelled three days, and then descended into the broad valley, whose treacherous mirage promised water. They reached the oen!tre, but only the white sands, bounded by jscorching peakß, met their gaze. And around I the valley they wandered, and ene by one the men died, and the panting flock stretched themselves in death under the hot sun. The children, crying for water, died at their mother's breasts, and with swollen tongues and burning vitals, the mothers followed. Wagon after wagon was abandoned, and arong men tottered and raved and died. Af wr a week's wandering, a dozen survivors found some water in the hollow of a mountain. It lasted but a short time, when all perished but two, who es* caped out of the valley and followed the trail of their former companions. Eighty-seven families, with hundreds of animals, perished here, and now, after 22 years, the wagons stand still complete, the iron works and tires are bright, and the shrivelled skeletons lie side by side. Amusing Rhetorical Blunders. Professor Hod^Bon, in his book on "Errors in the Use of English,' quotes the following rhetorical blunders : — ' The death Is announced of Sir W. 0. Anstruther, a Nova Scotia Baronet, " whose creation dates from 1694." — Public Opinions 18,h Seplnmbor, 1669. [Of course the writer refers to (ho date of the qcq<

atfon of the Baronetcy, not the Baronet.] 'The audience "embrace" nightly our beat critics.'— Boaton Paper. 'As indicating the caution with which some cowfeeders are now disposed to act, we may mention that a " cowfeeder " in Thornybank, one of whose cows was observed to have gone off its food, "was at once dispatched " to the slaughter-house and killed ; but, on a " postmortem " examination of the carcase, no sign of disease could be found.'— Scotchman, 22ad August, 1865. [Unhappy cowfeeder !] 'We are all Englishmen, and " men " of Devon, " as you " (Lucy Passmore) " seem to be " by your speech.'—' Westward Ho I '— Kingsley. Raising Hair by the Crop. Thousands of girls in Switzerland, Germany, And Norway devote themselves to the cultivation of their hair as resolutely as. a farmer does his crops. Once a year the merchant, very often an old woman, arrives at the village, and » brisk trade Ib carried on. The Swiss girls make the most, as nature has bestowed on them an abundant orbp of the blonde colour, which is the hardest of all to obtain, and the climate is evidently propitious to its growth. The price obtained depends upon the length of the rednndant tresses. Hair eight inches long b worth 25 cents an. ounce, while that 36m in length will bring the fortunate possessor eight dollars an ounce, and in cases of exceptional beauty and thickness even 35 dollars an ounce may be realised — Paris Fashion Letter. The Japanese. The Japanese have much to learn concerning health and disease. If we may credit the statement of the New York Herald, they do not believe in such a tbiug as a contagion, and would be aa willing to live in a house with a friend who had even so virulent a disease as the { small pox, as if he were sound and in perfect health. Thus, when cholera is declared by the board of foreign physicians to be an epidemic In Yokahama, and the Japanese government, ] at their instigation, take measures to prevent the spread of the disease, the natives object to be placed in quarantine, and use every method In their power to escape from their bouses. The Ear. Few people realise what a wonderfully delicate structure the human ear really is. That, whioh we ordinarily designate so is after all only the mere outer porch of a series of winding passages, which, like the lobbies of a great building, lead from the outer air into the inner chambers. Certain of these passages are full of liquid, and their membranes are stretched like parohment curtains across the corridors at different places, and can be thrown into yibratfon, or made to tremble as the head of a drum or the surface of a tambourine does when struck with a stiok or the fingers. Between two of these parchment-like curtains » chain of very small bones extends, whioh serves to tighten or relax these membranes, and to oommunicate vibrations to them. In the inner- , most place of all* rows of fine thread, oalled nerves, stretch like the strings of a piano from the last point to whioh the tremblings or thrilllngs reach and pass inward to the brain; tf these nerves are destroyed the power of hearing as certainly departs m the power to give out sounds is lost by a piano or violin when Its strings are broken. : The Clergyman. A man whom all may criticise, The old, the young, the foolish, wise ; ' Who always must be keen and bright, ' Theugti dealing with,the old and trite ; Who ne'er must show the least displeasure Or grumble in the slightest measure, H, after working all the week, On Sunday when he comes to speak The handful that his preachir'g draws Ouly respond by nods and snores ; Who daily must his visits make, Though many a precious hourit take { Must vißit sick and visit well, Where live the rich, where paupers dwell ; Must wed his flock, their young baptise, And say some nice things when one dies ; A man in whose unwilling ear ' Are poured all scandals, far and near ; To whom all come with cark and care } Who must his people's burdens bear ; ' A man whom men folk patronize And whom the women idolize ; A man we laugh at when we canSuch, reader, is the clergyman. —Boston Transcript.