HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2978, 12 April 1911, Page 85

HERE AND THERE.

Edison’s Sixty-fourth Birthday.—

Thomas A. Edison recently completed his sixty-fourth year, and 'he celebrated it, as he has most of his birthdays, by working three-quarters of the day. Ho was particularly busy on this particular day, says a. New York contemporary, not only declining an invitation from Mrs Edison to go on a little outing with other members of his family, but refusing to take time to go to his home, in Llewellyn Park, for luncheon. Instead, he had a snack sent down to his laboratory. Tire inventor conceded something to the day by putting a bright carnation in his buttonhole. A reporter reminded him that two years ago he announced he had given up active work.

“ I did,” ©aid the inventor, with his ready smile, “ but that was only the things I didn’t care to do. There are still a great many things that I care to do, and I .keep doing them.” “Agreable work never hurt anyone, and I am no exception to the rule. So long as I can do what I like to do I expect to keep my health. I was a business man for half a century, and now I am merely having a good time.”

Mr Edison’s good time consists in experimenting with one invention or another, always with the definite purpose of making .some specific improvement. _ “ It’s nice to hear that the public is Interested in my health,” said Mr Edison. “My body and I are still keeping at it for about 18 hours a day, and I am very glad to say that it is seldom, I get tired. “ When I have any spare time I study music. You will be surprised to learn that, but it is true. When I was young I was denied the op-nortunities to develop' myself along aesthetic lines, but now I am doing more of it. Last night I waded through several hundred compositions. Of course, I did not execute them. I have a machine that does that for me. I am investigating the construction of music, and have found, to my surprise, that there is very little originality in it. All the waltzes are nearly the same, and the fact is that musical composition is full of plagiarism. Most of the writers of music merely take old themes and work them over, but Beethoven is one who escapes that charge. His compositions will always live.”— Advice from Mr Carnegie.—

Mr Andrew Carnegie, in an address to the woman employees of the Leslie-Judge Publishing Company, advised them to seek intellectual development, declaring that the millionaires’ wives did not keep pace with their husbands’ mental progress. “ Most millionaires’ wives are unhappy/' he said. “ They have too many luxuries and no mental resources to fall back upon. Some of my partners have been unjustly criticised for what was not their fault, but the fault of their wives. Do not condemn a man simply because he is a millionaire, although I would rather be a poor man than a millionaire—and I have had some experience in both directions. I have made 42 or 43 millionaires in my time, but I want to say that the only right man has to wealth lies in its acquisition by useful labour. The great trouble with wealth to-day is that the sons of millionaires, do not realise thenecessity for being of use to the community. I shall never forget how proud I was when I. got my first wages—ss a week, —.and how I felt when I was raised to 6s as a telegraph operator. Taking home that money to my good mother gave me such a feeling of manly independence. I owe a great deal to my mother. She was a seamstress, cook, and washerwoman, and never until late in life had a servant in the house. Yet she was a cultivated woman. She read Channing, and kept up with the literature of the day.”

—,A - Hunger Strike. — The interest of all Russia (says the St. Petersburg correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on February 14) is riveted on the eccentric monk Iliodore, who first obtained notoriety by expounding UltraConservative views, criticising hia superiors, lay and spiritual, and publicly reviling members of the Administration. The Most Holy Synod resolved to transfer him from the city of Tsaritsin- to a monastery in the diocese of Tula. He refuses to submit. Iliodore has solemnly sworn an oath before the altar to starve himself to death rather than quit Tsaritsin. Already for five days he has remained in the church before the altar, fasting and praying. The members of the numerous congregation watching him have sworn to do likewise. Prayers, chants, and moans commingle in the church day and night, and thousands of pious people have had their minds unhinged. Telegrams are being sent all over Russia about Iliodore, who has mad© a fantastic will. The Holy Synod is concerting measures at the present moment to induce him to quit Tsaritsin. Later the corresnondent telegraphed :

“ The monk Iliodore’s resolution to perish by hunger is causing indescribable excitement throughout the orthodox world. All the conservative associations in the Russian Empire have espoused his cause, and sent telegrams to the Czar to-dav, beseeching him to allow Iliodore to remain at Tearitsin. The monastery church is crowded to overflowing with frenzied men and women abstaining from: food and sleep, and passing days and nights in prayer. The ecclesiastical authorities are at their wits’ ends.” The First Americans.—•

In the beginning the Hohokam dwelt in the land. They were the first Americans—before the Unknown People, who lived in the United States so long ago that their name is utterly lost. Out in the iSouth-west old tribes of Indians like the Zunis and Navajos know nothing of them save by vaguest tradition. The ■Pimas and Pagoe of Southern Arizona-,

who occupy part of til© land that sac©was theirs, know that another race pos*. sessed the country long ago. More they cannot tell. They and their fathers, for hundreds of years, have seen what we see—the scanty remnants of ancient villages. For the inhabitants of the villages they have no name except the Hohokam — that is, the “ Unknown.” The modern archaeologist describes the implements and pottery of the Hohokam. He cannfA d<? much more, for their houses are laid low. Except in a few places, such as the ruins of the Casa Grande, near the Gila River, the very walls have vanished. Casa Grande itself may be the work of a people later than the main body of the Hohokam. We can never know the whole story. Yet little by little we may s&arn its chief facts, Arizona and the adjacent regions are full of ruins unknown to scientists- and even to the people who live within a mile of them. Thev are so nearly obliterated that there seems at first sight little to repay study. Archaeology begins the task of reconstructing the past; geography must finish it. Modern geogmphy enables us to determine the mode of life which must prevail, especially among primitive peoples, under given conditions of physical environment. If we can cor rectly picture the geographic environment of the Hohokam, we may learn much of the history of our earliest fellowcountrymen.—Ellsworth Huntington, ; n Harper’s Magazine for February. of Street Cries.— Armed with a recording gramophone,. M. Ponge, a schoolmaster (says the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph), spends his leisure hours lying in wait for street criers in populous quarters. He is preparing a museum of speech, which he will leave behind him for the instruction of future ages. When he hears the Parisian equivalents of “Milk!’’ or the muffin-man, he pounces on them, and compels them to sing or ring bells into his receiver. He has already collected the cries of the birdseed man, the vegetable woman, the fishwife, the basket-maker, the o’-clo’es man, the window-pane mender, the flower men selling mimosa, and the shrill tenor who pieces together again “marble, alabaster, and porcelain.” Two criers resisted all the collector’s blandishments or threats — the wife of the chair-mender, who gathers custom for her husband, and who was afraid that the gramophone was one of M. Bertillon’s new anthropometric recording inventions, and the haughty and funereal Hercules who walks groaning sepulchrally, “Tonneaux, tonneaux!” as if his heart were breaking, and robs you shamefully whenever ,you do sell him an empty wine cask. He passed on chanting “Tonneaux!” and refused to take the slightest notice of the schoolmaster’s request for a record. —A Clause in a Will Causes Two Deaths. — The will of Daniel S. Haines, a ranchman, of Rose Hill, Kansas, who died a few months ago, has now resulted in two deaths. Mr Haines specified in his will that his daughter, Katherine Haines, should not inherit his 100,000dol estate if before she was 25 years old she was married to William M’Quitty, to whom, it was rumoured she was engaged. Miss Haines killed herself on February 7, because of this clause. She was ; just 18 years eld at the time of her father s death, and the will provided that if she still loved M‘Quitty when she wap 25 she could be married to him and inherit the estate. M’Quitty on February 10 took his life by shooting himself in the head with a shotgun. The charge of heavy shot entered his body near the heart, and he died foui hours later. He had been despondent since the death of Miss Haines, and friends and relatives feared he was preparing to take his life. He went into a field on the, M’Quitty ranch, one half-mile west _of UcPall, after saying that he was going shooting. The report of the gun was heard, and the elder M’Quitty, who was at work near the barn, left his work to see what his son had shot He found the young man on the ground. M Qmtty will he buried in the Udall Cemetery by the side of his sweetheart. —Fear of Growing Old.

On the fear of growing old Mr Philip Gibbs writes:—“A man is young if he has a young brain. He is never old until brain ‘and heart are weary. He begins to be a man when he begins to think, and has some knowledge on which to base his thoughts. He is a babe at Eton, a child at Oxford. He has to go to school with life before he leaves Ins boyhood behind. Many of those young bloods who fought duels in Georgian days and led our men in. the Peninsular war were merely highspirited youths who to-day would be wearing short breeches and stockings and carrying broomsticks in the noble army of the Boy Scouts. Here, therefore is good comfort to those who are afraid of growing old. They may defeat old age so long as° they keep their, spirits young. They may be young always until death comes to take them by the hand, if their bram keeps its activity and their heart its cheei fulness.” —Mind Influence. —

The Lancet reports a very remarkable example of the possibilities of mind-influ-ence in controlling boddy functions which has recently been brought before the medical fraternity in Vienna. It 18 that a man who lately came under the observation of an Austrian physician possesses “such an extraordinary control over his physical organisation that he was even capable of voluntarily changing the position and size of his heart.” Also, that “he could reduce the frequency of its beats from 80 to 50 each minute, and he could bring it either into the right half_ of the thorax (chest) or into the middle line by suggesting to himself (1) that he was going too l fast, or (2) that his left lung was collapsed. He could produce at will hypersemia (congestion with and swelling of any email area of the skin wy auto-suggestion, merely by impressing m. his mind the belief that be bad burnt bhngelf at that spot.” It is also reported that

this f-.dividual is able volurite? ily to contract and dilate the pupils of his either together or separately. —A Strong Protest.— A correspondent recently wrote to a London paper as follows : —“To-day, travelling from Brighton, a young woman sat opposite to me with a complete polecat sewn round her hat, the tail and paws hanging down. Bound her neck hung a fur ending in heads of squirrels; and from her muff hung a row of tails. Three little heads dangled from another muff in the carriage. Ido not happen to be an eater of my fellow-creatures, but if a butcher had entered the carriage with a row of mutton chops round his neck, a sheep’s heart hanging from one shoulder, and the tongue sif an ox from the other, he might justly have answered objectors with the statement that those gory things represented what 90 per cent, of his fel-low-citizens regarded as necessaries of life. But if the butcher is not allowed to thrust these things in our faces, why should women be allowed to insult every decentminded person dangling before us the heads, legs, tails, and bodies of beautiful creatures slaughtered for a vulgar fashion?” —Romance of a Fresh Egg.— Mitchell (S.D.), February 5.—-Because he wrote hie name upon a nice fresh egg while he wae packing a crate for shipment to the east, Edward Taylor, of Alexandria, a grocer’s clerk, was wedded last week to Miss Margaret Graynor, of Brooklyn, N.Y., reputed to be the daughter of a wealthy man. Miss Graynor, when she was about to eat the egg for breakfast, noted the name and address on the shell, and wrote to the young man more as a joke than anything else. Later photographs were exchanged. Two weeks ago Taylor went to Brooklyn, and the marriage too place. Friends have received wedding announcements packed in cotton eggshells neatly inscribed with the date, and the address of the future home of Mr and Mrs Taylor, which will be in Brooklyn-