Miscellaneous.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4440, 16 July 1887, Page 4

Miscellaneous.

There are twelve million silk bats made annually in the United Kingdom, worth four millions sterling. The most costly hats in the world are those made at Panama of straw, which take six months to make, and are sold at £5 each. The Manchester Courier gives publicity to a letter which appeared in a New York paper over Henry George’s signature, in which that gentleman asserts that he was the first person to carry the news of the Phoenix Park murders to Mr Parnell, who was then staying at the Westminster Palace Hotel, London. Mr Dillon and Mr Michael Davitt were also present. All were deeply moved, especially Mr Parnell, who, on the impulse of the moment, talked of resigning his scat in Parliament, and retiring from public life for ever. The following stories are told by the Bev*

. Or. Jessopp in his book, just published* called “ Aroady: For Bettor, For Worse”:— A moral incumbent was once consoling a small farmer who had lost his wife, declaring that Providence must be submitted to with resignation. “That’s right enef, that es! There ain’t no use a gainsayin’ on it; but somehow that there Old Providence hev been agin me all along, He hev! Whoi, last year He meat spoilt my taters, and the year afore that He kinder did for my turnips, and now He’s been and got hold o’ my missus. But I reckon as there’s One above as’ll put a stopper on Ha if a’ go too fur.” A story is told of one Jerry Eke, an Arcadian, who was backed to eat a calf at a sitting. The animal was chopped up and made into seventeen enormous pasties, with an outer crust of thin batter. To the horror of his backers, Jerry stopped at the tenth one; but it was only to remark, “ I say, Mas’r, I aint’t got nothing to say agin them page; I loike ’em omazin’; bat I’m a thinkin* et’s about time I should begin upon that ther calf.” We have no space to say more than to recommend a most excellent and amusing book. Fifty years ago we had the Queen, a dainty little maiden, only four feet ten inches in height, with a delicate figure, a flowerlike face, a slender arm and an exquisitely poised head. The face was a little pensive, but nevertheless mirthful, the corners of the mouth turning up as decidedly as they now turn down ; the tendency of the upper lip was to curl, allowing a mere suggestion of white teeth to appear. A simple gown of white India muslin bound round the small waist with satin ribbon and embroidered with field daisies, strings of pearls wound ronnd the white throat, and tapering arms left modestly bare, complete the picture of the youthful niece of George IY. And now tho enemy of womankind has stolen a ' triumphant march upon Victoria. But one thing neither time nor flesh has deprived the Queen of, and that is the really regal bearing, the erect figure, the uplifted head and firm tread which in her triumphal entry into Westminster Abbey fifty years ago led the beholders to declare that she was a tall yromau.—Excnange,