Miscellaneous.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4978, 10 April 1889, Page 2

Miscellaneous.

Mr Gladstone, who was the bitterest opponent of even England’s restricted divorce law when Lord Westbury carried it through Parliament, has recently declared that he is still opposed to divorce, and has created the impression that he is soon going to write on the subject. The town of Johannesburg has been erected on what two years ago was a waste and contains well-built stone and brick houses, with all the resources of the largest towns in Cape Colony; The population is estimated at 12,000 whites besides many natives, and as many more inhabitants of the scattered mining camps. The place is 200 miles from a railway, and 800 miles from the sea, so that the difficulties that have been overcome in building are enormous. Lord William Neville, whose secession to the Church of Some some time ago caused no little stir in aristocratic circles, has just been married in London to a daughter of the Marquis de Sanlurco. The Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince George of Wales, and quite a distinguished party witnessed the ceremony at the Brompton Oratory, while the Heirapparent proposed the health of the bride at the wedding breakfast. A boat may be pierced in several places below the water-line, and yet continue to float indefinitely, so long as as a swift motion through the water is kept up. This was recently proved by an interesting experiment tried by the English builders, Thornycroft and Company, with a new boat. For the purpose of making the experiment, a throe-quarter-inch hole was bored into the side, about one foot under water. When the boat was at rest the water flowed in very rapidly, but when moving at a speed of about ten miles an hour a skin of water was drawn over the hole, which resisted any inflow. At Brussels recently a tragic event happened in the courtyard of the house belonging to the Corporation of tho Fishmongers. A travelling menagerie had arrived, and attracted great attention by its enormous elephant. A boy of seventeen, who was employed distributing handbills of the menagerie, was in the habit of teasing the elephant by twisting its tail. The elephant never remonstrated with the boy, and submitted to all his pranks with extraordinary patience, but one morning the boy threw a bucketful of water over the elephant’s head. This was too much. The weather was cold, and the elephant lost his temper. With one whisk of its trunk it seized the youth by the right ankle, and whirled him twice over its head, and then dashed hipj against the wall. Death was instantaneous.

One of the wannest friends of the late John Bright was the wife of the Jute Emperor of Germany, who made Mr Bright’s acquaintance when he was made President of the Board of Ti’ade, twenty years ago. She thanked him for the defence ho had made of her mother’s secluded life since her widowhood. Mr Bright was an inveterate smoker j when ho was in good health he was seldom without his pipe or cigar. He used to admit that he was one of the most lazy of men. He once told Justin McCarthy that his great and yearning desire w r as a passionate love of doing nothing. Of course this referred to his physical and not his mental activity. The now Dean of Chichester is a bit of a humourist, and in Sussex, where a very little clerical wit goes a long way, they are saying that he is quite as funny as Sydney Smith. At a church festival at Eastbourne last week he brought down the house by telling how some letters came to him addressed “Dr Pagan.” Dr Pigou excited a still heartier burst of laughter when ho communicated the secret of making a goblin vanish': “Ask the ghost for a subscription to the Sunday school funds.” He added that the best way to disperse a turbulent crowd during a riot is to announce a “collection.” The ex-vicar of Leeds in making these remarks is not complimentary to ths Anglican laity.— Christian Leader,

It is estimated that in England one man in 500 gets a college education, and in America one in every 200. The following, from tho Secretary of the Irish Temperance League, will go some way towards explainicg the existence of poverty in Ireland : —“ Legalised temptation in the form of liquor-shops abounds everywhere in Ireland beyond anything I have ever seen. You go into a shop to buy a newspaper, and on one side you see barrels of beer and bottles of spirits. On the door of the respectable draper’s shop you may read ‘licensed to sell spirits, &c., to be consumed on the premises.’ I met lately a Wesleyan minister who had that day left a place of 1200 inhabitants with 30 drink shops. I heard of a village having seven shops, and five of them sold drink. In Killarney, with a population of 0500, wo found 83 drink shops, besides hotels ; and in Eilrush, with 4000 inhabitants, no less than 80 places for the sale of liquor.” A delightful little anecdote about the old German Emperor is told in the “ Memoirs of a Court actor,” whicli a well-known comic actor has just published at Stuttgart. It was at Wiesbaden, and Emperor William I. had gone to see Fritz Eeuter’s famous play, “Onkel Brasig,” In the scene where the villain of tire play, after having been prevented by Onkel Brasig from committing suicide, calls out, “ I will re-enter tho army,” the old Emperor leaned over tho front of his box and called out angrily, “ Yes ; but I won’t take him on again! ” The next day an adjutant appeared before the manager, saying that the Emperor would be present again that evening, but he would like the above exclamation by the villain to be taken out or altered. That evening the repentant youth, instead of expressing tho determination to re-enter tho army, said, “ I shall become manager of a theatre, and then I hope yet to do well.” Whereupon the grey head in the Imperial box nodded approvingly, and tho Emperor exclaimed, with evident satisfaction, “There now—that’s a better plan!"