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Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9254, 2 December 1891, Page 2

A cuiious incident occurred at one of the Exhibitions at Home. In the building there was an automatic machine which supplies a photographic portrait of some " celebrity " or other to any one who " puts a penny in tho slot." An elderly and matronly lady, being under the impression that thia was tho new contrivance for taking photographs of which she had heard so much, duly inserted abronzo coin in the aperture, then, posing herself bofore the machine, and assuming her most pleasing expression, calmly awaited the result. After an interval of a few seconds the result came ; but alas 1 when the lady opened the drawer the photograph she extracted -therefrom displayed, not her own form and features, but the figure of a female acrobat in full professional costume. A wedding was once stopped in tho > following curious manner. The people i were well-to-do farmers. The day was 1 fixed, breakfast prepared, and tho cari riages waiting at the door. All things ; were ready. Tho bridegroom drove up to 1 the house, and ran in to see his bride before he started for the chapel. He i found her weeping, as brides often do when they leave home. And who would i believe it if they read it in a romance ? The bridegroom coldly informed the young ! lady that (i if that was the way she was . goiug to begin it would be the end of it." Ho left the bride in a dead faint, walked \ out of the house, and rode away. It was 1 the end of it in more ways than one. There ' was an action for breach of promise. The ; young lady died of a broken heart.- He ' afterwards married three wives in rapid ' succession, and his life was far from being j happy- ( A good etory is told of Mr Henry H. Howorth, who is M.P. for the South Division of Salford. Mr Howorth is the i author cf a learned and volumnious i " History of the Mongols." On one . occasion a lady was introduced to him, and somewhat surprised Mr Howorth by immediately turning the conversation into a talk about dogs, and appeared most anxious ; to get his opinion as to the best of poodle and the finest sort of setter. At last Mr Howorth had to confess ignorance regarding things canine, when the inquirer exclaimed, in rather an injured tone, " Well, I do think it very strange. I thought you had written a history of the mongrels." The famine in Russia is compelling the use of some strange article of diet by the peasants. " Bread made of straw chopped fine, bran and an admixture of rye," says a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, " is a godsend, to obtain which thousands of human beings would sell their very souls. Powdered treo bark, flavored with ground peas, is esteemed an excellent food by men who work as if their bodies were made of some incorruptible metal. " Hunger-bread," made of dried dung, treo bark, powdered peas and goose-foot, is not only not spurned, but greedily grabbed vp — nay, fought for — with as much eagorness and bitterness as if it were ambrosia of the gods." It is a mere truism to add after this that life in an -English workhouse would be heaven to many a poor Russian at the present time. A story 'ias been told that at a masked ball recently held in a certain town on the West Coast a youth of ingenious countenance was flirting with a tall lady in a pink domino, when to his immense amazement, and the great ainusemont of those in the vicinity of the pair, the voice from behind the mask said :— " Why, Bobby, wherover did you learn such awful things." The pink domino happened to be his mother. What followed is not related. Some years ago Mr Gladstone was making political speeches up in the North of England, when one day he alighted from a train at a railway station to speak to tho people. He planted himself on a small eminence no tr by, and turnod loose his soul in a torrent of eloquence. "My friends," he said, among other things, " your destiny is assured. With such a country, and such a climate, and such a soil, what may not thisvillago become? In this soil " hero he stopped, and Hcrapod tip a handful of it — " I seem to see the very seeds of the ompiro. In this red earth — which looks as if fertilised with the iron pfyqur will — aro latent the promise and the possibility of the grandest crops. What will such a soil not grow ? It will produce not only fruits and grains, but men and women of heroic mould ; and as I now scatter this prolific earth to tho four winda, aa I scatter this gencroua soil — " But just here tho orator's remarks wore consumed in inextingu,ish,a,b,lo laughter. H-j was standing on the site of an old tannery, and the generous soil was oak bark. In Gibraltar it is tho custom, for sentries to challenge all comers at night, and tho person spoken to should reply " Soldier " or '■' Inhabitant " as tho caso may bo j tho term " friend " should never be used, An infantryman was on duty in ono of tho principal streets, and uoticing a private of tho Engineers with his swoetlioart approaching, he sang out : " Halt ! Who goes there ?'-' The person, spoken to, wishing to givd himself as high sounding a titlo as possible replied ; " Engineer and his lady." " Advance, sapper and his sorvant girl," responded the Bentry. " All's well."