WHAT THE WORLD SAYS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 1899, 30 November 1877, Page 4

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS.

There will be general grief at hearing that Mr Archibald Forbes's health broke down badly before Plevna on the 11th instant. Mt Forbes had only time to reach Bucharest, and despatch to the Daily News his splendid telegram announcing the virtual defeat of the Russians, when he was compelled to take to Ins bed with an attack of raging fever. Latest advices state that Mr Forbes has been ordered to quit the Danube altogether, and that he is on his way to England by easy stages. This is how a German comic paper accounts for Mr Forbes's general accuracy about the war : — " Dialogue between two War Correspondents. — Mir Forbes meets Dr Entoutcas m the street, and the following conversation takes place: — 'Bon morning, Mr Archibald, what mach you ?' '0,1 am sehr very. TTnd you V ' O quasi ! Segg mi, Mr Archibald^ wie mach you dat mit your fixity Lei the Berichters V 'O, very simple ! I make meiue Beschreibing of Slacht schon vorher fix and forty. Danu Igo to .the Russian conimandeur and segg to him : " Here is a fin description, nu maken sic mair mal'ine Slacht danach." The Russian commandeur, being a gefallig man, erweist mi the little pleasure, and damit all right !' " Close to Sir George Wombwell's at Newburgh, stands Coxwold Church, where, a little more than a century ago, Laurence Sterne was curate. "Mr Yorick " is hardly remembered as a preacher, unless it be by the single sermon m Tristam Sliaiidy. Nevertheless his pulpit utterances were often highly characteristic of" the man. One Sunday morning he began a sermon from the text, "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feWing," by frankly asserting, "That I deny." Aud on another occasion, to the words " Sorrow is better than laughter," he promptly added, "For a crack-brained order of Carthusian monks, I grant, not for men of the world." The Prince of Wales might have attended Newburgh Church to hear such theology as this. The overpowering melancholy of wedding breakfasts was agreeably relieved at one which I attended the other day. An orator of the most lugubrious type, who was beginning to weep copiously, took out as ho thought his pocket-handker-chief, and was greeted with shouts of unrestrained laughter. He had m his hand one of his wife's silk stockings, which she had asked him to match the day previously, and which he had forgotten to do. In certain sports the " tykes " seem to have an odd way with them. In a recent cricket match between tho New Wortley, Leamington, and Harmby clubs " several of the spectators ran up to the wickets and threatened to kill the umpire, or at least throw him into the beck." And later proceedings m the match are thus reported by a correspondent m the Yorkshire Post : — " Shortly afterwards the same umpire gave another batter out, 1b w, and immediately scores of the spectators rushed forward, one of them striking the umpire severely, and one or two of the visiting players got roughly used, a free fight taking place for some minutes. For a short time the match was broken up ; a crowd gathered round the pavillion, threatening vengeance on the umpire if he dared to come out, and m these threats several so-called 'ladies' joined." There is a remarkable rumor abroad concerning the financial position of a certain peer of the realm, who is at present one of the company of distinguished guests asked down to Perthshire to meet Prince Leopold. Matters, long m a simmering distrustful condition, are now reported, to have reached a crisis, and a very significant and determinate step has been already actually taken at the country seat of the noble lord during his absence m the North. The catastrophe haa been somewhat sudden ; but the answer to the question — eagerly asked on all sides m the neighborhood — as to how it. has come at last, is m • reality quite patent. In the first place, the noble lord holds an important position m relation to a certain very illustrious personage, which position m itself requires an ample revenue to sustain, but to support which he receives just £602 per annum. Secondly, the noble lord has lately been led into enormous expenses. Thirdly, times are bad, creditors pressing ; keeping a pack of harriers and travelling about town and country with the very illustrious personage are expensive. Affairs being m this condition, what is to be done ? and, above all, where is the money to come from ? To the latter question some well-meaning friends, with a tolerable sense of justice, reply, " Let it come from the very illustrious personage m question." But then, what if tho latter be, after all, m pretty nearly as poor a plight as the faithful scapegoat who has now to suffer ? More money has been subscribed m these islands towards the alleviation of the Madras famine within the past few weeks than has been bestowed by the Russians on the Red Cross Society since the Ist of January. The entire sum contributed to the funds for the relief of Muscovite wounded since the war broke out is less than a million and a quarter of roubles. A rouble may be roughly set down as the equivalent of three shillings. One of the strongest arguments against possible success for the Turks was their utter unpreparedness for war. How fallacious this was may be gathered from the fact that m May last a friend of mine saw m a church m Constantinople just half a million Martini-Henry rifles. They were m stands, beautifully kept, and quite ready for immediate use.

It is gratifying to know that, despite the wholesale " massacres," and what may perhaps be described as the retail-ed "atrocities," which have been deluging with blood the country of the Bulgarians, that "gentle, honest, and kindly" race is m little danger of becoming extinct, or even of being as seriously^ affected by this indiscriminate depopulation as one might have feared. One of the special correspondents of the Times, m a letter headed " The ' Terror' m Bulgaria" — a heading, by the way, smacking rather of the Daily Telegraph than of the Times — reassures us on the subject. As he was sitting the other day m his tent or hut, bu9y with this very letter, no less than thirty little children at different times toddled mto see him, proffering baskets of grapes m exchange, as they wished to intimate, for bread, of which the poor little things looked sadly m need. Our kindly correspondent supplied their wants, and while doing so he looked out through the doorway, and saw the mother m conversation with one of the sentinels. If this family of thirty little toddlers may be taken as an 3yerage specimen of the number of children the Bulgarian mother is m the habit of rearing up to the Bulgarian father, it is obvious that that fertile land, whether under the rule of the Crescent oi the Cross, is but little likely to suffer from a lack of inhabitants. I commend this fact to the notice of Mr Gladstone. The Cliarlotte Observer quotes a verse of a sacred song very popular among the colored worshipers of that city, and which has a " large run," particularly on revival occasions : — I shako the dus' off ob ray feet, An' walk barefoot on the golden street ; I know my hido's chuck full of sin, But I know old Pete will let me m. Chorus : Don rise, children, up m a crowd, An' Bhout an' sing to de angels loud ; An' fix your eyes on the Ian 1 ob rest, Ease hell am hot as a hornet's nest. Apropos of aristocratic enlistments m the English army : m Italy men of fortune and immemorial titles begin by serving m the roughest labors of the barracks and the field, clean their horses and sleep under them, eat black bread or go without, like the rest. Indeed, the Marchese della S., who is the last representative of the greatest Franco-Italian ducal house of the Middle Ages, tells me that, when there is any particularly dirty job from which the plebeian private shrinks, the white-handed young patrician makes it a point of honor to set an example by doing it himself. " I have been commanded by my own contadino," he often say 3 with pride; and this saying means much m. a country where the peasant is a kind of assal. He also relates that on one occasion his contadino sergeant gave him a whack on the hand for an insignificant breach of discipline, at the same time scrupulously addressing him as " Signor Marchese. " No one who knows the Italian army can well imagine the peculiar love — an affection of comradeship mingled with a generous reverence for rank and breeding — which the Italian private feels for the officer who has served at his side. This is surely something better than the vague, somewhat snobbish, or at least not self-respecting, veneration for their commanders which is supposed to do so much for the British soldier. By the way, why should so excellent an army as the Italian be systematically starved sis it is 1