General News.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5108, 1 June 1885, Page 3

General News.

The Glasgow Mail relates the following anecdote of General Gordon :—" In the last fortnight of his stay in England, before bis departure for Khartoum, ho mot a beggar in the lanes of Hampshire, near Southampton ; and that beggar more suo, pitched to him a wonderful tale, Gordon had but one coin in bis pocket, and that coin was a sovereign, which he readily subscribed for the benefit of the beggar. An hoar later he discovered from a police constable that the beggar was a boary importer. Gordon immediately proceeded to select tlte thickest a>h cudgel his house could supply. He walked 15 miles, and succeeded in l»3'ing hands upon the delinquent, whom he trounced within a few inches of his life. Un'ortu nately, he forgot to ask for the sovereign back Bgain, and three days later he went to Khartoum. The Spanish Budget for 1885 shows a deficit of £993 750, but the Opposition journals of Madrid contend than the estimate is far too low, and that the actual deficit will far exceed that amount. Arabi Pasha teaches and lectures in Ceylon. ••The'annihilation of time is, says Vanity Fair, " slow, but sure. According to the calculations of the Post Office, *5t should take exactly 1080 hours to reach the Antipodes, allowing for ordinary Bccidents and stoppages; and the New Zealand Steamship Co. recently acceptedl a oontract to carry the Boyal mails betiveeD i England and New Zealand within that time. On the occasion of their first attempt with their steamer, the Aorangi, the distance was traversed in the remark able time of 932 hours."only, and it is con. fidently anticipated .'that even this almost fabulous run will be beaten hereafter." The Mansion House Fund for the National Memorial to General Gordon amounts to £8500 £30C3 of which has been collected since the 14th March. The Arabs grind their coffee as fine as flour and boil it in a copper saucepan without a lid. They would not on any account boil it in a covered vessel, as any lid or cover would prevent "the deleterious qualities from escaping acd make the coffee bitter." . . ■> A North Sea codman carries a suite of lines which extends 7200 fathoms in length, and has usually fixed upon it the amazing number of 4680 hooks, every one of which must be baited. One of the strangest uses for snails has been discovered by the London adulterater. Bruiied in milk, and boiled, they are much used in the manufacture of cream, and a retired milkman pronounces them to be the most successful imitation known. , „ T ■, A rise of a penny a pound in the .London wool market would mean an addition of £334,000 to the yearly income of the colony. The falling off of the exportable value of our grain last year amounted to £389.000. , . ■-,*.,' No less than seven suicides effected or attempted were reported in Paris one day last week. At five in the morning a packing- CBBe maker in the Faubourg St. Martin, named Rozette, took a dose of laudanum, and was removed to a hospital in a critical state ; at seven, a messenger named Moietie, was found hanging in his lodgings at an hotel in the Rue de Cbartros; about the same time a concierge, at 16, Rue Chagrin, committed ■uicide with charcoal; at eight, M.' Earmier, a retired tradesman, aged 62, killed himself by firing a revolver in his mouth ; at one, a man named Fiot, living in the Place delaChappelle, stabbed him■elf with a shoemaker's knife; at four, a porter at the Central Markets shot himself with a revolver; and, lastly at ten in the evening, a tailor named Descamps, living in the Bue Bonaparte, shot himself twice in the head while riding in a cab.— Galignani. ' ■