Our Letter Box

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 822, 29 September 1894, Page 24

Our Letter Box

Jingo, Tapu.— Sub's, expires 21&t October. A Wanganui Correspondent. — Yours to hand re contributions. We have no opening at present. r Nothing Venture, etc. — Without experience, strength, skill, or money you would stand about as much show of making a pile at Coolgardie as a race-course spieler stands of becoming Primate of New Zealand. Marker.— How many inches should the top spot of a billiard table be from the cushion, and should it be measured from the base or the top ? According to the latest ruling (as observed by Roberts, Pell, and other cracks) the distance should be 12? inches, counting from the top of table A Manga wai Correspondent. — We don't in the least know why you should not have received Observer regularly. Quarter's subscription started with issue of 25th August, that number being posted 23rd August. And paper has been posted regularly ever since. Enquire at your post- office. T. A. C. — Your verses remind us of rough brown sugar they are sweet but unrefined. They now repose in the editorial basket. To-morrow, or perchawce to-day, they will be cremated. Such is the fate of rejected M.S.S. when postage stamps to defray cost of their return to their writers are not enclosed. A Mauku Correspondent.— We have inserted some of ryour notes in ' Country Cousins' ' page, but your ' poem ' we had to ' pass.' But we will give one verse,--.iust to show you how it looks in print : — Not a sound was heard, not a single quack, As they sat right in the corner ; His arm was right across her back to keep her all the warmer. Wills never wrote anything more graphic. But owing to pressure on our space, etc. Student of History.— The instruments of torture in use in the ' good old days ' were many and various. The rack was a cheerful contrivance that stretched a man's limbs out of joint. It was often employed to make the racked own up to something. After a few turns he generally owned up, whether he was guilty or not. The thumb-screw was another festive machine. It seized the thumb in a vice-like grip and crashed the ~" bone. The ' boot ' was also a neat thing in tortures. It was a metal boot which enclosed the foot and part of the leg. It was capable of s jueezing the imprisoned members to a jelly. These sweet little inventions have now 'gone out.' but we still have the concertina and the bag-pipes, which have been known to cast a gloom over an entire community.