TOPICS OF THE BAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6970, 26 September 1890, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE BAY.

♦_ • [From oub London Correspondent.^} \ London, August 8. A DEAD LION. The Stanley boom is over. Society got dead tired ot the explorer and hisyoungmen before the end of the season, and the present s disposition of people lies in the direction of depreciating rather than exalting their . exploits. For instance, here is Truth dc- ; daring th&t in the Transvaal the fusa we ; made about our latest lion excited profound ; derision. Tin- re are (says Labby) dozens i of old Dutchmen who have performed the ■ actual journey Stanley has so talked about,. and who think notbing of it. They know all about the dark forest and the dwarfs, and nothing Stanley can tell them is really • news. j If, however, our great explorer's popularity should ever be seriously threatened it will not be by the imaginative tarra- • diddles of South African Boers, but by the revelations of Mr Troup and the survivors^ or the luckless rear-guard. These gentlemen, 1 am assured ou first authority, have a sorry tale to unfold. Had Mr Stanley not attacked their dead leader, they might have suppressed portions, but now they mean to tell the whole, and leave the verdict to the public. Mr Troup's book will bo iosued in October, and that of Mr Bonny (whom Stanley has never treated with much consideration either in public or private) a month later. Both promise sensational revelations. LAEBMAN SENTENCED. The trial of the uiorphiomaniac doctor Laeiman, for causing the death of Mrs Marshall Hall under circumstances familiar to you, came on at the Old Bailey on Friday last, and resulted, as generally anticipated, in a conviction. The wretched prisoner had no hopo from the first, for he knew that if by any quibble he got off on the charge of manslaughter, he would at once be re-arrested and tried for forgery.. His counsel made much of the face that Mrs Hall pestered Laerman into attempting the fatal operation, and that he had again and again refused her request. Ultimately when lie did give way he had drunk a quantity of chartreuse, and was not sober. The Judge dwelt on the terrible agonies poor Mrs Hall must have endured, explaining that a drop of the corrosive fluid the prisoner (no doubt accidentally) used would burn through a man's finger nail in twenty seconds. The Jury were locked up from seven till nearly midnight on Saturday, when they returned a verdict of manslaughter against Laerman, adding that they considered the witness Eugenic Grandt and Lieutenant de Yismes should have been included in the charge. The Judgo then sentenced Laerinan to fifteen years' penal servitude, an exemplary punishment, which will strike terror into the hearts of many another illegal practitioner in the same line. ENGLISH BEAUTY. The decay of English beauty has beenlamented in the columns of an English journal by a veteran critic, and indignantly denied by the gallants of tho rising generation. It has been finally and practically refuted by the manager of a Parisian theatre, who is coming to London in order to enlist recruits for his ballet. And he advertises his venture as promising quite special attractions. Your Frenchman is excitable, but he is not unfair ; he makes up for the affection which ho refuses to the men of Albion by lavishing it upon their wives and daughters. It is only when his suit has been rejected that he finds consolation in smiling at the corkscrew ringlets, the projecting teeth, and the bony shoulders, which linger in some of the Boulevard caricatures of the English maiden. The only thing which, he does not admire in our women is their unaccountable and distressing preference for their own unworthy and prosaio countrymen. DEVELOPING THE BRAIN. In the direction of medical and surgical science fresh discoveries nre being constantly made, and operations of the most startling description are signalled from time to time— such, for instance, as that undertaken to remove layers of fat from a Frenchman's person by the use of tho knife, which operation was attended, so it was stated at the time, with the ruo3t complete success. It appears, from what we read in a Paris paper, that to a French surgeon is due the discovery of a new method of developing* the brain. He had brought under his notice a little girl more than half idiotic, whose bead ho perceived to be abnormally small for her age. With the consent of the child's parents he undertook an oi>eration, which consisted in removing a> ' pr rt of the skull, with the object of allowing the brain room to expand. It did expand, we read, with the satisfactory result that tho little patient is now quite as intelligent as ordinary girls of her age, and her health has in no way suffered from the delicate and difficult operation undergone. The question suggests itself whether, if this experiment was really as successful as is stated, it points or not to the fact, that idiotcy may to a .certain extent be curable, and that the intelligence of a human being varies in proportion to the size of his brain. Doubtless, if there is no exaggeration in the particulars stated,, we shall hear more anent this marvellous discovery. HARD LUCK. Here is & case of real hard luck. A. was walking in Paris the other day, when he. was knocked down and robbed. Amongst the valuables taken were a diamond pin and a gold cigarette case. When the police picked him up, he evinced a desire to go off without saying a. word about the rob- . bery, and did not want to prosecute. The thief, however, was caught, and the assaulted one had to appear — much against his will— and charge the man. While standing up in Court, explaining how he had been assaulted, he was recognised by a detective as a notorious thief and housebreaker, wanted by the police, and was consequently taken good care of at the end of the trial which had originally brought him into Court.