CURRENT TOPICS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6593, 19 September 1899, Page 3

CURRENT TOPICS.

That virulent opponent of „, a bogjjs, ...Dxeyfus, . M.. ... Quesnay, .. do, dossier. Beaurepaire,. was apparently

not brought to his senses by the famous " Karl " hoax. It will be remembered that a few months ago he advertised for proofs of the guilt of Dreyfus, and was successful beyond his wildest dreams. A joker sent him a firstxilass story about a journey to Switzerland in yellow boots, "specially constructed to contain photographs," and in company with the indispen- ' sable "veiled lady." M. de Beaurepaire oven sent money to the joker in exchange for liis "secrets," and only discovered the hotix when the money was returned. The exPresident of the Court of Cassation did not learn wisdom, however, but continued to receive lies and fabrications and to swallow them all. lie compiled a wonderful " dossier," which he proposed to produce at the Rennes trial, and even asserted his readiness to go into the witness-box and swear to the truth of these allegations. He carefully arranged and numbered his thirty-one witnesses, and finally committed their statements to print, and now the thirty-one jokers have "let the cat out of the bag," and are enjoying the fun. But it is not all fun, for the incident shows how utterly untrustworthy much of the accepted, evidence against Dreyfus must be. M. Eugene Vasseur, of Tours, was one of M. de Beaurepaire's correspondents. He wrote a mysterious epistle to M. de Beaurepaire stating that he had " confidential and grave information to^ impart to him respecting the traitor." To avoid arousing suspicion, Dreyfus's name was not mentioned. He made a great show of secrecy, "so as to put the police off the scent," and signed his letter "Etienne Pasuet.''^ The bait was swallowed, and Pisuet became No. 22 in the "dossier." The ex-judge's. reply was couched in mysterious language, and was unsigned. "M.JPasuet" thereupon forwarded, in grave and equally mysterious words, a cock-and-bull story, in which it was stated that Dreyfus, when residing at Tours, was in tin: at i> with a Bavarian Jewess living there, who. spent large sums of money. The truth is, as M. Vasseur has since stated, that Dreyfus never stayed at Tours. Another of these "witnesses" whose statement figured in M. de Beaurepaire's " dossier " as " deposition of witness No. 25," signed himself " Betzbeze Pegas," a pithy provencal phrase which means something like " go and look, idiot." If M. de Beaurepaire had taken that advice and had investigated some of the silly stories which lie was so ready to believe, he might have saved himself from the humiliation and ridicule which have fallen to his lot. It is a striking tribute to the reliability of French justice that a man who has held a prominent position among the magistrates of Prance should be so easily gulled. Most people are familiar more with the phenomena of about t thought transference in some telepathy, form or other, and many stories are told of the faculty of divination. An Australian writer who has collected many instances of genuine thought reading, recently published some of them. The story of Robert Browning's experience with a famous Italian "seer" is not so well known as it deserves to be. The seer asked Browning for a trinket of some historic value. The poet replied that he had hone, but from under his coat-sleeve there glistened some old. sleeve-studs. Gazing at these, the Italian remarked, almost immediately : " Here is something which cries out '.murder;' " and he proceeded to gi?e details of a crime with which the studs were I .associated.. Browning stated that the

"seer's" story was perfectly time, as the studs had been taken long before irom the dead body of a murdered uncle. There are j at least thres probabilities in this case. The "seer" may have made a marvellous guess, or he may have known something of the history of the trinket, or what is more likely, the strong brain of the poet, full of the grim history of the studs, was read off like an open book by that mysterious faculty of which so little is actually known. Mark Twain also relates a striking experience. He tolls how he suddenly became possessed with the idea of touring the world as a lecturer under the guidance of " the much-travelled Mr Smythe," at the precise moment when the latter was thinking over the same project. They wrote letters to one another to the same effect, with a result that is now well known. Of course, this may have been only a coincidence. But the theory of telepathy or "brain waves "is fairly comprehensible, although, perhaps, it cannot be demonstrated with mathematical Nothing in the universe is lost, srf scientists tell us, and there seems to be no reason why this doctrine should not be applied to the movements, undulations, or whatever .they may be, of thought. It may not be very long before philosophy will show us that what now seem 3 strange and mysterious is quite natural. "The Lady's Realm" engagements, lately propounded for discussion one of the general subjects which women love to dwell on. A large number of ladies in different stations in life, and of various habits of thought, sent in their views on " the, desirability of long or short engagements." Of these, Miss Ella Dixon approached the subject in. a philosophical and scientific frame of mind, and traced the historical development of engagements. Long engagements between grown-up young people were, she observed, a modern arrangement. The longest engagemants are those of little Australian blacks, who are engaged from' the cradle, if they have one, and the same practice of betrothing children of tender years was once common in Europe. The Maid of Norway was about three years old when she was betrothed to the first Prince of Wales, and James V., of Scotland, at an early age had a lucky escape from being engaged to the notorious Queen Mary. ' Miss Dixon, however, does' not count these engagements, for they were ended as scon as the pair were marriageable. Ordinary people, she says, on the strength of Elizabethan dramas, were married as soon as 'they were betrothed, but she forgets that a 1 dramatist could not put five years of .engagement on the stage. The "salutary penances" ordained by the Church for the jilt who broke the sacred form of engagement, and the | fact that an engagement was almost as binding as a regular marriage, show that the final ceremony did not always follow close on -betrothal. Miss Dixon thinks the brief engagements of France a prelude to the "most strikingly successful " of western marriages,- but French novels, which are as good evidenca as Elizabethan dramas, do not altogether confirm this, opinion. The patient German indulges in long engagements, but they are denounced by Lady Arabella Romilly. She says the girl "has a perpetual feeling of being in disgrace with her family " ; she is only allowed to write to her young man ones a week, and she is "filled with wild apprehension as to his behaviour and with unsatisfying reveries." This makes her hard to live with, and her family suffers, \tnd the pair do not even get the advantage of gaining an intimate acquaintance with each other's character. On the whole, she advises all young lovers to marry in haste, while Miss Lang thinks j that a reasonably lengthy engagement gives j a girl time to learn housekeeping and other useful accomplishments. The advice of the "Daily News" is for a man to defer proposing till he can support a Wife and family, but it does not think its advice will be taken, because "young men will propose, and young women will accept them" before the former have acquired the necessary qualification The advent of steam as a sailors' motive power at sea has had supek- a marked effect, on the superstitions. stitions of sailors. The legend about the ship that was planned on a Friday, finished on a Friday, named on a Friday, commanded by Captain Friday, sent to sea, on a Friday, and that •foundered on a Friday with all hands, gains little credence now-a-days. ' It is true that there are still to be found in British sailing ships masters who would use a good deal of artifice to avoid sailing on the unlucky day, and that among foreign sailors Friday is still held in superstitious awe. But, as Mr F. T. Bullen points out in an interesting article in the " Spectator," the hurry and stress of work on a steamboat leaves little scope for indulgence in such fancies. Among the superstitions that survive is that connected with Jonah. Though the suspected one is not likely to meet with the same fate as that of the recalcitrant prophet; he is generally in an evil case as far as the sailors are concerned. There is a story that when Te Kooti and a number of his fellow Maori prisoners seized the schooner Rifleman and escaped from the Chatham Islands in 1868, they put this superstition to a practical test. After battling for two days against a head wind and heavy seas, Te Kooti communed with the spirits, and ascertained that there was a "Hona" (Jonah) on board. An unfortunate old man, supposed to have been an uncle of the chief, was dragged on deck, tied hand and foot, and cast into the sea. Shortly after the atrocjjous act was committed, strangely enough, the s^orm abated, to the satisfaction of the Maoris and the great glory of the prophet. Although it is no longer thought proper to box a youngster's ears for whistling, to prevent his merry note from raising a storjn, whistling for wind is still practised. Mr Bullen tells us that not many sailors now object to the presence of a clergyman on board a boat, and probably their ; ,. uneasiness, originally. : aj;pije .from the unwonted restraint}- to which they were subjected in the matter of language. There is still a belief that when 'sharks follow a ship in which a passenger is ailing, it is with horrible anticipation, and the idea is firmly fixed in the minds of many " old salts" that a death, whether of man or animal, must be followed by a gale of wind. i