HERE AND THERE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18643, 24 December 1928, Page 8

HERE AND THERE

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. The Bells of a Buried Church. Long ago where the little Polish village of Sromowce now stands therf was a town called Schromowce, which means The Refuge. At that time the river flowed at the foot of the slope where the road now runs, and the great church of the town stood in what is now the river-bed. One year there was a great flood. Houses were washed away and the River Dunajee changed its course. It carved itsplf a new bed where the church stood. The church walls fell, and beams and ruins were carried away. The bells, too, were carried down to the great whirlpool below the Red Rocks. It is said that even now, if you listen, you can still hear the bells ringing under the deep waters of the whirlpool. XXX When Tea Wes a Medicine. Sir James Crichton-Browne, the eminent physician, avers that the effects of tea are “generally beneficient, conducive to contentment, clear thinking, and sobriety. It is the best of the cocktails.” Anyone who has ever been seriously ill knows that hospital nurses are the most assiduous of all tea-drink-ers. Tea, introduced into England about 1650, was drunk for a long time only for medicinal purposes, its use as a habitual beverage being regarded as disgusting and un-Christian. The first monarch to popularise tea was Queen Anne. Millions of pounds were imported annually by the end of l the eighteenth century. X X X Do We Sing High or Sihg Low? The question of “high” and “low” in the human voice is always an interesting one, and there are people who declare that the differences between voices are merely those of tone quality and that all voices are of the same altitude, the apparent difference being an aural illusion. lifany people hear the tenor voice of a man equally high as the soprano voice of a woman, while others assert that what are known as the extreme low notes of the Russian basses are deceptive and are the result merely of a thicker quality of tone. The one thing about this that is definitely known from scientific investigation, however, is that whispered tone, no matter what the singing or spoken tone may be, is all of the same pitch, so that a deep Russian bass whispering gives exactly the same notes as does the highest soprano. X X X “The Alderman’s Nerve.” Before sitting down to a meal, many persons used to tickle the backs of their ears with a feather. There is ail old superstition that such action creates appetite, and a doctor holds that it does. The superstition is based on the existence of what is known as “the alderman’s nerve.” The nerve is situated at the back of the ear and is connected to the nerves running to the stomach. In the old days aldermen who had eaten so much at a banquet that they felt uncomfortable would dip their napkin into the finger bowl and touch the back of their ears with it. This had the effect of stimulating the digestion and cooling the stomach.