NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 697, 25 February 1933, Page 22 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

STRONG SILENT MEN. Divorce is kept at a minimum among the Sioux Indians by their “ perfect solution of the mother-in-law problem,” according to Chief Wi-Hi-Ni-Pa. The chief, who is going to Austria to attend the Boy Scout Jamboree there, says: “ A bravo never speaks to his mother-in-law except through his wife. The wife’s mother is not even allowed to look at her son-in-law. That may be one reason why there is no such tiring as divorce among my people.” EATEN BY ELEPHANT. “ Please send me a new savings book—my old one has been taken from my pocket and devoured by an elephant.” This is one among hundreds of queer communications received over a period of 70 years by the British Post Office Savings Bank. Another is the request of a depositor that her account should be opened on the 9th, 10th, or 11th of the month—but not on the Bth, also that the digit* of the number of her account should not total 8. The P. 0.5.8. is one of the biggest banking concerns in the world —it has 15,000 branches and 10,000,000 depositors. Balance held for depositors amounts to £300,000,000. BURNS PILGRIMAGE. All the Scots clubs affiliated to the Burns Federation have been invited to join a great pilgrimage to the shrine of Robert Burns, which is being organised for next July. Burns enthusiasts in U S.A. and Canada will leave New York on July 7 for Scotland, and they will begin a five-day tour of the Burns Counti-y on July 17, finishing at Dumfries on July 21, the anniversary of the death of Burns. Machline, Tarbolton, Ayr, Alloway, Maybole, Kirkoswald, Ellisland, and other places intimately associated with the life of the poet will be visited. It is hoped that civic receptions may be arranged at the various towns, and that lectures will be delivered bearing upon the association of the poet with each place on the itinerary. This will be the first pilgrimage of such a nature to be organised in America.

TAPIR IN A BEDROOM. A tapir from South America was the centre of a comedy at Chester Zoo. When the keeper went his rounds the tapir’s cage door was open, and the animal was missing. A search disclosed the tapir contentedly nosing round a spare bedroom in a workman’s house in the Zoo grounds. The docile tapir, which weighs half a ton, would not budge from the bedroom, notwithstanding coaxing and pushing by the curator, Mr. Mottershead, and several men. The tapir refused to risk his neck climbing down a ladder placed to the bedroom window, and only consented to leave his pleasant quarters when a ladder of plaited material with closely-packed staves was laid on the wooden ladder. Two hours’ work for several men was needed before the rescue of the tapir was accomplished. It is thought that the animal opened the cage door and the door of the outer building by shooting the bolts with his proboscis. MOUSE STOPPED THE TRAFFIC. A mouse and an elephant were the separate causes of considerable dislocation of traffic in the main streets of Southend (England) recently. The mouse merely scampered across the pavement. Some women who saw it screamed, and in their fright forgot the dangers of street traffic and the “ Safety First n lessons they are asked to impress on the young. Two unsuspecting motorists, seeking to cross Victoria Circus, heard the screams and applied their brakes in a hurry, with the result that their cars almost came into collision. A tramcar driver, equally alarmed by the screams, put on his bi-akes so suddenly that most of the passengers were thrown from their seats. Meanwhile the mouse had disappeared down a drain. The second stoppage, later in the day, was due to an elephant, which was being quietly led through the streets to a local place of amusement, when a woman who was crossing the thoroughfare in front of it suddenly fell screaming to the ground. She alleged that she was knocked down by the elephant, but the attendant disputed this view, and claimed that at sight of the animal the woman took fright and fell in a heap in the street. Whether she fell or was pushed, there was a stoppage of street traffic until the woman and the elephant were able to proceed on their respective ways. “DEAD” WOMAN SHOCK. A woman who was mourned as dead for four hours was stated to have suddenly shown signs of life and to have breathed again, although she did not regain consciousness for nearly three hours. The woman, Mrs. Hurni, aged 66, of Battersea. London, who had been suffering fr"" bronchial pneumonia, was seen in the morning by her doctor, who told her daughter that her mother had only a few minutes to live, "mo ... to hurry away to another case.” said Miss Hurni to a * reporter, “but he said he would return to sign the death certiii cate.” She continued: —“I sat at mother’s bedside with other members of the family, and soon afterwards her heart-beats ceased and she stopped breathing. About four hours later we were all in the room waiting for the doctor to return when I saw mother’s lips move, and I was sure I noticed the sound of breathing. Just then the doctor arrived. He w r as astonished at what I told him, but realised that mother was breathing, and gave her an injection, when the breathing grew more pronounced. The doctor stayed all the afternoon, and mother co:i tinned to improve for some time, bul later she weakened and died. There is no doubt she was still alive more than seven hours after we thought she had passed away. Miss Hurni said that the doctor told her it was the most extraordinary case in his experience.

SNAKE IN CUSTODY. There was a boot box in Hornsey polio® station, London, which no one dared open. Even burly policemen gave it a wide birth when they passed it. The reason for this timidity was the yard-long snake which spent a night as the guest of the police, neatly coiled in the box in which, it was found on the top of an L.G.O.C. bus at Wood Green. Nobody claimed the snake the following morning, and the police officials were somewhat perplexed what to do with it. Later in the day. as no claimant had appeared, the snake was handed over to the Zoo authorities to take care of until the owner turned up. KILLED BY EATING HAIR. How a 16-year-old girl inmate of Hortham Mental Colony, near Bristol, died through eating bair was described at an inquest. The post-mortem revealed a large quantity of human hair and horse hair, but nurses were unable to suggest how the girl obtained it. She had previously been in another mental institution in Bristol, and it is thought that she swallowed the hair while there. “There is no evidence of any negligence on the part of the staff,” said the coroner, Sir Seymour Williams. “It is one of these things that happen once in a lifetime, or even less often.” A verdict of death from syncope due to obstructions from hair swallowed was recorded. DIAMOND ROMANCE. Mr. Leopold Hirsch, who arrived in England from Bavaria with only £5 and became one of the principal figures in the South African diamond boom, left estate valued at £333,11** 2/7, with net personality £298 12/ according to his will* published last month. Mr. Hirsch went to England in 1876. He obtained a junior position in a stockbroker’s office, and then, in 1888, branched out on his own as a small broker. He met Mr. Alfred Beit, and was useful to him during the development of the Kimberley mines, and through that was introduced to Sir Julius Wernher. Sir Julius needed a broker to carry out the vast operations of Wernher, Beit, and Co., in connection with the gold and diamou boom, and Mr. Hirsch was chosen. Mr. Hirsch’s monetary bequests included £IOOO to his secretary, Ernest William Percy Maurice, with a further £250 per annum so long as he acted as trustee. To his valet, Joseph Barson, £IOOO, and one year’s wages to his other servants with five years’ service. Mr. Hirsch died at a Brighton hotel last September, aged 75. BRIDE KILLED BY PLANE. A bride of two weeks was killed ana her officer-husband seriously injured when the airplane in which they were returning from their honeymoon crashed at Lunghua, China, last month. The young woman was Mrs. Christie Mathewson, au American, who was married in Shanghai to Lieutenant Lemuel Mathewson, a U.S. army officer stationed at Tientsin. The couple had -been spending their honeymoon at Hangchow, and were returning to Shanghai in an amphibian belonging to Mr. T. V'. Soong, the Chines© Minister of Finance. Mr. Mathewson. was -piloting the machine. After landing at Lunghua for luncheon, Mr. Mathewson took off badly, and the airplane rose with difficulty to a height of 50 feet. Th© pilot then attempted to turn, but put the nose of the machine down too far, so that it crashed into the water and then ran into a mud bank. It overturned and was wrecked. Spectators extricated the couple. Mr. Mathewson, who sustained a broken leg and arm, was taken to hospital in a serious condition. Mrs. Mathewson was found unconscious, and died within a few minutes of her husband’s removal. GAOL FOR “GOLD MAKER.” Donikowski, the Polish engineer wh® claimed that he could extract gold from common earth by means of a secret radio ray, is to go to gaol for two years. It is nearly two years since he became known in Europe as the modern alchemist. Ho owed his troubles at first to people who had lent him money to enable him to carry out his experiments near Monte Carlo. After his arrest on a charge of accepting money from his backers under false pretences, his machine was installed in a laboratory in Paris, where he was accorded full facilities. Time after time, under the eye of experts appointed by the police, ho tried in vain to produce any convincing results. His machine, he explained after each failure, could only be worked when lie could use material of which he alone possessed the secret. He alleged that attempts were being made by the police experts to steal this secret from him, and on this pretext he refused to continue his experiments. In addition to sending him to prison for two years, his judges fined him, and ordered him to refund to those who advanced him money a sum of £22,33G (at par). He must also pay the costs of tho VETERAN NURSE DIES AT 102. Miss Jessie Lennox, wta> was a personal friend of Dr. Livingstone, the African missionary, and Florence Nightingale, died in an Edinburgh nursing home at the age of 102. The friendship between Mies Lennox and Dr. Livingstone and his wife originated in. 1862, when Miss Lennox, a qualified nurse, travelled with Mrs. Livingstone from Durban to the mouth of the Zambesi, where she witnessed tlx© meeting between Mrs. Livingstone and her husband. To her death she had in her possession Dr. Livingstone’s “Last Journals,” presented _ to her by Miss Nightingale, with the inscription. “Offered to Miss Lennox in memory of her old friend Dr. Livingstone, and with an earnest prayer that we may each of us be enabled to do our duty as he did, each in our own work to which we aro called. (Signed) Florence Nightingale, London, July 1, 1876.” Later she entered the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in London, where she worked for several years. She was one of six nurses chosen by Miss Nightingale to take up duty at Netley Hospital, the first to be appointed by the War Office. For 18 years Miss Lennox was at the Sick Children’s Hospital, Belfast. When th© Scottish War Memorial was opened in Edinburgh Miss Lennox was an honoured guest. The King and Queen and tho Prince of Wales shook hands with her on that occasion.