AROUND THE WORLD.

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 325, 17 January 1907, Page 6

AROUND THE WORLD.

A master tailor named Wunderlich, while crossing a street in Gottingen, Germany, at night with a party of friends, sneezed five times in succession, so loualy that several people were disturbed in their sleep. A policeman, thinking the tailor had sneezed on purpose, fined him three shillings on the spot, but he declined to pay, and had to go to the police station. The case was decided in favor of defendant, the magistrate considering that he did not sneeze on purpose, but because he could not help it. The trouble of having to dismount from vehicles to shut gates is likely to be a thing of the past ere long. A gate which is operated by centrifugal method, and by altering the centre of gravity, is the Jatest thing in automatic gates. A relase spring 15in long rises in the roadway to a height of Tin or Sin, and is so contracted that it will not until the wheel of the vehicle has pressed it down close to the surface. Then the gate swings open, and, after driving through, the vehicle passes over another spring which closes the gate again. The kicking of the spring by a horse or other animal will fail to open the gate. The contrivance, which is a most ingenious and simple one, is to be introduced to New Zealand in due course. “ One of the bravest men I have ever met, was Captain D’Oyley’s estimate of Rev. Charles Christopher Godden, the Anglican missionary who was recently murdered in the New Hebrides by a recently returned Kanaka. Captain JTOyley (of H.M.S. Pegasus) made this observation at a meeting held at the Chapter House recently to arrange for a memorial to Mr Godden, and added “I remember on one occasion being on the point of landing an armed force to arrest a chief for an offence, when Mr Godden approached and said; ‘ You must not do that, captain. Wait a little while, and I will bring him to you myself.’ And up into the hills among the savages he went, concluded the speaker, amid a sympathetic outburst of applause, “ and brought back the offender, whom he handed over to me. The little action had the effect of minimising an unpleasant incident.”

Seventy babies in one bouse should be sufficient to satisfy the average paterfamilias. There was one house in Christchurch on Wednesday containing seventy infants of all degrees, dark and fair, thick and thin. They belonged to various sets of parents, and were left in the creche at the Exhibition while the others did the round of the fair. According to a report in the Lyttelton Times, the babies resembled a flock of poultry, in a way. When one cried, the others constituted themselves a chorus, and made a pretty uproar. The attendants, however found a remedy, When one of the children began to exercise its lungs, it was removed to a side-room, and the others, deprived of the leader of the orchestra, soon relapsed into silence. The rise to fame of ? the American novelist Jack London was sensational. Tiring of life on an oyster boat, he sat late one night puzzling over his future career, when his eye caught an advertisement of a prize of several hundred

.pounds offered by a paper for a short ■ story. He began to write at 11 o’clock, ■ and. at four in the morning he had . finished the story of an episode which had occurred to him at sea, and with —this he won the prize. More than that, ■ his victory opened up a new career for him; it dragged his talent from under the bushel where it had hidden so long. v Mr London is about to pay a visit to Australia, and possibly to” New Zealand. . Not only this, but he has had a boat built in which he is to make the voyage. This will mean a certain spice of adven- ■ ture, and no doubt at the end of the voy a § e ) if all goes well, a book. Being a good deal of a socialist, Mr London is interested in the way they manage affairs : in Australia and New Zealand.