Brief Mention.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVIII, Issue 3248, 2 July 1895, Page 3

Brief Mention.

The must valuable pearls are perfectly round. No one oan breathe at a greater height than seven miles from the earth. Only the untried man wholly trusts himself. Very few men can moke money and friends at the same time. The most dangerous hole in a man’s pocket is the one at the top. No man is as good at home as his picture looks in his neighbor’s album. The man with a grievance is, more often than not, a grievance to his friends. The first speech from tho throne of England to Parliament was delivered by Henry I in 1107. The Greek Church employs two rings, one of gold, the other of silver, in its marriage ceremony. A bargain is a ludicrous transaction, in which each party thinks he cheated the other largely. Scandal is a bit of false money, and he who passes it is frequently as bad as he who originally utters it. Keep your troubles to yourself. When you tell them you are taking up the time a£ the man who is waiting to tell his. An elephant’s sense of smell is so delicate that it oan scent a human being at a distance of 1,000 yards. Amber is the gum which exuded from trees in geologic times, and has become hardened and fossilized by the lapse of ages. It is calculated that from 40,000 to 50,000 slaves are yearly carried away captive from Zanzibar and neighboring ports. When Dublin Cathedral was re opened, after restoration at the expense of a Mr Wise, the archbishop took for bis text, “ Go thou and do like Wise.” It has been calculated that on a steamer like the Campania or Etruria more than 3000 articles of glass and china are broken on every voyage. Twenty-four years ago, electricity, as a mechanical power, was unknown. Now £180,000,000 is invested in various kinds f electrical machinery. In Japan a man can “live like a gentleman ”on a little over £IOO a year. With this can employ two servants, pay the rent of a house, and have plenty of food. The supply of coal in Australia is considered practioally inexhaustible. Tbe quantity raised from the mines in the year i 893 was no less than 4,073,929 tons. The only clothing materials usad in Madagascar are silk and rofla cloth. The latter is spun from a fibre taken from a native plant, and is seldom exported. The letters in the various alphabets of the world vary from 12 to 202 in number. The Sandwich Islanders’ alphabet has the laßt-named number, the Tartarian the first. When a fast train from London Bridge was approaching Sydenham station the other day, a man deliberately placed his neck on the line and was decapitated by the engine. As many as 1500 packages of ent flowers are being shipped at Calais daily from the South of France for markets in London and the North of England. They consist chiefly of violets. Assuming that the 20,000,000 women of England shed tears twice a year, an Englieb statistician has figured that the products of the combined weeps would about equal the displacement of a 180 ton yacht. Fifteen thousand marriage licenses were made out last year in Chioago. If the population of that town is really 2,000,000, this shows that a Chicagoan has a chance to get married once in sixty-six years. Hard putty may be easily softened by passing a red-hot flat piece of iron over it, so that it can then bo removed with the fingers or the edge of a knife without any difficulty. There are 400 women employed in the Government salt mines in the PuDjaub. Their work consists in carrying head loads, moving trucks, and other labor, supplementary to the actual cutting or mining, which is done by men. Oscar Wilde is now being educated in the importance of being punctual. He is doing his six hours a day on the treadmill, and has to lift his feet to the time or know the reason why. Such circumstances eught to be favorable for the manufacturing of paradoxes. According to a statistician, taking the average of a good number of cases, the man of fifty years of age has spent 6000 days of that time in sleep, he has worked for 6500 days, 800 days have been spent walking about, he was amusing himself for 4000 days (of course this includes Sundays and holidays), eating and drinking took 1500 days, while he was ill for 50 days. Seven or eight of them were talking in the courthouse the other day about the best position in which to sleep. “ I lie on my back,” said one, “ I lie on my face,” said aaother, “ I lie on my left side,” said a third, and so on until it reaohed an old fellow writing at a desk. “ It doesn’t matter to me how I lie,” be said without stopping his work, “ I’m a lawyer.” A Jowish farmer in Russia bargained with some robbers to sell his wife to them, tho intention of the purchasers being to draw out her veins, from a superstitious belief that they would render thieves invisible. Luckily for the intended victim her little daughter overheard the bargaining, and told her of it. The husband and would be murderers were arrested. “ j C are not to ask if there be dregs or tatters of human life such as can esoape from the description and boundary of mortals,” observes Mr Gladstone. “ I submit that duty is a power which rises with us in the morning and goes to rest with us at night. It is co extensive with the action of our intelligence ; it is the shadow which cleaves to us, go where you will, and which only leavcß us with the light of life.”