ITEMS OF GENERAL INTEREST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8278, 20 October 1905, Page 3

ITEMS OF GENERAL INTEREST.

Compiled From Various Sources

' The Union Company's coal hulk Menschikoff, at Lvttelton, has been sold to bo broken up. She was built in 1847 at Baltimore, was purchased by the Russians and armed, and was captured by the British in Balaclava harbour during the Crimean war. She is said to have been a slaver, a privateer, and a trader. Two secret receptacles—a hollow beam and a hollow bulkhead—were found in her, and also, some years ago, a few grape shot. The cabin fittings were of rosewood, veneer, and Spanish mahogany. She came to Lyttelton over twenty years ago from Sydney, and was seized and sold for debt, since which time she has been used as a coal hulk.

On the 22nd August, as M. de Meritens, a magistrate of Marseilles, was on the way to his office, a man suddenly threw himself upon him and stabbed him with a knife in the abdomen. By an extraordinary effort, M. do Meritens succeeded in reaching a neighbouring chemist's shop. On arriving there he immediately lost consciousness. After several attempts to revive him, he was carried to the hospital, where he lies in a critical position. Meanwhile, the police arrested the assailant, a man named Granicr, who declared that his object was to kill the magistrate, who had been the cause, some time ago, of his being sent to prison for six rro.iths

Drastic police action is, on the initiative of the Kaiser, being taken against the gambling clubs of the German capital, owing to the numerous scandals of recent years. The 1900 Club is especially the object of suspicion. It cost £50,000 to build, another £20,000 was spent in equipment, and the club's commission on the stakes changing hands amounts to £5000 per annum. As this commission is small, the sum reveals that the money changing hands in the club in a year must be reckoned at hundreds of thousands of pounds. Some people (wires a contemporary) have very little idea of the dangers of life. Just a little while ago, in Sydney, a girl was cleaning gloves with benzine, beside a naked light. An explosion took place and set her on fire, and nearly burnt her to death. She was not aware that benzine was inflammable! A young woman in London was drying her washed dog before the fire recently, and her celluloid comb took fire and burnt the hair oft her head. She sued the drapers who sold her the comb, because she was told it was bone. She obtained a verdict against the draper (W. Roper, Kilburn) for £50, and £4 for "special damages." Miss Philippa Garrett Fawcett, who was " above the senior wrangler " in the Cambridge mathematical tripos in 1890, has been appointed by the London County Council as principal assistant in the Education Department, at a salary of £400 a year, rising to £600. There were 456 candidates. Miss Fawcett's teaching experience, combined with her great mathematical abilities, should make her a very valuable member of the stdt of the London Education Department, Her mother, Mrs Henry Fawcett, was Miss Millicent Garrett, of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, sister of Mrs Garrett Anderson, and a member of, a brilliantly brainy family.

The belief of Sir James Crichton-Browne that brain-workers achieve their best wcrk in later middle age is easily confirmed by glancing at the careers of a few of the grand old men who are still with us, many of whom are as busy as in their younger clays. Lord Roberts, as 73, is still worth £5000 a year to the nation as one of our Imperial defenders; Lord Kelvin, at 81, may startle us with further generalisations on the mysteries of science; Sir William Hiiggins, at the same age, still explores" interstellar spaces; while the activity of the octo-genarian Duke of Rutland and Lord Wemyss is as effective as ever in preserving the privileges of our old nobility. An interesting illustration of longevity turned up in Jersey City court-room recency, in the person of one Charles Dimmers, who was defending a suit to enforce payment for lumber, and said he was 96 years old, and that he had been working on canal boats for 77 years. When some expressed disbelief, Dimmers smiled, and said : " I am still young. Why, I have a sister in Germany who" is 135 years old. My father died at the age of 136. I expect to live a great many years yet." Dimmers has made a hundred thousand dollars in the canal boat business. He is the owner and captain of a boat which carries coal between Perth Amboy and New York, and it is said owns a row of tenement houses in Buffalo, from which ci'y he went to New York two years ago. Dimmers, it is said, has been married four times, outliving all his wives. In spite of his age he takes his turn at the wheel, and can throw a line from his canal boat as accurately as boatmen a Jhird of his age. He served in the FrancoPrussian war. Although of small stature, he is powerful. Canal boatmen, who have known him for thirty years, declare he is a wonderful specimen of manhood.