Miscellaneous.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 365, 2 February 1909, Page 3

Miscellaneous.

i A tragic story comes from * | Harbin oi the suicide of a young Chinese actress. Si Tsay, although only sixteen years of age, was the ‘•star” in a large company which was on tour in the Russian frontier towns. She. had scored great triumphs wheiever she appeared, when suddenly the Emperor’s death interrupted her career. The mourning decree issued throughout the empire forbade any theatrical performance during the next three years, but the prospect of giving up her art for that period was so unbearable to Ti Tsay that she resolved to die, She swallowed a phial of opium, but a, doctor having been summoned, she was rescued from • death. She then succeeded in seeming a revolver, and during’ the night shot herself.

! En glish is spoken by more people i than any other language in the < world ; more than 130,000,000 | people, or nearly thirty per cent. I or all the earth’s inhabitants, i speak it, while French, is spoken i by only about twelve per cent., or a little more than 52,000,000. Russian and German are both spoken by a larger number of people than French; 85,000,000 people speak Russian, and 84,000000 speak German. Furthermore, German and English are the only languages vhich show a proportionate percentage of increase in the number of people speaking them, as compared with the number speaking them a hundred years a,go, and while the percentage of increase in German is only one-tenth of one per cent., that of English is sixteen and onehalf per cent.

He strolled into the ■ AgentGeneral’s office in London the other day and asked< to see the man in charge of immigration. |He was shown in. Just an ordinary labouring man of fifty or so. He said he wanted to emigrate to New South Wales with a part of his family. How many had he ? Well, he had a few; perhaps they j would write their names down as he called them off Alma, Violet, Annie, Helena, Lily, Jessie, Evelyn, May, Vere, Charlie, Dolly, Gladys, Arthur, Norman. They ranged [from the cradle into'the middle | twenties. “ Part of your family you said ? ” queried the embarras- > , sod "emigration officer. “Yes-,” replied the father of twenty. “ I have half-a-dozen sons older than these over in Canada. They don’t think much of Canada, and if you could settle the rest of us down in your country, and we like it, the boys would probably come outtoo.” There were (writes the London correspondent of the ‘‘Sydney Telegraph ”)one or two" / little difficulties in the way—the old man w’as slightly over, the age, and some of. the chilclrer ’ below the age .particularly-'desiret by the departfnent—-but the office, wisely , threw out Vs/arms and, grabbed the, lot. They.couhfeV' miss that sort. • J W ;

1° 1860 (said Surgeon-General/.,'. Sir Albert Keogh, speaking at the •/ Royal Sanitary Institute, London, recently) more than a full half T company from each regiment 'was missing from parade from sickness,, -S while in 1907 only half that V number was absent. Each man A away in hospital meant an expense I to the State of about £l4 a year A in pay alone, so that the present/W state _of health in the army represented a saving of £37,674. " L Switzerland’s richest and most eccentric man, Dr. Gabrini, lias passed away at the age of 95. He left a fortune of over £1,000,000, most of which goes to charities/ The doctor, a bent, thin little man, never married, and lived in the beautiful chateau of Ciani, with ~ * only two servants. He, however, employed a large number of gardeners to look after his magnificent park. The millionaire wore the shabbiest of clothes, and one of his favourite amusements was to conduct tourists over his park in the role of gardener, and to receive their tips. Gabrini would walk always alone to a little cafe, and drink his cup of coffee. He did not smoke, drink intoxicants, or 1 gamble, and used to boast that he , lived on four shillings a day.