INTERESTING ITEMS.

Western Star, 31 March 1911, Page 4

INTERESTING ITEMS.

Sundays and fixed holidays excepted, it is estimated that £20,000 worth of fish is daily dragged out of the sea by British fishermen. A pair of magpies have built their nest in an elm tree close to the Three Magpies Inn, near Fairford, Glos. The proprietor of the inn is named Sparrow. A St. Louis man is seeking a divorce because his wife hasn’t spoken to him for five years. Many a man, on the other hand, would give his it i- i

A St. Louis man is seeking a divorce because his wife hasn’t spoken to him for five years. Many a man, on the other hand, would give his all to have a wife of that sort.

Mrs. Everett Parker, of Richmond, Indiana, who was married at thirteen, is now, at the age of twentyeight, a grandmother, her daughter having been married when fourteen years old. Mrs. Parker’s great-great-gramiraother, aged ninety, is still alivn.

For twenty-nine days a Kent artist named Charles Spencer, has swallowed nothing except a glass of water. He has undertaken this fast because he is slightly delicate, and inclined to suffer from liver trouble. His weight has fallen from 9st. 31b. to 6st. llftb.

Mr. William Byford, whose death has just taken place at Long Melford, SuSolk, remembered seeing a man lead his wife to Clare Market with a halter round her waist and sell her for half a crown, and also remembered seeing drunkards put in a cage at Cavendish Green.

Spiritualists seem to be getting a good innings just at present. At a health restaurant lately opened in London tho head chef belongs to those peculiar people, and it is suggested that everything he cooks will be medium done ! Per contra a Highgate woman who applied to the magistrate to assist her In finding her missing husband the other day explained that the man had “got mixed up with the Spiritualists, and been spirited away to New York.”

The largest barometer in tho world was recently set up in the Italian town of Faenza, the birthplace of Torricelli, ’who discovered the barometer and the “vacuum” which perpetuates his name. The liquid used is purified oil rendered free from,air, and this gives a column over eleven metres in height. Owsng to tho very small amount of evaporation nn oil barometer is much more accurate than one filled with any other liquid except mercury, and the long column makes it very sensitive.

An! arrangement has just been made whereby the Federal Court of Alaska will be set afloat next summer. It will cruise along 2,000 miles of the Alaskan coast in a revenue cutter, stopping to administer justice where the occasion demands, trying and sentencing prisoners and stowing them in the hold until thej end of the cruise. The journey will extend from Seward westward to Unalaska, and thence up the shore of Bering Sea to the mouth of the Yukon. The coast-line is dotted with salmon canneries, inhabited only in summer,, and acts of lawlessness are frequent.

Apropos the rubber boom, an amazing instance of good luck has befallen a man who was asked a few years ago for a loan of £SOO. “I have lost money heavily,” the borrower remarked at the time, “but I will give you the title deeds of a rubber estate—although I do not suppose they arc worth much.” The lender has just disposed of the rubber estate to a company, and has made a profit of £320,000.

Greek poets and prose-writers alike were conscious of certain subtleties of tone and rhythm as we are not conscious of them. Song and dance followed as if by nature from the very mood of the poetry, and the audience and the spectator thrilled to delicacies of sound and sight where an Englishman would hear and see nothing. To this sensitiveness to form is due what wo call the “classic” quality of Greek art, its outward grace, its harmoniousness ; but the singular thing is that it does not fail to be embued, in the nobler authors, with an equal magnificence of spirit and of thought.—“ Daily News.”

Reviews, Mr. (Murray, tho publisher considers, have a decreasing influence on the sale of books. In the old days—say, thirty or forty years ago —a review in the “Times,” he remarked the other day, would sell an edition of a book ; but in those days they selected special books for review, and the reviews were extremely well done. It is probable that a very strong adverse review would now do more to sell a book than any amount of praise. “The fact is,’ said Mr. Murray, “there are too many reviews appearing. People get tired of them, and they either don’t read them, or, if they read many of them, they sometimes consider that they have learned enough about the book in question, and do not trouble to read it.—‘'‘Great Thoughts.”