WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 45, 8 November 1890, Page 11

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

A Rolling stone gathers strength. The optimist is the man who never felt fate's boot. A weak slip of a girl can shake the heart ont of a powerful man. It is not so much what a man has l»een as what he is and is striving to be that counts. If an ordinary man was muwled like a flea he could throw a l-ook agent two miles. The wise employe always laughs promptly when the proprietor makes a joke. Most |>eople would succeed in small thing' if they were not troubled with great ambitions. A red-headed woman who loves the truth will swear in the witness-box that her hair is auburn. M hen a man is kind to a woman she forgets he was ever cross, and when a woman is cross to a man he forgets she was ever kind. No matter how generous-hearted a man may be. it never seems to do him any good to sit down and think how rich his next-door neighbour is. M a y° un " man is in love he is tormented by the belief that every man he know s is his aident rival for his ladylove's afieetions. When he realises that this is not the case he is no longer in love. In youth's bright morn he feels ambition's thrill And in the held of human strife engages. Resolved to make a glorious name that w ill Go thundering down the ages. When age has carved its wrinkles on his brow. And he has drank in life more gall than nectar. He's very happy if he gets a vlave As custom house inspector. The difference between the truly modest young woman of the preceding generation ami the conventional yoiutsi woman of to-day is pointed out by an authoress. A study of modern society seems to show that we have suffered a great loss of delicacy; and that in society delicacy is strength. Historv gives a strange reckoning for American boys. Over against one citv - bred boy who reaches like places, ten country bovs go to Congress : tw'elve go on the Bench : ten become Governors of States; ten come to the head of great business enterprises. Not a single city-bred boy has yet been elected President of this Republic. This makes the farm supreme. Too Late.—lt happened recently that a man named Cooper, residing in London, was fined for not sending his children to school. His goods would have been insufficient to meet a warrant of distress, and the alternative —for being too poor to send his children to school! —wasthe gaol. Two constables went to arrest him. ‘ You had l-etter come this way.' said the miserable wife, with eloquent sarcasm ; ami she led them into a room where her husband lay dead. May and December.—Married last month, Mr Thoma' Gowler, an eminent tailor, grocer, and chandler, of Warboys. Hunts, near a hundred years old, to a brisk young widow of rhe same place, about thirty. He was so infirm that it was with great difficulty he got the licence out of his pocket, and he several times dropped the ring before he could get it on the lady's finger. But since his marriage he has so greatly recovered as no longer to need the assistance of his cane.— G-ntlemrn's . 17 —. Fresh-baked Aristocracy.—Some of the numerous armorial bearings on the carriages of New- Yorkers are worth illustrating in the comic papers : no such elaborate, splendid trappings are visible ou the broughams of the exalted nobility of England as may be seen any day on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. Crests, mottoes and coats-of-arms are emblazoned on plates almost as big as a porous plaster on the carriage doors, and there is enough gold am! glitter about it to suggest an amateur circus. An English Nobleman on American Girls.—lt's just like Yankee girls. They all think such a lot of them selves. It’s positively absurd. They might be Duchesses in their own right from the amount of consideration and attention they expect. It’s all the fault of their men, who spoil them by rubbishy flattery I never saw anything like it w hen I was there. Men bow ing and scraping to girls all day long ami making love to them. And the way they fussover them at balls and follow them about, and bend over them and whisper ! I actually saw one man fanning a girl while another held her bouquet ! Fancy Englishmen going in for that sort of rot ! It's deuced hard lines on us, though, for of course we are exj-ected to do the same. They don't seem to be aware that we don't make ourselves slaves to our womenkind. The Strength of the Limpet.—The limj-et is probably the strongest of known animals, excepting the Mediterranean re«u.v r*rr-cawi. a cockle-like creature, which pulls 2,071 times its own weight when out of its shell. Savs Mr Ijtwrence-Hamilton, ‘ I found that the common seashore limpet, which weighed a minute fraction less than half an ounce, required a force exceeding o2lb. to remove it from its grip, or upwards of 1.9(34 times its own dead weight. This seasnail. which, acting ujH-n immersed objects in the water, would, of course, have pulled a much greater weight than that of 621 b. Thus in the ait a limpet pulled upto 321bs-, but sub-equently. in spite of its previous fatigue, when covered by the incoming tide, it then took upwards of 5411*. to remove it. Disappearance of Smallpox — I’nder the 1-eneficent law of Germany making vaccination compulsory and providing for re vaccination at stated peri-*ds of life, 'ma)!|«-x is almost completely disappearing from the German Empire. In 1388 of the 110 deaths 88, or about four-fifths of the w Iv-Ie number, occurred in those parts of the Empire immediatelybordering other countries not well protected by vaccination an-i in which there is constant intercourse l-etween the vaccinated and the unvaccinated side*- of the boundary. More than one-third of all the deaths occurred in the Rus sian province of Posen. Comparing the smallpox death rate of the laree cities of other countries with that of the larger cities of < lermany, it was 136 times as great in the cities of Austria, 30 times a- great in those of Hungary, 16 times a~ great a* those in England, 24 times as great in those of Belgium, ami twice a- great in those of Switzerland as in the German cities.