WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 17, 23 April 1892, Page 426

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

Man regards woman as an end, but is regarded by her as a means to an end. It is much easier to die for the cause of virtue than to live according to the tenets of virtue. ‘ Did I tell you what my boy said to Hicks ?’ asked Marberry. • Yes. Four times last night and three this morning,’ said Barton, wearily. Nothing exasperates a woman who has been shading her eyes from the gaslight with her hand all the evening so much as to find that after ail she had left her best diamond ring on the washstand. The success of a plant depends not upon its size, as compared with the other plants of the garden, but upon its steady and healthy growth. So the success of a human life does not depend so much upon the rank it takes among others as upon its own continual progress. WEIGHED. AT CHURCH. All richly clad within her cushioned pew She sat. and heard a talc of sorrow told Of want and hunger 'mong the suffering poor. And down her cheek the tears of pity rolled. AT HOME. Within her boudoir rich she sat and thought. ‘ With pleasure would I meet this piteous call, But every cent. I've got to spare must go For a new dress to wear at Hauton’s ball.’ No tie can be so close, no love so strong as to form an excuse for telling a secret which belongs to a third party ; and it is a false sentiment and a mean jealousy that would require it at the hands of a friend or lover, husband or wife. Every one is at liberty to decline to receive such confidence if he please ; but, having received it, he has no light to impart it.

He was on the road, and billed to appear in a small town. When he came upon the stage he was so tipsy that the audience hissed him. Steadying himself against the scenery, the actor said : ‘Ladish and shentlemens, when an artist of my shtanding consents to appear at all in such a little one-horse town ash thish, he must either be drnnkish orernzshy. I prefer to be conshidered an inebriate.’ The audience roared and forgave him. The people of Paris have consumed within the year 21,291 horses, 229 donkeys, and 40 mules, the meat weighing, according to the returns, 4,615 tons. At the 180 shopsand stalls where this kind of food is sold, the price has varied from 2d a pound to lOd, the latter being the price of superior horse steaks. But only about one-third of the meat is sold fresh and undisguised ; the rest is used in making sausages, and it should be added that 402 horses were seized and condemned as unfit for food before entering the sausage state.

The salary nf the British Ambassador at Paris (Lord Dufferin) is £lO.OOO ; at Constantinople £B,OOO : at St. Petersburg, £7.800 ; at Rome, £7,000. Sir A. B. Paget at Vienna has £B,OOO ; Sir E. B. Malet at Berlin, £7,500 ; Sir F. C. Ford at Madrid, £5,500; Sir Horace Rumbold at The Hague, £4,000 ; Sir George Petre at Lisbon, £3,750; Sir Henry Drummond Wolff at Bucharest, £3,650 ; Sir E. Monson at Athens, £3,500 ; Sir F. R. Plunket at Stockholm, £3,400 ; Lord Vivian at Brussels, £3,230 ; Mr St. John at Belgrade. £2.050 ; Mr Scott at Berne, £1.450 ; while at Munich Mr Drummond has £1,700 ; and Mr Strachey at Dresden, £950.

In case any of my readers may have heard of the salicin treatment of influenza, I may tell them that salicin is a substance obtained from the bark of the willow tree, and has been much prescribed by physicians in the treatment of rheumatism. Dr. T. J. Maclagan has advocated giving ‘ ten grains (of salicin) three times a day, for many weeks,’ in cases of influenza, the idea on which this treatment is founded being that influenza, being a germ-producing disease, the salicin acts as a germ-killer when it gets into the blood. Of course it may not be at all necessary to give salicin in the above doses for more than a few days. It is said to cure influenza more rapidly than any other form of treatment.

• Last Friday,’ says an up country journal, ‘ we were nominated for mayor by acclamation : this is equivalent to election. We don’t deny that we sought the nomination. We have had our eye on it for a year past. We shall also do our level best to snow our opponent under. We have been moved to this course by a desire to see the town wellgoverned, and because we believe the mayor should be the representative man of the town. We are that man. There's no use in filling and backing and talking about modesty and self conceit and all that. We lead this town. We know more than any ten men in it rolled together. We shall make the best mayor the town has ever had, and we shall see that all the city printing is given to ourselves at legal rates.'

What is the one thing in America that strikesan Englishman as most unlike what he finds at home? According to the Duke of Marlborough it is the American woman. She has a natural quickness for appreciating the characters of the men aronn:! her, and she takes infinitely more trouble, and in some respects greater interest all round than the English woman displays. Maternity does not seem to crush everything else out of them as it does with all classes in England. The bright cheery girl remains the gay caiefullydressed married woman who is always trying to show herself off quietly to the best advantage ; and she understands the art perfectly among all classes of the people. In middle age and even later in life she seems to preserve a perennial interest in everything around her; she does not grow old mentally as so many English women do. The tendency to nagging ami gossip mongering of an ill natured character, moreover, seems rarer in that country. The Duke of Marlborough, in drawing this pnrtiait of the American woman, suggests that the climate has something to do with these diffeiences of disposition ; but then the American man is under the same ‘ skiey influences.' Yet he, we are told, so far as club life is an indication, is pretty much like the same sort of person we should expect to find in England.