WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 25, 18 June 1892, Page 618

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

When we begin learning how to live, it is time to die. Friendship is the highest degree of perfection in society.

Resignation conies in at one door as hope goes out at the other. •

A great many people want the earth, but are willing to compromise on a few building lots.

‘ I am laying up iny treasure in Heaven,’ as the widower remarked after burying his fourth wife.

The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor infeiiors. The first he does not admit of; the last he does not concein himself about.

Irate German, to stranger who has stepped on his toe : * Mien frent, I know mine feet vas meant to be valked on, but dot brivilege belongs to me.’ Ninety-nine women out of a hundred will eat up every cold thing in the house before they will begin to cook for themselves, when there are no men folks around. EXACTLY SO. A pin hole in her gloves will make Iler tramp a dozen blocks To buy a dozen pair or so ; Hut the zephyrs tierce may blow and blow Right through her husband s socks. There are no unions that have not their dark days; but when we have loved each other, we remember it always, and those sweet remembrances that the heart accumulates survive love like twilight. A writer ought always to be concealed, to keep out of sight, and make himself forgotten, in order to produce nothing but the truths he designs to inculcate, and the passions he designs to purify. The Chinese method of subduing a rebellion is quite as etl'ective as it is barbaric. About eight thousand natives who recently engaged in battle with the Imperial troops were either put to the sword or burned alive. If a well could be dug to the depth of forty six miles, the density of the air at the bottom would be as great as that of quicksilver. By the same law a cubic inch of air taken 4,000 miles above the earth’s surface would expand sufficiently to till a sphere 2.000,000,000 miles in diameter-

The only woman living who witnessed the battle of Waterloo is Mme. de Velariola, now ninety-eight years old, but in full possession of all her faculties. On the eventful battle day she and her sisters—then the Mlles. Capran—stood in a neighbouring windmill and witnessed the defeat of the French aimy, and the same evening she helped to care for the wounded on the battle field.

If any one is ill or annoyed in any way in Thibet the evil spirits are responsible, and the only sensible thing is to go and hire a priest to frighten them off. For this purpose the lama reads aloud from his sacred writings, blows a horn made from a human thigh bone, beats a drum manufactured out of two human skul’s rings a bell and tells over a rosary of disc shaped beads cut out of human skulls.

How to Copy Ferns—The most perfect and beautiful copies imaginable of ferns, etc., may 1 e made by thoroughly saturating them in common porter, and then laying them flat between white sheets of paper (without more pressure than the leaves of an ordinary book bear to each other) and let then; dry out.

Milk Ivory.—According to accounts from America, artificial ivory is now being manufactured front milk by coagulating it as one would in making cheese, mixing the solid portion with borax, and subjecting the mass to high pressure. The resulting product, upon which the curious name of ‘ lactitis ’ has been bestowed, is said to be hard, durable, and well suited for the manufacture of combs, billiard-balls, pen holders, pipe-mouthpieces, and so forth.

Artificial Clouds. — Some experiments in connection with the artificial production of clouds by burning cases of resinous matter were lately made in the Jardin d’ Acclimation, Paris, under the auspices of the Societe des Agiiculteurs de France, but were only partially successful on account of the wind carrying the clouds away as soon as formed. The promoters of the idea contend, however, that, in the absence of the exceptionally unfavourable meteorological conditions which attended the experiments, thick and permanent clouds may be formed for protecting too forward crops against late frosts, and covering military operations.

An Eric in Embroidery. —Probably the only epic in embroidery the world contains is treasured in the Hotel de Ville of Bayeux, France. Miss Strickland says of this piece of work : •It is beyond all competition the most wonderful achievement in the gentle craft of needlework that ever was executed by fair and royal hands.’ It was done by Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, anil the ladies of her court. It is a coarse linen cloth, 214 feet long and 20 inches wide, on which is worked in woollen thread of various colours a representation of the invasion and conquest of England by the Normans. It contains the figures of about 625 men, 200 horses, 55 dogs, 40 ships and b rats, beside a quantity of quadrupeds, birds, trees, houses, castles, and churches, all executed in the proper colours, with names and inscriptions over them to elucidate the story. It is a valuable historic document, as it gives a correct and minute portraiture of the Normans, their costumes, manners and customs.

How They Were Made. — Among exclamations in common use ‘ Halloo !’ and ‘ Hurrah I’ have curious oiigins attributed to them. It is said by the author of the ‘Queen’s English ’ that the people of Camwood Forest, Leicestershire, when they desiie to hail a person at a distance call out not * Halloo '.’ but * Halloup I’ This, he imagines, is a survival of the times when one cried to another : ‘ A loup ! a loup !’ or, as we would now say : ‘ Wolf ! wolf!’ ‘ Hurrah !’ again, according to M. Littre, is derived from the Slavonic Huraj, ‘to Paradise,' which signifies that all soldiers who fell fighting valiantly went straight to heaven. • Prithee ’ is obviously a corruption of ‘I pray tl.ee,’while • Marry ' was originally a method of swearing by the Virgin Mary.