WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 31, 30 July 1892, Page 762

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

Nothing is so distressing and ominous in the lives of men as their aimlessness. One of the hardest things to prove to man is that he is a fool and don’t know it. The less a man amounts to the prouder he is of his ancestors being big people. Man is not merely the architect of his own fortune, but he must lay the bricks himself. There are people who pray for showers of blessing who want them to come without any clouds. Ghemist's bell rings violently at 2 a.m. Chemist: • Well!’ Angry voice yells back, ‘ No, you idiot—ill!’ 11 is sometimes hard to tell the difference between the man who is too good to fight back and the man too cowardly. The truest test of civilisation is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops ; no, but the kind of man the country turns out. What health is to the body, cheerfulness is to the mind. Indeed, cheerfulness is not only a good sign of physical health, but a great aid to it. Everything comes and goes. To day in joy, to morrow in sorrow. We advance, we retreat, we struggle : then the eternal and profound silence of death ! —Victor Hugo. a HINT. He was a lover dilator}-. And had delayed to tell love’s story It might have been a year or so : Im patient grown, she said, with sigh ; ■ If I were you, and you were I, I would have married long ago!’

A woman whose great beauty eclipses all others is seen with as many different eyes as there are people who look at her. Pretty women gaze with envy, homely women with spite, old men with regret, young men with transport. The first book in which musical characters are known to have been printed in England is Higden’s ‘ Polychronicon,’ the production of Wynken de Worde, in the year 1495, some eighteen years after the introduction of the art of printing into this country. Passions are strong emotions of the mind occasioned by the view of approaching good or evil. These emotions are planted in man by Providence in order to give him activity and fit him for society. The directing of our passions to improper objects or suffering them to hurry us away with them is the gieat danger in human life. The people of Paris consumed during last year 21,221 horses, 229 donkeys, and 4 mules, the meat weighing, ac cot ding to the returns, 4,615 tons. At the 180 shops and stalls where this kind of meat is sold, the price has varied from 2d to 101 per lb, the latter being the price of superior horse steaks.

Great students have generally extreme sensibility of nerves, consequently much irritability of temper ; they are necessarily more liable to the attacks of disease, and their complaints are also more difficult of cure than those of others less keen to distinguish themselves. Over-study, besides, often defeats its object ; it causes a kind of dulness of brain, and, as Rousseau remarks, ‘returns man to his original stupidity.’ NOTHING WORTH HAVING IS EASY. ‘ There’s always a river to cross, Always an effort to make, If there’s anything good to win, Anv rich prize to take. Yonder’s the fruit we crave ; Yonder the charming scene ; But deep and wide, wit h a troubled tide, Is the river that lies between.’ Some people are born freckled, and others have freckles thrust upon them. The former class might as well accept their freckles as a dispensation of Providence, for nothing can be done for them. The latter can always get rid of their allliction by using a couple of drachms of sal ammoniac with an ounce of < ierman cologne, the solution mixed with a pint of distilled water. Applied two or three times a day it will cure the worst case of acquired freckles on record. Questions of THE Day.—lt is not possible for everyone to be interested and active in all the questions of the day. Some will attract one, and some another ; but it is incumbent on each one to obtain a knowledge of some of them at least, to cultivate an interest in them, and to form some intelligent ami reasonable opinion upon their merits and their methods. While a general acquaintance with public affairs is extremely desirable, both for the sake of the individual and his influence, the special interest that he can take in one or two will be of still greater value. Veneer for Pi anos.—The veneer used for the higher decorative work in cabinet making and piano cases is made from the great burrs or warts that aie seen on old misshapen trees. Falstaff boasted of turning diseases to commodities ; that is what the cabinet-maker does with trees that are knotted with abnormal growths ; and very costly commodities they are. When a sufficiently large burr is found it is cut away and shaved by a wonderfully ingenious and powerful razor into sheets about double the thickness of ordinary cardboard. The ebullition of the sap that has been going on for many years produces that floral like figure which you see in the finest piano cases. The sheets of wood are ot exquisite colour, rich in browns and fascinating in varied tones of smoky looking greys, the figures curiously matching each other as the knife shaves down to the tree itself. At first the veneers are biittle, but softened with water and a slight mixture of glue they become as pliable as leather, and in many respects as strong. The fibre running in every kind of eccentric way gives exceptionally great binding strength, so that when it is amalgamated with other wood the combination is strong as iron. Veneering in the old days, when it was difficult to obtain mahoganies and other expensive timber, was more or less of a disguise ; but to day it is adopted for decorative purposes, and so complete is the modern method that the veneer practically becomes part and parcel of the underlying wood.