WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 11, 18 March 1893, Page 248

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

Vanity is the quicksand of reason.

Man is a substance clad in shadows. Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.

Calumny would soon starve and die of itself if nobody took it in and gave it lodging.

Honesty is the best policy, because it is the only policy which insures against loss of character.

One of the easiest ways of rendering a man woithless is to till him with the idea that he is indispensable. Mohammed hearing one of his soldiers say, ‘ I’ll turn m y camel loose and trust him to God,’ said to him, * Tie your camel and then trust him to God.’

There is no more universal characteristic of human nature, says Kussell Lowell, than the instinct of men to apologise to themselves for themselves, and to justify personal failings by generalising them into universal laws.

DO YOUR WORK. No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him ; there is always work And tools to work withal for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil! The busy world shoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set Until occasion tells him what to do : And he who waits to have his task marked out Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. Lowell.

Work Done by Bees.—Bees must, in order to collect a pound of clover honey, deprive 62,000 clover blossoms of their nectar. To do this the 62,000 dowers must be visited by an aggregate of 3,750,000 bees ; or, in other ■words, to collect bis pound of honey, one bee must make 3,750,000 trips from and to the hive. As bees are known to fly for miles in quest of suitable field of operation, it is clear that a single ounce of honey represents millions of miles of travel.

The Need of Sleep.—The crying need of women, says a physician, whose specialty of the nervous diseases brings him in contact with plenty of the nervous type of the sex, is sleep. Over and over I tell my woman patients, says a correspondent of the Family Doctor, ‘sleep all you can, nine, ten hours every night, and, no matter how much at night, sleep surely one hour of daylight.’ Many of them reply, ‘ I don’t have time to sleep during the day.’ ‘ Take time,’ say I, ‘ you’ll get it back, good measure, pressed down, running over.’ Then they can’t sleep in the daytime. That is nonsense. They may not the first few days, but very soon, after persistently making the effort every day, at a certain time, the habit will be formed.

The Foundation of Coutts the Banker. —Mr Coutts was indebted for his success as a banker to its coming accidentally to his ears, very soon after he commenced business, that a certain London bank had refused a noble customer a loan of £lO,OOO. Mr Coutts immediately wrote to the nobleman asking him to favour him with a call, and when he called, offered to lend him thedesired sum. ‘But I can give you no security,’ said the peer. ‘ Your lordship’s note of hand will suffice,’ was the response. The offer was closed with, and the borrower, departing with £5,000, left the rest upon deposit. The story soon got about, and brought great aristocratic customers. Then it reached the King’s ears. His majesty desired to see such a liberal banker, and was so delighted with his conversation that he ordered his account to be transferred to Coutts’ bank. The royal example had plentv of imitators, and the foundation of the great banker’s fortune was laid.

Her Husband’s Pockets.—‘Men are fond of laughing at the little ways and whims of women,’ said our sprightly hostess, ‘ but I wish some man would explain to me why he carries unimportantpapers about with him for months, wearing them out in so doing. - I have often watched my husband carefully change the contents of coat or trouser pockets from one suit of clothes to another. Soiled, worn envelopes, and folded papers are tenderly transferred, and for a long time I was impressed with the importance of the operation and drew an instinctive breath of relief when it was safely over. One day my curiosity got the better of me, and I begged for a sight of those mysterious documents guarded with such care. To please me my husband examined them. He found several unreceipted bills, some that had been paid and receipts filled, a note from a friend dated three months back, regretting that he didn’t find him in his office when he called ; one or two business cards of firms he had no recollection of knowing, several advertisement circulars, a playbill of last season’s performance, preserved for some forgotten temporary reason, and perhaps three really important papers among the whole lot. And I honestly believe, if I had not prompted the investigation, he would be treasuring those worthless bits of paper to this day, under the impression that they were of value.

Infantile Mortality in the Eighteenth Century. —London in the eighteenth century was regarded as a devouring monster, which drew to its den the surplus country population, and destroyed them. It appears, however, that Edinburgh was even worse, so far as the saciifice of infant life was concerned ; and if we can trust the registers, Norwich had as large an excess of burials over christenings as the capital itself. At all events, there can be little doubt that London, for several generations after the plague and the fire, was a very unwholesome city. Taking the deaths from the bills of mortality (which were, on the whole, trustworthy until the beginning of the present century), I find that they were, in the thirteen years from 1653 to 1665, and inclusive of the Great Plague, 259.305, an annual average of 19,946. In the next thirteen years—l 666 to 1678, in which there was only a little plague at the start—the deaths were 233 873, an annual average of 17,990. From 1679 to 1691 they were 287,080, an annual average of 22,237. And, to take a somewhat unfavourable section of the eighteenth century—the thirteen years from 1718 to 1730—the deaths were 357 246, an annual average of 27,326 By that time the population had increased by about one-third from, say, the third quarter of the seventeenth century. An incredible p oportion of all the deaths was of infants under two years, and the health of men and women was destroyed by drink ami evil living — From ‘ London After the Great Fire,’ by C. Creighton, in Blackwood's Magazine.