In The Smoke Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XXIV, 12 June 1897, Page 763

In The Smoke Room

A RUSSIAN who the other week won over a million francs at the Monte Carlo tables is said to be now almost penniless. Baccarat at certain clubs at Nice relieved him of the greater part of his winnings ; the remainder he lost at Monte Carlo. He He was even reduced to pawning his jewellery. In connection with nearly all the police stations of the Metropolis and the large towns of the provinces there are 1 professional bail-givers,’ who make a very fair sum by becoming bail for persons who have been locked up for drunkenness and other minor offences. Suppose that a man who has valuables about him, or can give a card with a good address, is locked up, and that his friends are too far oft to be communicated with, or that he does not want to let such friends know of his plight, one of the policemen hanging about will, when the incarcerated one becomes decently sober, generally, for a ‘ tip,’ find him a professional bail-giver, who, whilst holding valuables, or good references, as security, will enter into a bond for the appearance of the offender at the police court next day, or when required. These men as a general rule clear a sovereign by each case they take up, but of course they give a bit out of this to the policeman who has introduced them.

The greatest dandy in the world (according to Woman) is Prince Albert of Thurn, Germany. This fastidious young man attires himself in a suit of clothes every day, enough yearly to keep twenty experienced workmen going, and to run up a bill of Z'3,000. Bach suit of wearing apparel is highly perfumed with attar of roses, at an ounce.

For a wager three men recently tested their waterdrinking powers. The winner swallowed twelve quarts, the second nine, and the third seven. All died very soon after their feat was over. A doctor, while condemning cigarette smoking as injurious to the health, especially in the case of young people, says that the free carbon deposited upon the teeth discolours them, but may act as an antiseptic and preservative. Many of the most fashionable hotels in London and other places are the happy hunting ground of a set of men who avail themselves of numerous hotel privileges without paying hotel fees. These men are generally attired in stylish apparel, and contrive to be on speaking and visiting terms with one or more of the hotel guests. Armed with the slightest of pretexts, and oftentimes without any reasonable excuse at all, they will boldly enter the smoking and reading rooms of the establishment and make themselves quite at home. They will use the hotel writing paper for their correspondence, and help themselves freely to anything that is not likely to involve them in expense. They will peruse papers and magazines; arrange appointments for people to meet them in the hotel, lounge on the best chairs, and loaf about the hall and passages as though they lived in the flace ; and all this without spending a sixpence if they can avoid it. Hotel proprietors justly diead them, for while they are responsible for much of the wear and tear done to the place they contribute practically nothing toward the expenses of the establishment. There are notorious losers of umbrellas, whether these latter be carelessly left by them or stolen from them. But this is by no means the case with women, who very seldom indeed lose an umbrella. An inspector of detective police once said to the writer—‘ Amongst professional umbrella thieves —men who will snatch up a ‘ mush,’ as they call it, whenever and wherever they can—it is well-known that going for the umbrella of a woman is too dangerous a game. They do not put valuable umbrellas down and then forget all about them as men do. We seldom have to offer rewards for valuable umbrellas lost by women.’

A most striking article by Mr J. Holt Schooling, on the nation’s expenditure, appears in the April issue of the Windsor Magazine. The writer says :—• Our expenditure is equal to a cost of per hour, or not far short of Z"2oo per minute, for conducting the national business of this country. We are not yet spending quite £2OO per minute, for this means a yearly expenditure of over 105 millions; but year by year the amount gets bigger, and for the year ending the 31st of March, 1897, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach estimates the expenditure at just over too millions. This is the first time that a Chancellor of the Exchequer has touched the 100-mil-lions level in his estimate of the current year’s expenditure. An old clock is now ticking solemnly on my

staircase, and at every swing of its old brass pendulum it records the fact that a paltry £3 4s 6d actually suffices to run this country and to leave a surplus of four millions at the end of the year. This clock is more than 150 years old, and it first ticked time away just as it does now, in the time of George 11., when, according to Mulhall, our national income was about one-tenth of its present amount, and when each swing of its pendulum was worth only 6s 6d, as a record of the country’s income during one second of time. Our income of £3 4s 6d per second is a vast improvement on the 6s 6d of 150 years ago. But all the same, £3 4s 6d per second does seem a trifling income for this country to have. ’ We are glad to see (says a London journal) that the Kennel Clnb has at length been stirred in regard to the odious and idiotic practices indulged in by the baser fanciers of cutting, trimming, and dressing up dogs for the show bench and show ring.

Friends abroad who have not seen the Prince of Wales for a few years (says the Whitehall Review) are shocked at his altered appearance, he seeming to have aged almost twenty years in this time. Those of us in England who see the Prince often have been observing this change coming on in his appearance ever since the death of the Duke of Clarence.

All of us have seen men wearing collars too large, too high, or too tight, without the smallest consideration of their style. Short necked, fat, puffy men look miserable in collars too high for them, but perhaps not quite so absurd as do others with great thin necks disfigured with Adam’s apple, who wear the lowest possible neck dressing. Men to look well in the high-banded fold-over collars must have good necks and perfectly formed chins.

The pipe smoked by the Shah of Persia on State occasions is set with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. It is said to have cost /’Bo 000. Recently published statistics have thrown deep gloom over the French Anti Tobacco League, for they show an enormous and rapidly increasing consumption of the narcotic weed in that country. In 1896 French smokers threw 393,000,000 francs into the Treasury of France by the patronage which they gave the Government’s tobacco shops, and this is 12,000,000 francs more than they spent for that purpose the year before. The President of the League finds in their excessive use of the weed the chief reason why Frenchmen are not increasing in number, and when an interviewer asked him how it was that smoking did not seem to produce the same effect in Germany he took refuge in the more than dubitable assertion that in Germany the people bought good tobacco, while in France they were practically forced to buy the wretched stuff prepared in the Government factories. M. Pasteur once expressed to some of his young student friends a doubt whether life would be possible in the absence of all bacteria, noxious or innocuous. We breath bacteria, drink bacteria, eat bacteria, and our bodies are the happy hunting-ground of countless myriads of them. This being so, it seemed not improbable that their presence was a provision of nature, and as necessary to life as air or water. Pasteur commended the question as an interesting subject of experiment, and a couple of his young friends have been carrying the experiment out. The result of their experiments, so far as they go, is reported to be that animal life is quite independent of the presence of bacteria. A number of guinea pigs were kept carefully shut from the moment of their birth in a sterilised chamber, with sterilised air, and fed with sterilised food. They throve under these conditions, and when killed not a single microbe was found in their blood or tissues Guinea pigs, then, can get along swimmingly without bacteria, but whether men could do so is a matter still doubtful.

Phrenology has been a favourite science of the Minnesota Legislature this year, and bills to appoint a State Commission of Phrenology, a State phrenologist, who is to examine not le-s than 2,000 heads a year, and an assistant State phrenologist, have been introduced. A learned professor of phrenology has been having the free use of the hall of the House of Representatives at night for the purpose of giving instruction in the exterior details of headworks.