In The Smoke Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XXI, 13 November 1897, Page 650

In The Smoke Room

A race-boat made of hardened and polished cement has been invented by an Italian named Ga'oellini. Steel bars one-third of an inch in diameter form the frame, and on this is a thin wire netting. The netting- is then lightly covered with some cement. A letter bearing the address, ‘Herr Andree, North Pole,’ has been found at the General Post Office, Berlin. It was written in all seriousness, and the authorities have returned it to the writer with the superscription ‘Unknown.’ Colonel Landman relates that in the early part of the present century, when at Plymouth, then the scene of much excitement, he noticed one of the many ingenious ways devised by drunken sailors to get rid of their pay and prize-money. A foremast man. who had just received £ 700 and twenty-four hours’ leave of absence, hired three carriages-and-four—one for his hat. another for his stick, and a third for himself —and in this fashion rode about the streets, from public-house to public-house, until morning. A champion has arisen for those who lose their tempers and use ‘swear words.’ In his bock on the "Therapeutical Aspects of Talking,’ Dr. Campbell says that outbursts of passion and irritability relieve the nerves and promote health, and that swearing may be justified from a physiological point of view. It may be true (remarks the ‘County Gentleman') that a healthy man feels relieved after a good swear, just as women are all the better for a good cry. But, unfortunately. it is invalids who are most irritable, particularly those who are instructed to keep quiet. Swearing is not even a remedy for such a common ailment as toothache, and sufferers from neuralgia derive no benefit from smashing crockery. A few months ago a doctor wrote some articles on ’Nagging Women.’ He related his experiences as a physician, and declared that a large share of human misery was clearly the result of woman’s pestilent and persistent’nagging’of those about them. But what about ’nagging’ men? There are men whose nightly return to their homes always means needless misery to their households. They find fault with their dinners, with the household bills, with the children, and with everything else. They make sarcastic remarks that burn and scarify the sensitive souls of their wives. They carry home the worries of business They ‘take it out’ of their families for everything that has gone wrong in the day’s work, and some are even cowards enough to revenge upon the innocent and helpless those wrongs and affronts which they have not had courage enough to resist and resent upon the offender. There are probably as many ‘nagging’ men as ‘nagging’ women in the world, and there is immeasurably less excuse for them. For men have the relief of work and out-of-door life for irritable nerves, and that is denied to most women. Despite his worries. Abdul Hamid's hair, it is said, never grows white. To prevent that it is dyed, and the dyeing is repeated as often as needful. for. according to the Turkish Court etiquette, the Sultan’s hair must always be black. This is said to be a good way to clean a pipe. Take two or three heads of fusees and place them in the bowl of the pipe. Have a cork which will just fit the bowl. Light the fusees and press the cork firmly but gently into the bowl. The nicotine is forced through the stem by the pressure of the escaping smoke, and the pipe will be as sweet and clean as a new one. The man who conceived the notion of placing metal plates on the soles of boots is reported to have made £ 400.000: while the idea of attaching a piwe of indiarubber to the end of a pencil brought the inventor tli£ respectable sum of £20.000. Howe, the originator of the sewing machine, derived from it an income of £lOO,OOO a year; while Fox, the inventor of paragon frames for umbrellas, made a heap of money.