Untitled

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XIV, 8 April 1899, Page 448

An old buffer in Picton, writes my private correspondent, attended at the Courthouse while the S.M. was hearing some old age pension applications. He listened for some time verv attentively, then shook his battered old head solemnly and walked out of Court. Down the street he met a friend. ‘Well, Bobson,’ said the friend, how ve you got on? Full allowance, eh?’ ‘Not much,’ growled the ancient one; ‘I aint a-goin 'ter axe for nothink. neither. That there darned beak’s a deal too personal for me. Wants ter know all the ins an’ outs o people’s lives, he does, flow’d he like ter be axe’d questions like that ’bout, how many times he went ter gaol, an' when he were drunk last, an’ sich. He's too personal by half.’ Another would-be claimant was found by a friend lying composedly by the side of the footpath with her head on the kerb. ‘Lor, Mrs Blank!’ said the friend, ‘how came you there?’ ‘Shuire an’ that’s beyant my comprehension intoirely,’ replied the would-be claimant; ‘but I suppose I’d better not be afther axin’ for my pinsion to-day. The S.M. ’ud maybe be afther thinkin’ I was dhrunk.’ I have been perusing an interesting note on a paper by Raseri. He tells us that as the result of the chronicling of 25,474 deaths and 36.515 births, the greatest numbers die from 2 to 7 p.m. I he least numbers die just liefore midnight. Most of us are born in the early hours of the morning, while the afternoon represents the period during which the least number of births occurs. The author gives a number of physiological reasons for the above facts. One of them is to the effect that in the early afternoon the brain and will power is at its height, this factor to a certain extent limiting the chances of birth, such chances being favoured at a time when the influence of the brain is less appreciably exerted, and when the involuntary nervous system is largely left to control the frame.