Minor Matters.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XIII, 31 March 1900, Page 588

Minor Matters.

Max O'Rell does not think highly of the Boer, or so one would judge from his recipe for making one. Here it is: “Take all that is dirtiest, bravest, most old-fashioned, and most obstinate in a Breton; all that is most suspicious, sly, and mean in a Norman; all that is shrewdest, most hospitable, most Puritan, and most bigoted in a Scot—mix well, stir and serve, and you have a Boer. Many of these qualities are excellent ‘ characteristics, though they are not necessarily those which make a man an agreeable-com-panion or a success in society.

How varied are the experiences of a juryman! How seldom so pleasant as those which fell to the lot of the good men and true who had to decide, at an English County Court, whether the quality of certain whisky, gin, and brandy had been injured bv being put into casks, which, it was alleged, had not been properly seasoned. After well sampling the spirits the jury retired. taking the hotties with them. Ou their return, after a judicious absence, the foreman announced that in their opinion the liquors were all right. How many teetotallers were on the jury is not recorded.

A very thoughtful arrangement has been entered into between the railway and asylum authorities at Wellington, whereby papers and other literature left in railway carriages shall be collected for the benefit of the asylum inmates. A notice will posted in each compartment inviting passengers to hand to the guard any papers or periodicals for which they have no further use, in order that they may be forwarded to the asylum. The guard will, on arrival at the Wellington station, place these in a locked box. which will be cleared every day by an asylum official, and delivered at the institution.

Insurance is occasionally not a profitable investment. Here is a story for the canvassers not to tell: The late Dr. Martineaux insured his life for £ 1000 as far back as the year 1828. It is not often that a life policy remains in force for seventy two vears. The total amount payable under the policy, with bonus additions. is ■44331. Assuming that the premiums paid had been invested regularly at compound interest, the result would have been much better, for the sum would have amounted to nearly £6OOO, taking interest at 3 pet cent.’, and to over £9OOO with interest calculated at 4 per cent.

“The best laid schemes o' miee and men gang aft agley.” A very fine scheme has gone wrong at Chicago. A “Matrimonial School” was started with the idea of making ideal wives and husbands. It has ended in disaster and disgust. After having a course of lessons at the School of Matrimony, and having the ideal husband and ideal wife set before them, painted in beautiful colours, thev realised what awful specimens of "husbands or wives they really had. This led to all sort of awakenings. Instead of idealising each other, the pupils began to analyse each other, and the results were shocking. Three homes were broken up. This is how it came about; Wives, who never before had been known to handle a needle, having visited the school, insisted on making their husbands’ shirts. They made them. Then they pointed out the ideal husband would certainly wear the shirts his wife made for him. The husbands seem to have compared the actual shirts produced with the ideal shirt. At any rate, they refused to wear them. The wives thereupon declared that their husbands evidently loved them no longer. The husbands said they would leave home sooner than wear those shirts, and they did. A baby narrowly escaped being poisoned with match heads the other day in Carterton. through the attentions of a little girl, three years old, who in a playful way placed match heads in the teat of the baby’s bottle. The mother was qnite unaware of what had happened. and did not notice the match heads, until being in the dark with her baby she was struck

,by the phosphorous glow of the matches. She was naturally terriblyalarmed, and Dr. Johnston was summoned. The baby, however, was not seriously affected,and was pronounced ° Ut danger in a short time, the mother having evidently discovered the match heads in the very nick of time.

A soldier at the front, referring to the fact that many of the women army nurses are young and goodlooking. writes:—The nurse attending me wag a distractinglv handsome girl with a pure Greek profile, reddish- ,* n h a ’ r the kind that seems full &° Wen tendrils in the sunlight—and eyes as liquid as a fawn's. The first time she put her finger on my wrist my pulse ran up to at least 175, and she took it for granted that I had a high fever and dosed me accordingly. I tried repeatedly to lure her into conversation, but she wouldn’t be lured. She was strictly business. When I started to pay her compliments she would ask me to put out my tongue, which was an insurmountable obstacle to conversation. I used to lie there with my tongue hanging out trying to put' my whole soul into my eyes, but it was no go. No man can look romantic with half a foot of furry red tongue protruding from his countenance. Another way she had of gagging me was by putting the thermometer in my mouth. The last week 1 proposed to her five times, or, rather. I tried to, but she invariably choked off my declarations by thrusting a thermometer into my mouth. I got so excited one time that I came near swallowing a thermometer worth several dollars. She was a most excellent young woman, and had lots of sound common-sense, as was evidenced by the fact that she gave me no encouragement whatever.

A Scots Guardsman relates the method adopted by two Highlanders to escape capture after Magersfontein: “Two men of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders went but towards the Boer trenches on the morning after Magersfontein. When about 400 yards from the trenches thev came across a wounded officer of theirs (Graham, I think), and were in the act of putting him into a blanket, in lien of a stretcher, when two mounted Boers rode up to them and told them in broken English that they were ‘prisonairs of war. Col. Cronje say so. He want you on the hill.’ ‘We ean’t leave our officer,' they said. ‘He prisonair, too; come along.’ So along they went, leaving the officer lying there. When about 150 yards from the trenches, the Boers galloped to the front, thinking the two Highlanders were coming on. Instead of doing- so. however, they lay down behind a bush when they sa.w the Boers far enough off, and commenced groaning and crying for water. Presently up came another parly of Boers, who knew nothing of the recent affair. ‘Are you wounded?’ they asked. ‘Yes,’ replied the Highlanders. ‘Take a drink of water,’ said one of the Boers, ‘and lie down, so you will not get shot? With this the Boers galloped off. When all was clear the Highlanders rose, and one leaned on the other, groaning, and making enough noise to wake the dead. In this manner they managed to escape to our lines.

A correspondent of a southern contemporary who writes from O'Kain Bay, Canterbury, states that the scarcity of harvest hands this season was a great source of trouble to growers, and that almost every farmer in the district was working with about half the number of men he usually employed. Consequently, says the correspondent, some of the men were rather independent, and one farmer was surprised to receive a demand for “fifteen pence an hour and plum pudding every day” from two swaggers.

A well-known drug traveller who was paying his regular holiday visit to — took the train for a little side trip, and in the hnrry of his departure left a handsome bone-handled umbrella hanging on a hook in the lobby of the hotel. It was a tempting prize, but probably every kleptoman-

iac Mho saw it supposed the owner was seated near at hand. At any rate, it remained undisturbed and was still there when the commercial returned. “By the way,” he remarked after he had exehanged greetings with the clerk, “I’ve managed somehow to lose my new bone-handled umbrella. Have any of you seen such a thing lying around the office?” A quick-witted “buttons” heard the question and, glancing around, saw the missing article hanging within a foot of his head. Supposing it had been there for only a few moments, he promptly grasped the ferrule. “Is this, the one?” he inquired. “Yes,” exclaimed the traveller, delighted, “and I mustsay I’m surprised nobody has nipped it!” “Aw, they couldn’t do that,” replied the boy.' “I’ve been holdin’ on to it for ye ever since ye hung it up.” The drug traveller stopped with his hand half way down his pocket, and a whimsical smile overspread his countenance. “Well,” he said slowly, ‘ I was intending to give you half-a-crown but if vou’ve been bedding that Umbrella for three consecutive days you’re more in need of a tonic. Here is a capsule of quinine and iron.” The gloom which settled down upon. the bovs face might have been hewn with an axe.

Reams of paper have been devoted to the dishonesty of gas meters,. to the unaccountable manner in which a score is run up against an unfortunate householder during the time he and his family have been away for a holiday, or the extrordinary manner in which a reduction* of the number of lights invariably increases the gas bill; but it is seldom that one hears of any protest on the part of the responsible party at the imposition, so when such a case does occur, it should be put on record. The other night the Hawke's Bay “Herald ’ office was thrown into darkness, and an examination by* a gasworks official showed that the meter had broken down. The poor thing’s life had been such a burden by* the load of sin it had been compelled to bear that the only possible result had eventuated, and another meter had to be procured.

When one speaks of .a broken heart one is regarded as. having said something funny, yet there have been broken hearts among birds, those known as love birds having furnished several eases, and there have been a few among pigeous. The papers lately had a story of a horse that died from a ruptured heart, as was shown at an autopsy, that being the Only organ not perfectly* sound. Its owner said it had been separated from the mate with which it had grown up and from which it had never been absent during its six y*ears of life. After they were parted the horse would not ear, and four days later it fell dead. Here is the material for a romance. The fate of this poor beast is to be the subject of a paper before the Veterinarian Society of New York, so the story Is evidently based on fair.

There are, I believe, no authenticated instances of any human being dying* from a broken heart, but there can be no doubt that many have died from grief. Sorrow depresses the system, and if there is no disease at first, a long season of mourning will put the body* into a condition conducive to disease. Add to this cases where individuals because of grief have refused to eat, and to whom sleep has become a stranger, and it will be admitted that though “men have died from time to time nnd • worms have eaten them, but not for love,” the law has some exceptions on the. feminine side. It is one of the singular things that when women are so sure that their dead are better off and happier than on earth, that they are so miserable over their happiness. There is a good deal of feeling in adults like that of the little boy who admitted that he didn't want to go to heaven, because he would have to be dead to get there.

Some of our New Zealand children are, writes a correspondent, “holy terrors.” One evening last week I was in the nursery when the children were being put to bed. The little girl was kneeling at her mother’s side saying her prayers, while her mischievous brother was standing at the back of the chair making grimaces. His little sister evidently had one eye open, if not two, for at last she stopped her prayers with “Scooze me, Lord, while I go and hit Georgie,” jumped up, struck her brother, and promptly knelt down again.