News, Notes and Notions.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 6, 10 February 1909, Page 48

News, Notes and Notions.

Lord Avebury, in a recent address on the pains and pleasures of life, remarked that life was not, of course, all “cake and ale.’’ Pleasure and pain were closely interwoven in the web of life. Everyone had anxieties ami sorrows; but many writers had greatly underestimated the blessings for which they had to be thankful. In life sunshine and shadow succeeded one another as quickly as on an April day. Whether the result was liappines or sorrow depended a great deal on which elements they looked at or brooded over. If they turned their backs on their blessings and magnified their troubles they made themselves miserable; if they looked to the sunshine and left the shadows behind them they would find that they had much to be thankful for, and in most cases that the good things were real, while what seemed evils were but blessings in disguise. They lived in a very beautiful world, but few good things were to be had without hard work. It was not a world in which anybody could expect to be prosperous if he was easily discouraged. Perseverance, earnest, steady perseverance, was necessary to success. This was no drawback. Good solid work was as necessary to peace of mind as it was for the health of the body; in fact, the two were inseparable. Very few 7, happily, had cause for anxiety as regarded the real necessaries of life—for bread, water, meat r fruit or house room. But they made themselves anxious about delicacies and superfluities, carriages and horses, gold ami precious stones, for luxuries ami appearance, making themselves anxious aiid miserable lest they should ba deprived of things which they could, perhaps, be even happier and better without. Time was said to be money, but it was much more—it was life. No doubt most of them would have to wmrk for money, but let them not sacrilice their lives’to it. Half-a-dozen schoolboys fell in love with a pretty woman who lived opposite their school, near Paris, and one, aged fifteen. wrote her a love letter. The lady's husband complained to the schoolmaster, w ho expelled the lad and claimed damages. The boy's father refused to pay the balance of the lad's school fees, and claimed damages for wrongful expulsion. because, he says, the schoolmaster ought to have had opaque windows in the school. The Court took another view, and upheld the expulsion, sentencing the father to pay the costs not only of the schooling but of the case. <s>•s> <S> Atr. F. A. Heinze, the ex-“Coppcr King." gave a “stocking darning*’ dinner party at Rector’s Restaurant, New York, in December, at which Miss Elizabeth Stanton, of the Gaiety Theatre, London, was the guest of honour; the other guests included some of the prettiest actresses in New' York and a number of millionaires. The dinner, which began at midnight, was served in a private room decorated with hundreds of pounds’ worth of orchids. An orchestra was concealed behind a bank of palms. Each guest found under his or her plate a souvenir worth £2O. When the dinner was half over the lights were lowered, and each woman was given a needle and some wool, with which she proceeded to darn a small hole in her stocking. Then the lights were turned on again, and the women exhibited the neatly darned hosiery as proof of their domestic abilities. The dinner cost £25 a plate. <s<s><£ Of all devices resorted to by bankers to. gain time and inspire confidence durin« runs on their institutions, there has never, perhaps, been a more novel scheme than that conceived in an American city. The depositors were astounded to find that they could enter the bank only at the cost of spoiled garments, as the astute president had caused the door posts to be freshly painted. An English bank once prevented a crisis in its affairs by exhibiting in the windows large tubs apparently brimful of sovereigns. These tubs, however, were simply turned upside down, only a small quantity of gold being piled on their bottoms. An ingenious device was resorted to in Buenos

Ayres. There was a run on a large bank, and for several days depositors besieged the premises, withdrawing money and placing it in another bank on the opposite side of the street. It so happened, however, that these two institutions had reached a private understanding; so fast as, the safe bank received the deposits they were returned to the unsafe one by an underground passage, with the result that everyone marvelled at its continued ability to meet its obligations. <s><s><s>The Kaiser is evidently determined to reform himself off the face of the earth. Not content with his discipline of selfabnegation along familiar lines, with having scorned delights and in the detached and vigorous condition ef a reeluse. studiously devoted himself to mastering the contents of forbidding Blue Books, and muzzled himself against indulgence in those public utterances that for sb long have been his delight, he has determined that there is at least one thing more wanting to complete the iron chain of self-discipline—the estimable virtue of total abstinence from all forms of alcoholic liquors. In view of this extraordinary interest has been taken throughout the Fatherland and elsewhere. But the Emperor, in taking this decision has no wish to compel the members of his Court to follow his example. He has a special temperance drink of the colour and effervescence of champagne, so that the contents of his glass appear in no way different from the contents of the glasses of his neighbours at table. When the Emperor is invited to dinner his especial drink is supplied to his host in advance, and is served from bottles similar to those containing champagne. <£<«><•> Christmas is a time of good cheer for Suffragists as for others (says the “Daily Telegraph”), the only difference being that tlie Suffragists, when holiday-mak-ing, do not forget the aim of their daily life in the arrangement of their menus. All colours save the green, purple, and white are taboo for table decorations, and a lady advertises in “Votes for Women,” the organ of the union, offering her services for a moderate fee to produce an artistic combination of the three shades. Appropriate themes are also.being thought out just now, and make very intelligible reading beside some of those provided at our restaurants. ’‘Stewards sautes,” “Chilled Constable a la Westminster.” “Cabinet Ministers on toast,” “Dessert a la House of Commons,” and “Ministerial lees,” the latter guaranteed to melt in a Suffragist’s mouth, are a few items from a suggested bill of fare. The cost of the whole is slyly suggested to be a few Liberal seats. It is to be hoped, at least, that the ladies will have liberal helpings. O <s> <®> M. Eiffel builded better than he knew, for the Eiffel Tower, having been the chief ornament of an international exposition, has since then been of the greatest service in scientific experiment. Investigations of meteorological phenomena, of wind currents, of atmospheric electricity, as well as of the pressure of air on falling planes, have been made by means of it; and besides serving as a ryepeck for adventurous aeronauts, it has for some time past served as a magnificent aerial station for wireless telegraphy. Regular communication by means of it. has been kept up with Morocco, and the success of thesq “aerograms ” has induced the Government to lit the 300-metre tower with a new installation of antennae, which will enable communication to be maintained over still greater distances. <s>❖<s> Tonnerrc, usually a peaceful town, in spite of its thunderous name, in the East of France, has conceived a strange antipathy to beadles. It does not mind them in plain clothes, but it cannot abide them in the gorgeous uniform in which the church decks them out, cocked hat, silver-braided scarlet swallow tail, smalls, silk stockings, and buckle

shoes. The Tonnerre beadle ventured out into the streets of his native town thus decorated. He was at once pounced upon, summoned, and fined tenpence. The indignant beadle appealed once and lost, appealed again, this time to the highest jurisdiction in the land, the Court of Cassation, and won. The tenpenny fine was remitted. The very next day the proud beadle once more put on his cocked hat, silver-braided tail coat, breeches, hose, and pumps, and armed himself with his mace of office, and appeared in the streets of Tonnerre. He was again apprehended, summoned, and sentenced to a fine of tenpence. Whether he will onee more fight the case is not known. There may be no end to the feud between Tonnerre and its beadle. <s><»❖ According to the annual report of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, a prehistoric buried city, a regular American Pompeii, is being excavated at Casa Grande, near Florence, in Arizona. Already a number of structures have been discovered, but the largest one excavated during the year was a building 200 ft. long, with eleven rooms and massive walls, enclosing a plaza. In the central room there is a seat called by the Pima Indians the “seat of Monte zuma.” These ruins at Casa Grande were found to be very much more extensive than w’as anticipated, and it is stated that their permanent preservation is of great archaeological importance. The Smithsonian Institution, under whose auspices Mr Roosevelt will hunt big game in Africa next year, will undertake the partial reconstruction of the American Pompeii at the legislative capital, so that all citizens may see and realise the high character of the civilisation which existed on the continent in prehistoric times. <S> <?> <®> Dr. I. Popper, a well-known German physician, has been making some interesting observations regarding the stature of individuals and the relation that exists between height and talent and genius. The doctor finds that not only persons with considerable talent, but the geniuses of the world, all have been and are of medium size or less. The results of Dr. Popper’s researches into this subject are very interesting. He has discovered that whilst most great small men are small in stature because of the. shortness of their legs they are really tall in the length of their bodies. That is, when sitting down, they are taller than when standing up, as they have big bodies above the waist. This very fact., the doctor thinks, is perhaps the secret of talent and genius—a good stomach, big heart, and lungs in a big body—as they have a direct effect on the intellect-. These organs help to feed the brain properly and make big men mentally. He mentions Bismarek, for instance, who was a very tall man, as having a bigger body in proportion. In other words, it is all in the body, and the person who, when sitting down, is taller as compared with another than when standing up has the advantage of the other in good, sound organs, and health mentality. When the organs of digestion have plenty of room they make

* healthy brain, and, according to Dr. Popper, talent and genius can in most cases be traced to these facts. /Considerable excitement has been aroused in Paris by the question raised by Dr Bosredon, of Brive, and taken up by his Paris colleagues, whether a doctor has a right, under certain circumstances, to take a man's life when he cannot be saved, and so spare him needless suffering. The Paris correspondent of the “Daily Express” says that Dr Bosredon was the first medical man who arrived on the scene of the railway accident in Brive tunnel. The stoker of the engine, a man named Lefort, was caught under the wreck and slowly burnt to death. “When I reached him,” writes Dr Bosredon, “the man was screaming with agony, and begged me to kill him. There was no possible hope of saving his life. He was being slowly burnt to death, and his body was horribly crushed. I considered that my conscience permitted me to put an end to his agony, and asked a gendarme for his revolver. He said that he had none, and the stoker was slowly burnt to death, instead of being put out of his pain there and then.” Dr Bosredon’s letter is widely commented on. 3> <s> <B> It would appear as if one 'condition of greatness is a simplicity of life akin to asceticism. In fact, ascetical principles of life can be shown to have produced the great rulers of mankind, the greatest teachers, the greatest warriors, the greatest poets, the greatest thinkers, and, in fine, the greatest geniuses of history, in over ninety per cent of eases. Caesar, whom historians agree in calling the greatest human phenomenon the world has known, was most abstemious in respect of diet as well as heroic in the matter of training his body—in other words, in subjecting it to hardship. Alexander, like his tutor Aristotle, was an ascetic during the wonderful campaigns in Asia Minor and India by which he entered into history. Hannibal, the greatest military strategist of all time, was as ascetic as a hermit- Saint Augustine did not “ find himself ” till he adopted the ascetic life. Napoleon, like Caesar and Charlemagne, was excessively temperate in respect to his bodily cravings, and as LordRosebery points out in his masterly “Last Phase,” despite all that has been said to the contrary, was, for the age in which he nourished, a distinctly clean-living man. Coming down to less illustrious beings, the money-makers of the present age have almost invariably shown that their energies were always tempered by a reasoned asceticism. In the athletic field, failure is the invariable result for the athlete who lapses from the ascetic or heroic regime, and the truth is beyond controversy that the man who governs his flesh is the man who helps to govern the world and make human nature repectable.