WAIFS AND STRAYS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 124, 10 September 1875, Page 14

WAIFS AND STRAYS.

Advertisements v. Commercial Tbavbllbrs.— An American journal writes thus lovingly of itself and its confreres as vehicles for advertisements to the trade addressed: — An advertisement if your business paper has most of the merits and none of the vices on commercial travellers, besides many advantages entirely its own. Ist. It travels in all directions at once, and visits your customers punctually. 2nd. It interests them in every town, and is building up the general prosperity, while it is faithfully transacting your particular business. 3rd. It talks with thousands of tongues/and has the confidence of its hearers. 4th. It does'nt get drunk. sth It does'nt bet, or play at billiards, pool or 100. 6th. It does'nt bring in any supplementary fancy bill of expenses. 7th. It requires no commission. Bth. It does'nt swell ro and on the credit and name of your house. 9th. It never gets mad and threatens to transfer its good-will to a competitor in business. 10th. It never sets up in business itself on the credit it has built up at your expense or has artfully filched from you. 11th. It does'nt add so much to your expenses as to reduce to zero the margin you would like to offer to good customers. 12th. It does'nt cost many hundreds of pounds a year, but brings customers to you and makes them your personal friends. J •«r L_ ThJ ?. . Lowdow Police.— No man is admitted to the London Metropolitan Police who stands less than five feet seven inches without shoes or stocking*, and it is rather amusing to sit by and quietly -watch, as one after another they come up to the standard ! One is conscious of a good couple of inches to spare, and stalks up | with a dignified self -«omplacency ; the next evidently has his doubts about it, Mid comes forward with a f*ce full of anxious concern. He stretches up his eyebrows, purses his under Up, sticks out his thumbs with painful rigidity, and finally endeavors to make a little use of his toes. This won't do, however. " Turn up your toes," io the stern mandate, and down he drops, and perhaps a, quarter of an inch below regulation height. If with the toes turned up there seems to be a doubt about the heels being fairly on the ground, a -?v Of ?* P , er ig , put and lightly pulled. The raisin? ' of the heels will of course liberate the paper. Tkb Pbinthe's Abt.— The following analysis of the contents of one days number of the London • Times' ii given by the Spirit ©f the ' Daily Press ' :— The • Times' of May 19 consisted of twenty pages— one hundred and twenty columns of well-printed type, seventy-three of which were advertisements. This amount of printing — about equal to Jive volumes of an ordinary novel was all accomplished in less than a day and night ! Let us see what all this means. Calculated roughly, it nieens 31,343 lines, 313 430 worde, 2,203,910 letters ; or, .inclusive of the metal slips between the lines and paragraphs, not fewer than 2,800,050— 0r perhaps three million— separate and distinct pieces of metal picked up letter by letter, and placed in regular and consecutive order so that any reader may refer to any paragraph with ease, celerity, and pleasure. This is the • Times' newspaper of to-day. Sah Fbaxcisco of thi PBESBNT.—In many ways San Franoiico is a city of contrasts. In population, in amount of business and wealth, in the developemont of its civilisation, in everything in fact, that goes to make capacity— it is old, while the years of its life yet number less than thirty. Its streets are narrow and unimposing; most of the houses of wood, in many places tottering to decay. One section of it is squalid and filthy beyond compare, while alongside of them the largest hotel in the world rears ita mansion walls, flanked by a dozen othor insignificant edifices • living and the necessaries of life are expensive, but, for all that, a man can have an ample and luxurioug lunch or dinner for nothing Tne men, as before remarked, are as a rulo. courteous and polite to each other, but if a "difficulty" does unfortunately take place it generally ends m the death or mutilation of one or more of the parties concerned. The climate, though equally removed from the extremes of heat or cold, is yet subject to great and sudden changes of temperature, and then, though no one complains of cold, everypne ag a rule catchea cold, The majority of the population of the

city is comparatively poor, but the wealthy men of San Francisco are perhaps the wealthiest men of the world. There are plenty of millionaires among them, while two individuals are supposed to have between them the astounding income of two million pounds sterling annually. So much for a city which, twenty-six years ago, was nothing but a few tenta scattered along a> sandy and somewhat barren shore. How to Bbat thjb Savage. — The cunning Frenohumn haa contrived a novel way to impress the barbaric mind. M. De Brazza, who has charge of the expedition to Senegal, carries an electric battery in his pocket communicating with two rings on his hand, and with other apparatus scattered about his person. When he shakes hands with a savage chief, that chief will be very much astonished, for an electric shock will fun up his arm, and he will see lightening playing playing about the head of his visitor. Naturally he will think he is being interviewed by the devil, an<S will be ready to consent to anything in order to get away. Irish Eelics. — A lawsuit has been decided in London whioh concerned the disposition of some interesting Irish relics. The suit was instituted for the administration of the will of the Marchioness of Thomond in 1868, which contained a clause giving to Lucius O'Brian, Baron Inchiquin, the family diamonds, four i bogoak tablets with the history of Brian Boroimhe, and various ! other articles enumerated. The testatrix died on the 22nd of October, 1874. Sir Lucius O'Brien, Baron Inchiquin, died in May, 1872, and the defendant, Edward Donough, the present Baron Inchiquin, his successor, claimed the diamonds and china plates. The Vice-Chancellor decided that the defendant, Lord Inchiquin, was entitled to the diamonds, etc., without prejudice to the question whether he was entitled to them far life only or absolutely, and the trustees must hand those articles over to him on his signing and giving an inventory of them ; and there must also be a declaration that the bog-oak tablets were given to Lucius O'Brien, Baron Inchiquin, and lapsed by his death. v Ojuoin op the Tkbm Cakakd.— The origin of the term Canard, "duck," in the sense of a journalistic untruth is by B. von Wurzbach in his "Historische Woraor" attributed to a M. Egyde Auberfr Cornelissen, of Brussels, a journalist, who once published a little fable, without any moral, on this wise: "The voracity of ducks ii well known, but up to the period of the following experiment, it could not be calculated with any nearness how much they could swallow. One of a flock of twenty ducks was taken, killed, chopped up as it was and thrown to the nineteen remaining ducks, who immediately devoured it down. The Bame course was followed with the remainder till there was but ono left, gorged with the flesh and blood of its fellows." This story made the round of Europe, and was re-imported from America *s a new fact in natural history. The very unpleasant cannibaliitie oanard who came twentieth in the story, is, lays Wurzbach, the parent of all later birds of the same feather, Alsxandrs Voir Httmboldt. — This painstaking traveller was equally painstaking as a correspondent. Up to the age of eighty-six he conducted his own correspondence, which was an enormous one, in his own person. On account of his position at the Court of Berlin, ho wai made the recipent of letters, not only from scientific men, bub from all sorts and conditions of men. Prom his own country, from Italy, England, France, and America, he was bombarded with letters, He received an average «T«ry year of over three thousand, and answered two thousand, his account for stamps running up to 500 or ! 600 thalers— £7s to £80 a y«ar. In spite of the wearisomnosi of hit ( oorr»spond«nco k« wowld nob Meeir* the h«lp of » ••crttary. How Sa¥ Jbaxjiioo wab IT amid.— Thai very remarkable book, " G«n»ral Bb»rma»'s Memtirs," contains some information as to th» miantr in which San Francisco obtained its name, whiek we do not r«m«mber to hare icon in print b«for#. In the lummn of 1848, Qentral Qhtrman, then an artillery LieuUnant,- was stationed ia California, and, in recalling reminiic»nc»i of thos» days, he imparts the information of which w» have spoken. While at Benioia, oa Carquinw Straits, k* became atquainted with Dr. Stmple, an I Illiuoisan, who published th« ' Califoroian,' which afterwards btcame • th» ' Alt* California ' of to-day. This Dr. S«mpl«, foreseeing the I growth of a gr«at city somewhere on the Bay of San Francisco, I selected a site on Carquinex Straits and laid out a city which was called Francisca, in honor of the wife of General Yallejo. At this time, the name of the town near the mouth of the bay was Yerba Buena. Some of the prominent men of the latter place, foreseeing that Franciica i»ight be a rival, and that there was something in a name, induced the Council to change the name from Yerba Busna to San Francisco. Gen. Valleio was very much incensed at the adoption of a name so closely resembling jfrancisca, and in turn ohanged the name of his town to Bonicia, which was Mrs. Yallejo' s other name, aud San Francisco and Benicia. the two places remain to this day. General Sherman says : " That Beaicia has the bast natural site for a commercial city I am satisfied ; and, had half the money and half the labour since bestowed upon San Francisco been expended, at Benicia, we should hays at this day a city of palaces on the Carquinez Str.iits. Tub DiiUNKAED'g Will.—" 1 leave to society a ruined character, a wretched example and a memory that will soon rot. I leave to my parents for the rest of their lives, as much sorrow as humanity in a feeble and decrepid state can well sustain. I leave to my Brothers and sisters as much mortineal ion as I could bring upon them. I leave to my wifa a broken heart, a life of wretchedness and shame, to weep over my premature death. I gire and bequeath to each of my children ignorance and low character, and the rememberance that their father was a brut*." Th» Cakb off Oil Cloths. — An oil cloth requires careful treatment, and should never be scrubbed with a brush, but after being swept with the long-handled hair-brushes that are made for the purpose, it should be carefully washed with a large soft cloth, dipped into milk and water, half-and-half, or if the milk is not obtainable, tepid water without soap. The latter ruins oil cloth, by taking off the brightness of th* point, and, it thould aev«r be>

applied to it. Hot water is very injurious to it ; either of them — ' soap or hot water — being sure to injure the oil cloth more than the wear of it. When washed over, wipe it off with a soft, dry cloth, and it will always retain a bright look. In purchasing an oil cloth, it is very desirable to obtain one that has been made for several years, as the longer it has lain unwashed the better it will wear — the paint becoming harder and more durable. An oil cloth made within the year is hardly, worth buying, as the paint will bo defaced in a short time. Hints. — Lard should be kept hard and white, and that whiclx is taken from a, hog over a year old is best. — Soft soap should be kept in a dry place in a cellar, and should not be used for three months after it is made. — When a keg of molasses is bought, draw off a few quarts, else the fermentation produced by moving it will burst the cask. — The best way to enjoy things is to use them, j and thus get the worth of your money out of them. There is no i sense in gorgeous parlors kept in darkness. — Two small arteries branching up from tho main arteries on each side of the neck, and passing over the outside of the jaw-bone, Bupply the face with • blood. If the nose bleeds from the right nostril, for example, puss the finger along the edge of the right jaw till the beating of the j artery is felt, press.hard upon it five minutes, and the bleeding will ■ cease. \ Swimming- Rivebs. — If a traveller can swim pretty well, it is a i good plan to make a float, and to throw himself down in the wator with his breaßt upon it, while his clothes and valuables are lied in a huge turban on his head. In this way broad streams can easily be crossed, and great distances of river descended. He may adjust paddles on to his hand. Hi* float may be a i'aggot of rushes, a log of wood or any one of Ids empty water-vessels ; for whatever will keep water in, will of course, keep it out, while, as to bags, the air that may ooze out through their sides may be blown afresh into them while afloat. Empty bottles may be corked and made fast under the armpits or stuffed under the shirt or jersey, with a belt tied round the wai»t below them. It is an easy matter to make a moderately effective life-belt simply out of liolland, ticking, canvas, or other similar materials ; and the crews of a vessel aground some way from the main land, and who must prepare to swim for their lires, might avail themselves of this plan : — Cut out two complete rings of 16 inches outer diameter and 8 inches inner diameter ; sew tliebe together along both edges, with as ilne a needle as possible, and double threada, and the chief part of the belt is made. What remains, is to Bew strong shoulder-straps to it so that by no possibility it can slip down over tho hips ; and, lastly, to sew a long narrow tube to it, out of a •trip, a foot long and two inches wide, from the same material as the belt. For the mouth of this a bit of wood, an inch long, with a hole bored down its middlo, should be inserted as a mouthpiece. Through this tube the belt can bo inflated by tho swimmer while in the water, from time to time, as often as may become necessary ; and by »imply twisting it and tucking its end m the belt, it» vent can always be closed. .After canvas, &c, is thoroughly drenched, it will hold tho air very fairly. The seams are the weak parts. For Bwimming iv clear walei", n collar is as geod as a belt. Bohantic Notions as to the Weight of Women. — In romance we read of heroes rushing off with fainting maidens from blazing houses, or " carrying" them off on their shoulders for purposes of revengeful abduction. Let any one out of training, or under six feet high, and proportionate strength, attempt to run away -with a fairly well-composed girl of eighteen or twenty, and give u§ his opinions of these vaunted knights. A woman weighing a hundred and forty pounds of kicking womanhood is not to be carried at all. Even a slight girl will weigh one hundred pounds, and " our hero " ■ will stagger under her lovely but encumbersome figure. There »re plenty of buxom girls who weigh up to a hundred and seventy pounds, and it is not given to every man to " hurry off with such baggage." When the victimised one faints on the stage, the robust tenor takes care that the fainting shall be accomplished as closo to the wings as possible. He knows what she weighs by sad experience at rehersals. Let any of our readers carry his sister np three flights of stairs without stopping, and forward to us his sentiments on the occasion. At Vienna we saw a little tenor struggling to carry off a fat soprano to the amusement of the house, while she made stentorian mirth by turning round, whipping up the tenor, and making her exit with him kicking under her arm. Freemasonry. — The installation of the Prince of Walea as Grand-Master of the Freemasons, calls forth the following protest from the 'Friend of India': — "It is hard to read without impatience the accounts in the newspapers of the installation of the Prince of Wales as ' Grand Master of the Freemason's.' Freemasonry is at the present day the most purposeless, unmeaning, and fruitless of all associations into which men can enter, beinw, iv fact, nothing more than frippery tempered by feasting and selfadulation. Nobody can understand its ends auy more than its ' mysteries ;' but all that outsiders are allowed to know of it breeds a vehement suspicion that both are merely nonsensical. If its purposes are moral or religious, there is no need for secrecy, but the contrary ; if the relief of distress, it is inferior to any benefit society extant ; if anything more tremendous, and hitherto xanknown, then it might be challenged in its very existence. But in reality it has no purpose in England ; and this, which' is made its excuse, is in fact its condemnation. It may bo very well fox private individuals to covet the putting on of apparel and tho laudatory speeches in which distinction iv the craft appears to consist; but a Prince who "will one day be called upon to reign over our Empire would do well to hold himself aloof from such vanities." Boot Jelly. — The reader may stare, but science smiles superior, and asyerts very emphatically that a toothsome delicacy can be made from a dilapidated foot-covering. Some time a^o, cays the ' Scientific American, Dr. Vander Weyde regaled some friends not merely with boot jelly, but with shirt coffoo, and the repast was pronounced by all partakers excellent. The doctor tells us that he made the jelly by first cleaning tho boot, and subse-

quently boiling it with soda, under a. pressure of about two atmospheres. The tannic acid in the leather, combined with salt, made tannate of soda, and the gelatine rose to the top, whence it waa removed and dried. From this last, with suitable flavouring material, the jelly was readily concocted. The shirt coffee, incidently mentioned above, was sweetened with cuff and collar sugar, both coffee and sugar being produced in the same way. The linen (after, of course, washing) was treated with nitric acid, which, acting on the lignite contained in the fibre, produced glucose, or. grape sugar. This, roasted, made an excellent imitation coffee, which an addition of unroasted glucose readily sweetened. In thb Towbb of London. — One of the placee I moit love to linger in is the Beauchainp Tower, where 10 many sad prisoners have waited for the guard which was to lead them off to the block on the I Tower Green. It was the prison of poor Anneßoleyn, Lord G-uilford ! Dudley, and many others. Poor creaturei! without hope or occupation, they have spent weary hours in carving their namei or ' thoughts on the stone walls. . . One look wo must take at this ' room in the White Tower. It is full of Spanish arms and armor ; at i tha end is a figure of Queen Elizabeth, reviewing her troops At Tilj bury. She is mounted on a curved horse, dressed in crimson velvet , (rimmed with gold laco, ring 3on her fingers, and pearls, spangle*, and, i embroidery everywhere ; she looks as though she might be saying, " Though mine a woman's form, yet mine the heart of England 1 ! king." . . . Here, too, is bluff King Hal's walking stuff, with •which we are told, his majeity sometimes walked rouadand about hii good city to see that the watchmen were at their posts. It has throe i matchlock pistols in it and a short "bayonet or dagger in the centre of the barrels. I should scarcely have cared to anger his most gracious kingship while he held the weapon ready, or to have stood near while he nourished this battle-axe, contrived to cut four holes in an enemy's ' skull at one blovr. But come, pas» by (he axe and the block, so conveniently shaped for tho noble heads that have lain on it, the mass of j thumbscrews and their horrorß intended to torture people with, naar ! the clumsy spears, pistols, and banners of gone-by days. The old I Boyer Tower, with its vaulted roof, is so called from, the days when | Englishmen fought with bowß-and-arrows, for hero dwelt th« master , and provider of the king's bows ; and here, too, it is said that a Duke of Clarence was drowned, by his own brother's orders, in a butt of malmsey wine. The last strong tower which we reach is called tht jßy ward Tower." Once there was a gate and a portcullis here, and long narrow loopholes, through which arrows went flying at the un. , ruly crowd of citizens — for king and iubjects often fell out in the old bow-and arrow daj ». — ' Little Folk*.' Eccentricities of Great Men. — Ferdinand 11., Grand Duke |of Tuscany, was, it appears, the slave of his infirmities. He was 1 often seen walking up and down his apartment between two large i thermometers, at which he anxiously and continually glanced; 1 putting on skull caps, of which lie had five or six in his hand, i according to the <legree of cold or lieat that the instrument pointed | towards. So, too, with the Abbe de St. Martin, who in the seven- [ teenth century was so notorious for his monomania. He had always nine skull caps on his head to keep him from the cold, and , on the top of these he put a wig, which of course was never by any chance in its proper position ! More than this, he wore nine pairs lof stockings one over the other ; his bed was of brick under which was a furnace, where he hod a fire in order to obtain just that i amount of warmth that he desired. Tha Jesuit Ghezzi wore seTen caps under this wig. Fourier, the mathematician, who had re- ; turned from Egypt nearly dead -with rheumatism, suffered severely . when he found himself in a temperature below twenty degrees ' Keamur, and a servant followed him about everywhere, in readi- ' ness to offer him additional coats for wrappings. During the latter jyears of his life, when rendered hort de aombat by the asthma from which he had suffered since his youth, he lived almost entirely in a kind of box, which allowed no deviation of tho body, and allowed no tiling to pass except his head and arm*.—' Shilling Magazine.'

The existence of a race of giants was largely baaed on the dis covery of bones supposed to have been those of human beings ; but which, on examination, proved to be the bones of mastodons. It has, however, been proved beyond a doubt that a height of even more than nine feet has been attained. In the museum of Trinity College there is a skeleton 8 feet 6 inches high ; in the museum of the Koyal College of Surgeons of England there ia another, 8 feet 2 inches. The causes that produce this extraordinary growth iv some persons are not well understood. According to Geoffrey Saint-Hiliare, Bishop Berkeley undertook to manufacture a giant. He reared an orphan boy, named Magrath, on certain hygienio principles, and succeeded so well that at the age of seventeen the boy was seven feet in height. Ho, however, died with all tha symptoms of old age, when he was twenty years old, at which time he was 7 feet 8 inches high. "In Silesia," says Nature, ''anew glass was invented a few days ago, by Herren Lubish and JJeiderer, in Count Solm's glassworks, Andreashutte, Kiltschodorf. near Bunzlau. This glass, which the inventors call ' metal glass,' is so hard that when a pane lies on the ground and a leaden ball of 40 grammes weight falls upon it from an elovation of 12 feet it receives not the slightest impression, nor is it iv tho least affect«d when dipped whilst redhot into cold water. Window panes, lamp cylinders, and other articles made from this metal glass can therefore almost be danoted as unbreakable. An English inventor makes shirt collars, cuffs, and similiar articles of wearing apparel by cementing together two or more layers of muslin by moaiis ot v, mixture of starch, fpormaceti, and washing blue, and passing them through rollers. Tho articles are then cut to the desired shape with suitable lapa at the exposed and wearing edges, whereby the eauie effect is produced as by linen articles.