All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 36, 5 September 1907, Page 38

All Sorts

A chimney 115fE high will sway lOin. in a high wind' without danger. ' What „ aie you crying for, Johnny ? ' ' Because 1 my brothers • have got a holiday and ' I haven't.' ' That's hard lines ; but why haven't you a holiday too ? ' ' Because I'm not old enough to go to school yet.' A kind of football was first played about the time of Edward 111 in England. Shortly after its advent, however, it was prohibited. , Later it was again revived, but in the reign of James I. it was^..suppressed, as being rough and brutal. ' Explain, 7 said the teacher to the class, ' the difference between the quick and the dead.' 1 The quick,' answered the boy in the corner, 'is them that gets out of the way of the motor cars, and the dead is them as doesn't.' The ex-Empress Eugenic uses a penholder that is set with diamonds'. This was employed ' by the fourteen • representatives in signing the Treaty of Peace of Paris in 1856, and was presented to the ex-Empress as a memento. Diplomatic Bachelor (who has forgotten whether the baby is a boy or girl)— Well, well, but he's a fine littlefellow, isn't she ? How old is it now ? Do her teeth bother him much ? I hope lie gets through its second 1 summer without getting sick. She looks like you, doesn't he ? Every one says it does. „ > Bowling t is one , of the games that originated in the Middle Ages. The exact date of • its introduction is obscure ; but it has been clearly traced to the thirteenth century. The first bowling greens were made in England. In bad weather these could not be used to advantage, and this led to the construction of covered bowling alleys. Here is the latest Wilberforce story :— When rector of Brightstone, in the Isle of Wight, he was waited on by an old farmer, whose one desire in life was to rent the glebe land. ' Why ? ' asked Wilberforce. „ ' Well,' said the old fellow, with a look of business shrewdness, ' when t'other parson was here he used to farm it himself, and there being so little of i~, he always got in his hay before anybody else. Then he clapped on the prayer for rain.' Mr. Michael ' MacDonagh, in ' Chambers's Journal,' tells of some interesting perquisites that fall to fortunate British State officials. Formerly a new Chair was supplied to the House of Commons on the meeting of each new Parliament, and the Speaker carried off the old Chair as a perquisite. The Speaker does not now get Chairs, but he still receives a plump doe in December and a fat buck in July from the Royal deer parks, and ' four and a half yards of the finest cloth that the country can produce ' from the Clothworkers' Company every Christmas. King Edward's announcement at Cardiff that he proposes very shortly "to establish a decoration bearing his own name, to be awarded to the courageous men who, in mines and quarries, voluntarily endanger their lives in order to save those of others, has been received with -great enthusiasm by English workers. The Victoria Cross is all very well in its way, but surely there should be a still • better cross for the man who goes down into the mine to take his fellow, at the risk of his own life, out of a tomb. -King Edward ■ has once again shown his tact and judgment in this matter. There is no hero, as a matter of fact, to be compared to some of the heroes of the mines.'There is' a peculiar thing about lions,' said a hunter who has trapped big game in Africa for menageries. 'They will not eat the flesh of a fowl. You might tempt them with canvas-back duck or the daintiest sqpab, -but they would refuse it. , I remember once having a swan which had broken its wing. We killed it, dressed it carefully, and threw it into the cage of the lions, but they would not touch- it, and it finally had to be taken out and thrown away. I 'have .repeatedly put pigeons alive into the cage just to see what they would do. I have thrown' grain down among the lions and the pigeons have actually got down and hopped around the big brutes, even hopping on ftieir backs, the lions making no attempt to disturb them, even seeming to enjoy their companionship. There is something rather strange about this, which it is difficult >to explain.