All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 16, 22 April 1909, Page 638

All Sorts

A silver coin is usually in currency for 27 years. In the Franco-German war every third German soldier had a map of the country through which he was travelling. A full grown eagle can consume two young lambs at^ a ■ meal. . ' It is said that two out of every three who begin to learn shorthand fail to acquire it. The Japanese host never entrusts the making of tea to his servants on high occasions; that office he fulfils himself. Eagles and their allies live to a great age — 100 years, or even more. The youth of the golden eagle lasts ten years. " - " The Roman catacombs are 580 miles in extent, and -it is estimated that something like 15,000,000 dead are there interred. • The geese, by their loud cackling, had saved Rome. ' That'll do,' said the old gander, irritably. ' You've done - all that anybody has a— right to expect from you. Stop your noise now and let me go to sleep ! ' For the geese of ancient Rome, like unto many a biped of a later period, when once starting to cackling, didn't know when to quit. Walter Savage Landor did not share his countrymen's taste for field sports. In his youth he had shot a partridge one winter afternoon, and found the bird alive the next morning, aiter a night of exceptional bitterness. ' "What that bird must have suffered ! ' he exclaimed. ' I often think of its look.' And Walter Savage Landor never took gun in hand again. ' Why do you keep your daughter practising so incessantly on that one piece ? ' ' I want to be sure she can play something when our friends ask to hear her.' __^ ' But suppose they want to hear her play something more ? ' ' Oh, there's no danger of that.' The teacher was explaining to Tommy the difference between the words ' foreign ' and ' domestic' ' Now, when anything is foreign it cannot be domestic,' she said. ' Yes, it can, ma'am,' spoke up Tommy. ' Impossible ! If you think so, Tommy, give ns an example.' Tommy thought a moment and then said : ' Our cook is foreign, but she is also a dometic' She was young and had not travelled much. She had left_Dunedin on the night excursion train for Christchurch. It was a tiresome journey, and just before reaching Ashburton she had dozed for a. minute or two. Waking up") and . turning to an old gentleman in the seat behind her, she said : ' Will you please tell me if we are on this side of Ashburton or the other side ? ' ' "We are on this side, ' he said. She seemed satisfied at this answer, although what she meant "by her question, and he ly his answer, »s perhaps still a conjecture. Little Wilbur was eating luncheon with his mother. Presently she noticed that lie was eating Ms jelly with his spoon. ' Wilbur, dear,' she said to him, ' you must not eat your jelly with your spoon.' ' I have to, mother,' he replied. ' No, dear, you don't have to. Put your jelly on yotir bread.' ' I did put it on my bread, mother,' said Wilbur, ' but ib would not -stay there; it's too nervous. 3 ; In mentioning the case in Dublin of a mother (ninetyfive) and child receiving Old -Age Pensions simultaneously, the London Lancet gives, without comment, the mother's sbatement : ' I have never been sick in all my long life, and never took an ounce of medicine^' Dublin is famous / for its distinguished nonogenarians. Hon. Thomas Lefroy, who was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland when in' his ninety-first year, and lived all his life in Dublin, survived till ninety-three." Lord Chancellor Plunket lived to be ninety. Three years ago there -were three nonogenarian Dublin physicians — Sir John Banks, Dr. Tweedy, and Dr. Ellis — of whom the last .died recently in his one hundredth year.

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