All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 26, 1 July 1909, Page 1038

All Sorts

The forage bill of the British army in times of peaoe is about £369,000 a year. New Scotland Yard, with accommodation for 3000 police officers, is the largest police station in the world. Not a single case of intoxication occurred last year among the 9000 inhabitants of Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire. Ben Kendal, in 38 years as postman at Hindolveston, Norfolk, has walked 192,000 miles in performance of his duties. ' I shall give you ten days or ten shillings,' said the magistrate. 'All right,' said the prisoner; 'I'll take the ten shillings.' The railways of Great Britain have just over 150 miles* of tunnel. The seven longest railway tunnels have a total length of 13 miles. The optimistic inventor, who constructed a fishing rod which automatically measured and weighed each fish as <t was caught, died, as was naturally to be 4 expected, a pauper. The world doughs every baker a living. The world hoes every tiller a living. The world doze every sleepy man a living. The world owes every man a living who is smart enough to collect the debt. A magazine poet declares that he never reads one of his own poems in print. His confession cuts down his supposed list of readers one-half, and the other fellow gets paid for it. He is the proof-reader. If the number of people daily entering London were to be despatched from any given station by rail, 1977 trains, each conveying 600 persons, would be required. If all these trains wore arranged in a straight line they, would cover 221 miles of railway. On a complaint being made in the Canadian House if Commons that 300 British immigrants had arrived at Toronto penniless and without work, the Minister of tho Interior said that the Government would enforce henceforward the rule that immigrants must possess £5 on entering the country. Messrs. Armstrong, "Whitworth, and Co., of Newcastle, and Messrs. Vickers, Sons, and Maxim, of Barrow, have almost completed the erection of large new steel works for gun forging at Muroran, Japan. The works will be carried on under the direction of the Japanese Admiralty, assisted by English experts. ' The .fierce light of public opinion,' said a young North Island Socialist in the course of a speech condemnatory of the action of the Government for offering a Dreadnought to the Imperial authorities, ' shall dog their footsteps until it strangles them. They shall swallow the bitter pill and drink its very dregs.' The teacher was giving an exposition on culpablo homicide. 'If I went out in a small boat,' he said, ' and the^owner knew it was leaking, and I got drowned, what would that be?' After a few minutes' silence, a little boy stood up and ' . said : ' A holiday, sir ! ' ' That is what I call an ideal marriage,' Hardy declared to his wife as they were walking homeward after an evening with some friends. 'Actually, I believe both think absolutely alike.' ' Yes, they certainly are charming,' assented Mrs." Hardy; 'but about the thinking, Joe, if you will notico, she generally thinks first.' - ' My brother,' said the good man, ' you should always keep your debts in mind. Experience has taught us all that our debts are our enemies.' ' But they don't worry me, my dear sir.' 'And why not?' 'Because I have always been taught to forget my enemies.' Quaint old Pepys, in his Diary, tells of the game of 'Pelemele,' which was played in England in 1660, and which seems to have been a game similar to golf, but more courtly. King Charles 11. had made a fine promenada* in London, now called 'Pall, Mall,' for the playing of this game, whose name is taken from the Italian palla— a ball, and ma glio — a mallet. The object of the game is to drive a ball, by hitting it with- a long-handled mallet through a ring at the end of a straight alley. The victor was the man who could accomplish this in the fewest number of strokes. It was a very fashionable game at the English court, and the King himself seems to have been an excellent player.