All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 15 July 1909, Page 1118

All Sorts

Keep your eye on the coal supply. There may be a large supply of cold-storage weather still in stock. If some people were to think twice before speaking they would probably forget what they wanted to say. Teacher : ' What is the highest form of animal life ?' Scholar : ' The giraffe.' The first illumination with gas was in Cornwall, England, 1792; in the United States, at Boston, 1822. One pound of cork is sufficient to support a man of ordinary size .in the water. ,, Fire and a half miles is the height of the loftiest mountain-peak in the world, while the greatest known depth of the ocean is six miles. The first printing press in America was set up in the city of Mexico at the request of Archbishop Zumarraga in January, 1536. "What sorter confuses me,' said Uncle Eben, Ms dat after I gits a lot of advice I's got to go around an' git a lot mo' advice 'bout which advice I's g'ineter take.' ' Yes,' said Mrs. Smith, ' Johnny's all right now. When he was bitten by that strange dog I took him to a doctor's and had the wound ostracised right away.' The largest steam turbine yet undertaken is the one '.f 24,000 h.p. that is being built at Mannheim for the Krupp ironworks in Rheinhausen. Java supplies the greater pSrt of the cinchona bark from which the world's supply of quinine is made. There are alout 25,000 acres of this island devoted to its cultivation. A hospital superintendent says that a baby, to be healthful, should cry three or four times in the day at least. This is interesting, for the reader will observe he carefully leaves the night unmentioned. 'It is claimed by some scientists,' said the school teacher, ' that men have descended from the monkeys, and I want to know from what have the monkeys descended?' Smart hoy: ' From the trees, sir.' 'And now,' said the teacher, 'we come to Germany, which is_ governed by the Kaiser. Tommy Jones, what is a Kaiser?' 'Please, 'm,' answered Tommy Jones, 'a stream o' hot water springin' up an' diturbin' the earth.' 'Why are articles on how to raise children usually written by people who have not families, of their own?' 'Probably,' answered the worried mother, 'it's because people who have children are too busy to write articles.' Mistress : ' Look here, Stisan, I can write my name in tlie dust upon this table.' Susan : ' Ah, mum, there's nothing like eddication, in there, mum?' 'Are you fond of works of imagination?' said the Torn intic young lady. " ' Very,' replied the matter-of-fact lawyer, ' 1 read the weather reports in the newspapers every day.' Little Mary went into the country on a visit to her grandmother. Walking in the garden, she chanced to spy a peacock, a bird she had never seen. She ran quickly into the house and cried out : ' Oh, grandma, come out and see! There's an old chicken in bloom!' Concrete itself is, of course, very old. The concrete stairs of Colchester and Rochester castles still show the marks of the encasing boards ; the dome of Agrippa's pantheon, which is 142 ft in diameter, is of concrete; and fragments of concrete buildings are found in Mexico and Peru. £h the reign of Edward 111. there were at Bristol three brothers wLo were eminent clothiers and woollea weavers, and whose family name was Blanket. They were the first persons who manufactured that comfortable material which has ever since been called by their name, and which was then used for peasants' clothing. Many words of most august sound prove to be of quite commonplace ancestry .when traced to their origins. * Finance' is really only 'settling up.' Literally, it is just 'ending,' and was formerly used in that very simple sense in the English language. Then it came to signify settling uy> with a creditor, and acquired the special sense of ransom. A strange comedy and tragedy was woven into the lives of Ibsen and Bjornson. As young men they were great friends; then politics flung them apart; they quarrelled, < and never met for years and years. Strange fate brought the children of these two great writers together; and Bjornson' s daughter married Ibsen's only, child. The fathers met after a quarter of a century of separation at the wedding of their children,