All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 4 November 1909, Page 1758

All Sorts

. ♦■ Sunday School Superintendent : ' Now, children. I want you all to sing heartily. Do not let me hear a silent voice! '. ' ' - A milliner meant originally one from Milan — a Milaner ; just as a ' cordwainer,' or shoemaker, was a worker in leather from Cordova." Mistress : ' Who was that gentleman that came in just now? - Maid: 'That wasn't a gentleman, ma'am; if was only the master, who came back for his umbrella.' All "things come to him who waits, If he waits in a place thUt is meet; - Bub never 'wait for an uptown tram On, the downtown side ' of the street. The bayonet is so called because it was first used, it is said, near Bayonne. A Basque' regiment, having exhausted their ammunition; placed long knives in the barrels of their muskets and made the original bayonne charge. ' Sea-side Visitor (to old inhabitant) : c You- don't mean to say that one can't get a daily paper here! Why, man, you can never know what is going on in Dunedin. Old Inhabitant: 'An' what about that? They don't know what is going- on here, neither.' There was a piece of cold pudding on the luncheon table, and mamma divided it between Willie and Elsie. Willie looked at v his pudding/ then at his mother's empty plate. '.Mamma,' he said earnestly, ' I can'.t enjoy my pudding when you haven't any. Take Elsie's.' ' We've been having a regular clearance at home,' explained Mr. X. at the office, ' throwing all sorts of old things away. I put one .of .my wedding presents on the fire this morning.' 'Did you really?' asked a horrified colleague; ' what was it?'" 'A copper kettle,' replied X. The first telegraph line in the United- States" was • opened for business in 1844, and thirty-two years, later the telephone was introduced. Comparison between the statistics of the two systems shows that the telephone extension increased by leaps and " bounds over that of the telegraph, until in 1907 the telephone mileage was eight times as great as that of the telegraph. Admiral Moore tells a good story of a peppery old seaman under whom he served many years ago. During some tactical operations one of the ships of the squadron had made some bad blunders, and at length the Admiral completely lost his temper. He stormed'about the quarter- ' deck, and informed his officers of his opinion of the officer in command of the erring ship. When he paused for .lack of breath he turned to the signaller and said to him, ' And now you can tell him that, sir.' The man scratched his head meditatively. ' I beg pardon, sir,' he ventured, c but I don't think we have quite enough flags for all your remarks.' ' - The day of the wax candle is supposed to have gone, by, with the advent of kerosene, gas, and" the electric light ; but, as a matter of fact, an enormous number are used everjr year all over the world. But the wax candle of today is not the wax candle of our grandfathers' day. The busy, bee is as busy as ever, but very little of the wax he " secretes is made up into candles. Mineral wax — generally -known as ozokerit — has taken the place of beeswax, and is dug from the ground in Utah and California, and in .Wales, Galicia, and Roumania. When found, it has a dark, rich brown color, slightly greenish and translucent in thin films, but when refined ft resembles well-bleached beeswax. ~ \ Lake Vernagther, a beautiful sheet of water, the pride of a valley in the Tyrol, vanished in a night. Next morning the -bed was bare mud. There was no earthquake on „ this occasion. The lake quietly disappeared as a bath " empties when the plug is pulled out. Speaking of Swiss' lakes calls to mind the extraordinary ' tidal ' waves.- of Lake Geneva. They arq called ' tidal ' for want of a better name. At uncertain intervals the lake heaves itself up, and rises five or six feet in a few seconds. Why' oir wherefore, no one knows. Nor can any one tell what . is happening in the Caspian Sea. For years' past its waters have been falling, and it had' been supposed that the great inland sea was gradually- drying up. Recent soundings revealed the astonishing fact that the Caspian is at -present actually deeper than it was" a century ago. There is only one possible hypothesis. The bottom of the sea must be dropping out. In 1905 petroleum w & s struck near the town of Dalton, in Texas. Believing that an oil deposit actually underlay the town, a trial boring was made just outside the city. The result was alarming. At a depth of 2/)0- feet the drill-points fell into what -was. evidently a gigantic subterranean cave, of which soundings failed to reach" the bottom. - .