Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 7 April 1910, Page 542

Notes

On the Rank In a recent issue Punch represents the driver of the Growler, saying ‘ Yuss, you meets some queer cards. A nole lidy ’ires me by the hour last Sunday. You know ’ow we likes that, an’ I does the usual funeral crawl, o’ course. Do ’urry up a bit,” she says at last. “ Cawn’t,” I says; “my ’orse don’t fink it decent ,to be fast on Sundays.” “All right,” says the old geyser in a pet, “I don’t mind. It’ll only ’urt you. The hour’ll take you all the longer!” Laugh l thought I should ha’ bust!’ Unionists and Home Rule Apropos of the Tory utterances, quoted elsewhere in this issue, on the Home Rule question, the following further expression of opinion—from an English Liberal paper—is interesting. ‘ There is no reason at a11,’,, says the Nation, ‘ why Mr. Chamberlain should not embrace Home Rule. “lam in favor,” he wrote 1886, in a letter signed by his own hand which lies before us, “ of the widest measure of Home Rule that can be granted consistent with the continued integrity of the Empire.” As for English Liberals, all we can say is,’ adds the Nation, * that, while not one member of the- party would consent to betray Free Trade, a Tory Home Rule Bill would be welcomed as warmly to-day as it would have been by Gladstone himself twenty-five years ago.’ . ■ • =. - - ,' . .

Husbands, Wives, and Holidays -The Anglican Bishop of London has been offering some advice to husbands and-wives. =- He tells them that in order to be truly happy they should be -separated at tegular intervals. The happiness he foresees is to‘ be the result of a sense of contrast following upon the separation, and of a reinvigoration by a change from routine. ~ :;- r; .. » - . - .' ■ _ The Bishop’s testimony is confirmed by that of Mrs, Price Hughes, widow of the late Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, a very well-known Methodist minister. , * Experience of life,’ says this lady in the Daily Chronicle ‘has taught me that it would often be a very good thing if husbands and wives could take their holidays separately. It is possible, even for people who are devoted to each other, to see too much of one another. We are all human, and a need for change is a human need. In a short separation for a holiday things can bo seen in their true perspective.’ This may be all true and sensible, but one can hardly resist the conclusion that it is not very flattering to the other partner in the firm. The Cause of the Paris Floods We have already given some account of the extent of the Paris floods and of interesting incidents connected with the inundation. The following simple explanation of the cause of the disaster is supplied by the London Daily Telegraph. v * -- , 'France, as a whole, shelves away to the seas from the central mountain masses- of the Continent. -Over the Alps;, and upon that Burgundian plateau throwing off rivers in all directions—which, as M. Hanotaux. once said in a fascinating study, has been the geographical and therefore the historical heart of France—severe weather raged throughout last week. There were tempests'of rain and great snowfalls. Huge avalanches cracked and thundered in their manner down the mountain sides, sending up clouds of light spindrift like the spray of cataracts. ■ ‘ Down below, the snowstorms piled up the flakes a couple of yards thick and more in the valley levels. Then this enormous discharge upon the central masses was soon hurrying down in flood by every outlet upon the country outside the Alpine fastnesses. At first Paris suspected ,no danger. The scenes elsewhere were desperate, but they seemed likely to affect only the region of France draining south. At Besancjon the Doubs rose 20ft in its channel, and threatened to sweep away from : its shores all the dwellings of men. At Lyons there was a mighty press of waters, and scenes of suffering and hardship, with considerable loss of life, had already excited the greatest sympathy in Paris, when, to the consternation of its people, the Seine showed unmistakable signs of raging in its turn. ‘By the end of last week there was every cause for excitement and apprehension, and, long after the deluge in the south had begun to subside the Seine, made wide and wild by- the volumes of flood water sweeping down all its tributaries towards . the main channel, was threatening a tremendous calamity. ... . The Seine was up at last to three times its usual height, and its roaring, surging breadth presented such a spectacle as no one who knows Paris had ever seen or imagined.’