MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1235, 19 February 1883, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

« The District Court of Philadelphia is engaged in .considering whether " damn " is a profane word. The question was raised by a telephone company removing an instrument used by a printer, on the ground that it was made the medium of profane and vulgar language. The printer denied this, but admitted the use of " damn." and the Court now has to^cpiisicler, whether the word iis profane\ 4.Theii decision, says an American contemporary, will be " awaited with a deep interest by a host of worthy men, and possibly by ' devout women not a few," who in moments of great physical or mental torture have found a grateful solace in the use of that compact and cogent expletive." A London correspondent of a Bombay paper writes : — " A prominent London literary man the other evening gave me some curious information respecting the effect which newspaper reviews have upon the circulation of 11,0 w books, and the" relative value in this respect of the various London daily and weekly journals. Supposing The Times reviews a book on Monday, the probability is that Mudie will have 50 applications oil Tuesday forthe work. A notice in the' Standard will smilatly bring 40 applications, the Daily News 30, and the Daily Telegraph ab.,ut a doznn. A review in the Times alone is •coftsid.eretl by jpuhlisfiery M Bidke£ a work " com plcMy ' sti cjessf ui. 5f the weekly papers the Spectator has the most influence. A notice in its columns will produce a groat demand at the j circulating libraries. It is a mistake, therefore, to assert, as was done lately, that reviews have no influence upon the sale of b00k.." Tho southern, pliorc of L:iko Erie

lie morning of June 23. Much <j larnage was done at Cleveland. The ( }igfl'pl^x>ffio»xa\^iaiji. point heard dis- c fcairij ; shujgfer at^.lO.y 'and^'looking 5 aol^aftvor l|Wk sa^!hGsjy < Mm^der^|d\p'^l|m^g^tW' Va%i*. ■ < A"bbve cahfortM, angry, looking conglomeration of clouds, and north ontalarge stratus cloud. It nKfaed. voiy ra^^ly^and^at 6^ a.m.' tlie}Wffly^rslamck the shore.. When, first noticed,- "the wave was about a qiW*i6^-ot«-igaJe-ftoui-the : Bli©re;- The lake had been cairn, and this was the first disturbance of its surface. The wave swept along rapidly and silently until it reached shallow water, when i^lrf&.dAal/^ild swashing noise, andBroke oriw shore with a great roar; The wave reached from N.KE. to S.S.W. After it had struck the shorp two recoil waves followed close to--gether. At 6.35 a.m., a quarter of an hour after the wave had reached the ( shore, a shower began, which lasted for ID minutes, during which twp-one-hundreths of an inch of rain fel£ . No high wind was peceptible, although slight squalls on the lake were reported by incoming vessels. ; Edmund Yates, who was an old postoih'ce colleague of Anthony Trollope, thus describes him in the World 1 newspaper : — " He was full of com- 1 mon sense, and at the same time ludicrously obstinate and perverse ; roaring and spluttering and wholly incapable 1 of argument. He was an amiable bull for whom there were a number of red fag's always in store ; and when these, were waved at him he would stamp and snort, and toss and gore everybody within reach. He could be ' drawn ' as easil^rtis Mr Gladstone. What I have just said will be borne out by the following anecdote ; — We were a party of post pilnjß (jGiCjihlsjk Summoned from the four quarters of England, and we were in conclave at — not a bad place, for it was June weather — the Red Lion at Henley. In tho course of our deliberaj^ij f; ! ; spme,9ni»j|mado a suggestion. Trollope, engaged in conversation at the end of the room, at once raised his head and his voice. ' I differ from you entirely,' he roared ; I differ from you entirely 1 What was it you said?" ' Mr Pridgin Tcale (says the World) has been delivering a lecture before the Plnlpsppbicjil Society at Leeds on the i econo.riiicaiicomb : ustion of coal. He says truly that our present open fireplaces are all on the furnace system, and advocates the adoption of a remarkably simple plan, which converts them at once into slow-combustion grates. A plate of iron to enclose the space between the hearth. and the lowest bar of .the, grate ( is, all that is wanted, or, in his own words, " a simple shield resting' on the hearth and rising as high as the bottom bar of the grate." It costs two or three shillings, and requires no fixing or " man's time." The Economiser makes three tons of coal do the work of four. By its universal use in the Leeds Infirmary it savps £100 a year in coal. It consumes nil cinders, and leaves at the bottom )f a j,f^ie/ ash, valuable to farmers. It is reckoned that if everybody in the United Kingdom converted l}is : fireplace into a slow-corabustion grata • on the principle laid down by ijfr Teale, there would be a .saving in the consumption of coal of nearly 9,000,000 of tons in the year. ] An Adelaide telegram in the Argots,concerning the Tararua gold robbeyy, says : — " Some curiosity is expressed as to how Hinton should have successfully escaped the vigilance of the detectives here when they were requested by the Melbourne police to .watch., h^ , movements. It is stated,. Melbourne telegram requesting that a surveillance be k£pt over Hinton conveyed an impression that only a faint suspicion attached' to* him. Tho telegram did not state., what appears to have been the cisc, that Hinton had charge of a set of keys giving access to the gold-room of the Tararua. The commissioner of police states that had ho known when Hiuton caino hero what has been communicated to him since, he would have executed the search-warrant at once. Hinton's" mode of life threw the detectives further off the scent. Ho lived in absolute penury, being unable to work, was supplied with necessaries by charitable neighbours. During his illness he received a weekly allowance from his employers. The man was often affected by profound melancholy, and doubtless the possession of : so much stolen property preyed upon his mind." •Mr Hay tor, of Victoria, arithemetical vp'er^on <pmployod to tabulate statistics and calculate averages for the Victorian Government, complains that he is unable to make his figures add up because of the disturbing influence of women. The statement, "thus nakedly put, suggests an infercncD unfavourable to Mr Hayter. It may be supposed that Mr H. is n, Jaun or Lothario, a gentleman abnormally susceptible

mently a very improper person to be a v jovernment statistical This refer- J nice, however, would be unsound. Per- t soually Mr Ilayter is merely a man I oi figures, and as unromantic as a tax c collector. It is amongst v the iigm-es themselves that women play the part of a "disturbing element." The nature of tho trouble is this. The Government, for some reason of State not very intelligible, desire to know how many persons per thousand of the population ina-Y te expected to marry in the year. Mr Hayter replies that if he is required to take in the population of both sexes he cannot, work the sura. His averages are . liable to turn out wrong, aiid for a reason which will be understood as soon as stated The marriage rate depends exclusively upon the number of marriageable men. The numbeivof marriageable women doesn't affect the question. You may increase the .;jaumber., qf marriageable women as much as you like, and yet not necessarily multiply marriages. Before the women can marry the men must pro pose. ' Barkis must be willin,' or there cannot be a wedding ; hence the marriage rate for any country is not determined, or even influenced, by the number of women. It depends on the number of Barkiss, and especially upon the number of the Barldses that are " willin'." For this reason Mr Hayter holds .that women — or, as he calls them, "females" — are "amongst the disturbing, elements which pught to be eliminated in making calculation of th c marriage, rate/ Find out the number of men, he says, and you may calculate from the average of previous years what proportion of them will be willing.. The number of women dosen't matter. There are always more women than the market can absorb, and women are always willing. .After that last remark, who will accuse Mr Hayter of being a romantic person ! " Spero" has shown a little more ''savee" than the .New Zealand ' barber. ' The latter, lam told, levanted with the sweep money ; but the Uotham grocer sits quietly in his shop selling cheese and fresh onions at £d per lb, the profits uf which he devotes to the "puffing up" of his late swindle. " The Graud National Investment Association," or " Spero's Totalisator Club," the fee for membership being set down at the extravagant sum of 12d, or 241 b of "onions." Parties in Dunedin wishing to join this money-making business musn't forget when sending their cheques for membership to enclose two postage stamps qf the vallje of 81b of onions, care of A. Easton, grocer, Hotham, Melbourne, in the Colony of Victoria, not above 16,000 miles from Gravesend. What audacity ! This is the man, or the company, " Mr and Mrs Spero," who last Cup meeting was pounced upon by the detectives, and after a number of Court adjournments) heavily fined. Up to that period he had received upwards of £1800 for investment in several tatalisator sections, and the holders of Assyrian had to be 'Satisfied with 8s Qd in the pound or g'es nothing; and the " Spero Company" to' receive the balance of £1000 for law ■expenses, shop being closed, and loss of business on 'the sale of "onions." These are ' the sort of swindles — the "Polk Company," for instance — that are doing, more injury to horse-racing ,in . Victoria, than the small fry of bookmakers or cardsharpers ; because a respectable citizen will not have anything to dp with blacklegs, but they are enticed by advertisements to have a shot, at the respectable " Polk" or " totalisator clubs. Why don't the Parliament leagalise the machine, and then we .should not hear of such disgraceful swindles as above narrated. The business manager. of Mace, Charles Fox, of New York, has a batter drawingf cardCthan Mr Abbey has in "Mrs-La'nwtry; despite-'the 'vigorous advertising of her imprudent goings-on with Freddy Gebhardt, plus an Italian artist, who is now hired to complicate the scandal business. The "Jersey Lily " still draws, while the Nilsson concert combination will end disastrously, the Swedish cantatrice having almost lost her voice through an inflammatory attack. Patti is doing well If she is not over-nice, she is naughty, and that goes a long way towards popularity. Virtue walks in rags or drowns itself. The world pays handsomely to' be amused, and grudges a cent for solid instruction. lam almost tempted to moralise, but I refrain. My letter is to long already, and the moralising may be left to intelligent readers. They should not blame me if the world is getting a little mixed. I simply note what I see and know. Anyhow, this century is 1 going out in a grand state of social, moral, and intellectual hotchpotch, when so eminent a Conservative as James Edward Fitzgerald takes up tho burden of Hoit Most and Henry George, and doubts whether our civilisation is not built upon a false basis, Longman's Magazine for January, v/luyli £;.<.- or.:, r.j []-.■: ctnTci-t mail,

all bs sure to bs in great deiniud by Vustralians, as soon as it is known hat it contains an article on " Cricket '* >y Mr Murdoch, "that great preeminent captain," as Mr Matthew Arnold has been pleased to call him. V purusal of the article will convince solouists that Mr Murdoch is. more aniiliar with the bat than with the, )en; nevertheless, in essentials hp speaks wisely. Not that lie has much ;c add to our theoretical know.edge of his art. He is all for going: in to meet tho ball on occasion ; and. iccording to him, Mr Spofforth and Mr Boyle say they cannot bo played by any man who stands still and abides within the crease. Mr Murdoch very wisely recommends- men not to practice batting too long at a time. Half in hour is quite enough. More practice begets carelessness. He thinks a ijood bat rather uusettles himself by. practising bowling. That art "tires'a, man, brings different muscles into play, and gives the eye a different conception of the flight of the ball. " This? is a ra-ther astonishing statement, for one great merit of the Australians was this: that their bowlers could bak England can boast of bowlers equally good with the bat, like Mr C. T. Studd, and others; but on the whole "a bowler's score is usually not hard to reckon up. Again, if a bowl er doe? get runs he is often off the spot in the next innings, and so less useful .to his side than he should have been. Mt Murdoch's remarks on the " cut" and on hitting half- volleys, as also on the common yorker and how to play it; are deliciously grave, and may b 3 read with profit by all cricketers. — European Mail. • .