PENNY WALK AS A SPORT.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 402, 21 January 1904, Page 6

PENNY WALK AS A SPORT.

Blew War of Killing Time Discovered I fcy m Traveling Hon Willie I" In Boston. "You might think that a traveling man's,time was fully occupied, -hut I there .-re occasions when "he feels the (need of relaxation, and, although {theaters are well in their, way, they , occasionally pall." j It was suggested that the traveling man might go to bed occasionally in order to catch the morning train,, but j this particular man would not listen j to that, says the Chicago Tribune. "I was in Boston last week," said j he, "and a man put me onto some{thing new. The idea is like this. Tt ■ won't work in a town where you're acquainted, but say you are in a j strange place; it has its exciting ele- > ments. You go out of your hotel in the evening, either alone or with a. man who is equally ignorant of loj calities, and you walk two blocks in : any direction. Then you halt and j toss a cent. Heads you turn to the right; tails, you turn to the left. The next two blocks you repeat the tossing up, and follow the indicator. So you keep on until you have twisted and turned all over the town. For variety there, is nothing to equal it; it brings you into the strangest quarters, and you see sights that you would otherwise miss. Of course, there is a chance that you will double on your tracks, and come back . to where you started, but in that i* ease it is allowable to cheat, or take another toas-up. Try it some time . when you are in a strange town and } you'll have more fun than a cat

MEANING OF MANUSCRIPT. Dsrtvarlo* of tit I»m W«J to Indicate Matter Written by . . V ./) Hand.

The, singular and plural forms of the abbreviated -word "manuscript" (iMS. and MSS.) are the initials of the two Latin words mahu scriptum, whence our word is derived. Of course, says St. Nicholas, it means, literally, written by hand. After the introduction of printing, certain books were spoken of as codices (or libri impress!), printed books, to distinguish them from codices raanu scripti. Most of the old -and important records found in manuscript and preserved in libraries: have' been copied and reproduced in print, so that vre need not trouble ourselves to decipher crooked characters or half-faded writing: It is, however, interesting as well as very curious to hold in one's hands the parchment or halfrdecayed paper on which the hand of some great scholar, long since dead, traced the "story of his day, or wrote a poem which lives even now. Would you not like to own, for instance, the manuscript of Virgil's Aeneid, or of Dante's ".Divine Comedy," written by their own hands? You would be a very rich young person if you did; but, of course, the real originals of the longago writers are very difficult, in fact impossible, to find. Probably they do not exist, and certainly if they exist* no one knows where they are.

PATHOLOGICAL DREAMERS. Peculiar Ab«rratf oiu of Conduct and Tendencies to Fantaatle Exaggerations. Students of psychological medicine will be particularly interested in some recent cases of pathological dreaming which Prof. A. Dick, of Prague, has been studying. Psychologists have long recognized a similarity between dreams and the delusions of the insane or the waking delirium of the opium eater, says a New Yorkexchange. One case occupying the attention of Prof. Dick is that of a man, aged 43, a goldsmith. During the ten years, of his married life his wife has noticed that he often, during the day and night, tpoke to himself, sometimes softly aiiil sometimes loudly, as ihough he imagined himself to bcamoug his fellow workmen. If spoken to he ceased at once, but gave no explanation except upon one occasion, when he said that variouvthoughts came to hiai against his will, which he had to epeak out, although he knew that it was untrue.

Another case deals with a clerk, aged IS. who manifested peculiar aberrations of conduct in the form of petty embezzling and theft, and a tendency to fantastic exaggerations. His waking revsrirs or dreams were sometimes s«> realistic that he could not distinguish them from actual facts. Metals That Flow. Tt is perhaps not generally known that one of the most important properties of metals employed in striking coins and metals and stamping and shaping articles of jewelry is that of flowing ' under pressure, says the Youth's Companion. . Standard .silver is remarkable for this property . which precisely resembles the Cowing of a viscous fluid. The flow takes place .vheii the metal is subjected to rolling, stamping or hammering, and iL:e particles of the metal are thus carried iuto the sunken parts of the di.- with-* out fracturing, and a perfect i:hpres« sion is produced. >"at-Crackin» by Electricity. In St. Louis the nut-cracking \w dustry gives employment to a considerable number of ;cria;is, there being forte plant* in the city. The nut-~i.„i-k •> arc drift n by eJc-cti U-i. v.tach) .at Lting fed tnaividtral'v jr. o the crusher. After the shells are c ncked :he nuts are wium wed by ap arr blast and rh. ..meat i.s picket! frt ;ji the cr«sii-ii shells by hand. woniCri and ueiug employed for this part of the work. . - .