Varieties.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 409, 10 March 1904, Page 7

Varieties.

• UNRECORDED HISTORY. gUN front of a confectioner's shop in lli Pots there used to Bit a woman ggsfe with two wooden legs. She sold pictures and songs, and played well on the violin. In 1848 she was there,, very pretty, and dressed with a good deal of taste, and when Louia Napoleon, then merely Prince Louis, used to go through the street nearly every day, he aevsr passed with., at giving her something. She knew him, and was also aware of his pecuniary embarrassments and his political afabitions. One evening she said to him: | ' Monsieur, I want to say a word to you.' ] ; ' Say it, tnadame.' ' They ti ill me that you are a good deal cramped j ist now. I have at. my house a comfortable sum, which is earning nothing. /Let me offer it to you. You will return the favour when you are Emperor.') Prince Louis did not accept the momey. But he did not forget the kindness, and when he became Emperor he offered her a small annuity. The woman was as independences she waß generoas. ■ Say tq the Emperor,' she returned, ' that it is exceedingly good of him to remember me; but I cannot accept his tffor. If he had accepted mine, 1 won't Bay what might have happened; but as it is, no 1' AT WORK IN MID-AIR, The men who put together the steel framework of a modern building seem to work as easily ten etoreye up on' the giant skeleton as if they were Bitting by the kitchen fire, A contractor says that houaeßmiths are the moat reckless lot of men in the world. • • ' We were patting up a big hotel,' said the contractor. ' The framework had just reached the eighth storey, and the masonry and the flooring of one.or two of the storeys were already in, I was up on the top, with a gang of housesmitha, who were hoisting a big girder. The foreman was kneeling on the edge of the frame, shouting directions down to the street, and the girder had just reached the top.

■'As they were swinging it into place the men let go for a moment and the girder swung round upon the foreman, hitting him behind as he knelt, and sweeping him over the edge into the street 120 ft. or so below.' " . 'There seemed to be no possible chance for ; his life. Somehow, though, he fell against the slack guy-rope which was dangling from. the beam. His leg and aim got entangled in it. three storeyh below, and he stuck to: the- rope. "More than that, the slack rope actually swung him into a window in the fifth storey. That happened to be one of the few in. which the flooring had been put in, and the rope dropped him on the floor .unhurt. ' He had been' working for our firm for years, and I knew him and liked him as a good foreman. When he went over the edge_of the framework I felt faint. It was a minute or two before I recovered my self-possession ; then I hurried down, expecting to find his mangled body in the 1 street. ■ - *■" 'As I went down the ladder I met him coming up, bruised, but not seriously hurt, and all he was thinking of was what he should say to the man who let the beam Blip. Although be had had as Bar. row an escape from death as I can con-. ceive, he went right back to work and bossed the gang for the afternoon, after discharging the man who was responsible for the accident.' THB BEIDE'S PRESENT. The Scandinavian bridegroom presents to his betrothed a Prayer Book and many other gifts, which usually include a goose. She, in turn, gives him, especially in Sweden, a shirt, and this he inwardly wears on his wedding day. Afterwards he puts it away* and in no circumstances will he wear it again while alive. Bat he wears it in his grave, and there are Swedes who earnestly believe in the resurrection of the body, but in the veritable resurrection of the betrothal shirts of such husbands as have never broken any of their marriage vows The Swedish widower must destroy on the eve of hia second marriage the bridal shirt which his first wife gave him, PRAYERS THAT FAILED. , According to last advices from China, the drought .in Chih-li continues. Asa last resort Viceroy Yuan Shih Kai ordered all the prisoners condemned to death to be released from prison and set to kowtow to Heaven for rain, a free pardon to follow success. But notwithstanding the most prodigious kow-towing, no rain fell. The executions will be duly carried out. RELIGION AND TEMPERANCE. Out of a total of 2887 Congregational ministers in England and Wales 2551 are abstainers, and of 220 students for that ministry, all but 19 are abstainers Presbyterians show only 247 teetotallers out of 925 ministers, but 22 of their 25 students are on the side of temperance, Out of 6638 ministers and local preachers among the Bible Christians, the Free Methodists and the Methodist New Connexion 5602 are abstainers, and so aro ail the students in training for the ministry of these three denominations. The Society of Friends, with 369 ministers, returns 350 as abstainers.