Sketcher.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 426, 14 July 1904, Page 7

Sketcher.

—*.— J ECCENTRIC HERMIT. of the strangest eccentricities mfirn afflict mankind is the desire for a solitary life. A particularly carious example was recently reported from England. A woman living in Cambridgeshire died after 80 years of complete Beolusion. In that time she had been seen by none, her meals having been left outside her rocm to be taken in when no one was near, and it was only through her neglecting to do this for three consecutive days that apprehension as to her safety was aioused. The door of her room was forced, and she was found dead on her bed. The reason for her eccentric conduct never transpired. An equally mysterious recluse dwelt in a town of Kent, England. A trusted civic employee, he one morning quitted his post for no ostensible cause, and retired to his house, where he lived on a scant annuity he possessed. Such food as he needed was purchased by a blind sißter with whom he lived, and he gave no sign of existence save when at night his steps could be plainly, heard racing Mb back yard, which, that he might escaps prying eyes, he had. roofed in with canvas. The mystery at his death remained unsolved. A physician named Blore, who lived at the end of the eighteenth century, was suddenly seized With a hatred of his kind, and resolved until his death never to see, or be seen by, man. So he had made a large, bell-shaped structure of wickerwork, open at the top to admit air and food. Into this, having caused it to be pi iced in the hall of his house, he, having bidden a solemn farewell to his wife and daughters, descended through the aperture In this case insanity was at-the bottom of the matter, and Biore perished by his own hand in less than a week after he had taken possession of his strange dwelling. The late E. P. Whipple, the American lecturer and critic, used to tell of an eccentric New Yorker, who, having read a pamphlet on immurement as practised by the mediaeval religious orders, was possessed by an irresistible desire to copy their procedure—though, not in his own person. This he gratified with the assistance of an tlderly pauper, who, in consideration of a handsome annuity allowed to his wife, egreed to be confined in a small dangeon built in the walls, In this cell he spent four years of his life, being fed through a small aperture so contrived as not to permit a sight of the "voluntary prisoner.

A strange fancy seized a Viennese watchmaker some years ago. He shut himself up in his house, and till his death, seven years later, wag never seen again by mortal eyes. All the windows were closely shuttered, and such communication as he had with the outside world was carried on after dark through an aperture made in the door. He continued, to some extent, to work at his trade, at which he was an expert; watches, clocks, &\., to be repaired being taken in and returned through the same small opening. M A.GNETIC MYSTEEIES. Alaska, it appears, has no monopoly in magnetic rocks that distress the mariner and surveyor. Not long ago a party of Bussian explorers found their needle swing round 180 deg. Parry, in his secqnd voyage in the Fury and Hecla, observed a considerable local deviation of the compass when off the shore of Igloolik. At Bluff Harbor, South Island, New Zaaland, there is a focus of magnetism on the summit of the' bluff; and during the survey of South Island, the officers of H.M.S. Acheron had to abandon the use of compass bearings. A similar disturbance was observed by Gaptain Creak, when surveying near Port/ Walcott, North.West Australia. He came across a submerged square mile of rock which made the needle of his compass hop about fifty degrees and more from where it should have been. Upon the Norwegian coast in the Joedern province is a magnetic mountain, about a thousand yards long, but of no great height. Its influence is such that vessels venturing too near the coast lose their bearings and frequently are wrecked. Nobody quite knows who first discovered that a certain kind of stone would attract iron, and nobody knows who first turned the knowledge to account. One gentleman of whom there is record lived at a date early enough to indicate a respectable antiquity for the science. From his case it would seem that the first to employ the mariner's compass was not a mariner at all, but a gentleman who ruled the Chinese 2637 years before the dawn of the Christian era. It was the Emperor Hoang-ti. A certain friend of' his, a Prince Tchipeou, had annoyed the monarch, who put out after the unmannerly one to relieve him,of his peacock's feather, hia. yellow waistcoat, his head and other unconsidered trifles. But the Prince with* his legions came across a fog, and into this, with all his fighting men he dived, The excellent Emperor, left on the outside, did not know from which side to enter the mist, nor in what direction to proceed when he did get inside. So ha 'made a car, which showed them the four cardinal points; by this means he overtook Tchiyeou, made him prisoner, and put him to death.' The magnetic needle in its crudest form was employed for th&t car.