FROM FAR AND NEAR

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 33, 8 February 1905, Page 9

FROM FAR AND NEAR

' * c c "Duty first, pleasure afterwards."' as t she Customs House Officer observed to the gentleman from abroad who had brought back with him a couple of boxes of cigars for his own personal s smoking. t I Scolding is mostly a ttabit. It is often the result of nervousness and an irri- 5 table condition of both mind and body. A person is tried* or annoyed at some trivial cause, and forthwith commences finding fault with everything and everybody within reach. Scolding is a habit very easily formed. It is astonishing how soon one becomes addicted to it t and confirmed in it. It is an unreasoning and unreasonable habit. Persons 1 who once get intb the way of scolding always find something to scold about. ] If there is nothing else, they begin scolding at the mere absence of any- c thing to scold at. It is an extremely disagreeable habit- It is contagions, j Once introduced into a family, it is pretty certain in a short time to affect 1 all the members. One of tbe greatest curiosities of the day is to be seen just now at the < Metropolitan Music Hall. Edgware-road, London, in the twin sisters, Rosa and •Toscpha Biazek. These young ladies, who hail from Bohemia, are joined •together much as were the Siamese twins, and appear to have enjoyed good health, on the whole, from the time of their j birth in 1878. In many respects they act quite independently of each other. One will sleep, while the other is busy i over some task: indeed, they never both sleep at the same time. They differ, too. in their tastes, one preferring wine, while the other favours beer. They speak German and Czech fluently, and though they can engage in totally independent conversations in different languages at the same time, they have never been known to quarrel, which says a good deal for their amiability. In Paris, at least, the pawnshop has quaint, half-pathetic humours which it would probably be difficult to match in any other country. This is the time of year for renewals, and the expiry of the date makes it possible to take an in ventorr of old pledges remaining cr gone. This year a small object pledged for 11/S in 18(59 has been withdrawn, after 36 annual renewals, involving £ 1 13/4. Among the other "relics" still remaining is a mantel ornament pledged for 5/ 22 years ago, and regularly renewed. But the champion "relic" of the place is an ivory-headed cane, on which the owner has paid 7W a year since 1859. A Home paper gives two extracts from letters written by soldiers lighting in the Far East which paint vivid pictures of the realities of war. Here is the first extract —it comes from a soldier in the division of General Tarnhegeff. and waa writte-n after the battle of Liao Yang: — "It was left to our men," he says, "to keep off the Japs under their Geueral Oku. They made six attacks upon us in two days. The slaughter was awful. In the third battalion were rive men from Andreyevo. and all were dead. Toporsky had bis head taken clean off by a shell, and the shell, without bursting, went on clean through his brother Luka. I myself saw Yakovleff bayonetted by a Jap, who stuck in his bayonet to the bUt. and then gave a. yell that made mv I blood run cold. Kuznetsoff. also from Andreyevo. was killed by a bullet which went into his mouth and stuck in the back of his neck. . . . The Jap shrapnel : and machine guns kilted every man with- \ in ten yards of mc. and for a quarter of ! an hour T was the only man standing ! in that part of the works. T nearly fainted, and every time I saw t ._ e flash of a gun T said to myself. "Thank God. Em dead at last:''" j Horses shy because -they are descended from ancestors accustomed to roam [over plains, where any tuft of grass or hush might conceal an enemy waiting to spring on them. Under tbes* circumstances, they must often have saved themselves by at onep starting away on observing any sudden or unexpected movement, or on coming* without warning upon some strange object. This is supposed to have become a habit which has descended to their domesticated descendants. Tho donkey, on the other hand, is descended from animals which dwelt in the hills, among which there are precipices and dangerous paths—hence the strrefootedness and comparative slowness of the donkey. TTis ancestors" wpre not jso liable to sudden attacks of wild I beasts and of snakes. Moreover, sud- | den and wild starts on alarm would have j been positively dangerous to them. : Hence they learned to avoid the very I habit wh'eh proved so useful to the j horse in the plains. The habit of eating thistles, which is j almost peculiar to the donkey, is also supposed to come from these same ancestors. Living in dry and ban-en localities, they found little food, and hence learned to eat hard- and dry and. if necessary, prickrj; plants*