NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

NEWS FROM ALL QUARTERS.

HIS LAST FOURPENCE. After spending £1000 in less than nx| months, Arthur Colson (60), a Molesey car-i penter, put his last fourpence in the gasl meter, and two hours later was found lying dead with his head in a gas oven. The money was left him by his wife who died eight months ago after a long illness. It is believed that the worry of his wife's illness unhinged his mind. TRIPLETS' NAMES. Mrs. B. Hartley, of Yerbury Road, Holloway, has given birth to triplets, two girls and one boy, in the Royal Northern Hospital. The girls weigh 31b 12oz and 31b 14oz, and the boy 51b. All are doing well. They have been given the names of Ann. Betty, and Cedric, after nurse Miss Ann Leydon, house-surgeon Miss Betty Darling, and the visiting doctor, Mr. Cedric Lane Roberts. MARRIAGE BY SIGNS. A wedding between a deaf and dumb couple was solemnised at Newport recently by means of signs. The parties were Mr. W. H. Abraham, of Bargoed, and Miss Violet Chappell, of Newport. The service was conducted with the assistance of an interpreter of the deaf and dumb language. Mr. Abraham and Miss Chappell met at the Deaf and Dumb School, Swansea, where they were being trained. FARCE OF AN OLD ACT. The most peculiar manner of spending Bank Holiday is that of Mr. J. H. Whitham, secretary to the ancient Cutlers' Company, of Sheffield. He sits in the Cutlers' Hall every August Bank Holiday waiting for manufacturers who never turn up. An Act of Parliament, passed in 1790, says a meeting shall be held on the first Monday in August to elect twelve assistants to the company. Nobody ever turns up for this meeting, but as it would cost from £700 to £800 to alter the Act the secretary'has still to attend. LITTLE DORRIT'S CHURCH. The famous flagstaff, with its Royal crown, which for two centuries surmounted the tower of St. Olave's Church, Tooley Street, S.E., has been presented by the.proprietors of Hay's Wharf, the owners of the site, to St. George's Church, Borough High Street. This is the church immortalised by Charles Dickens as "Little Dorrit's Church." St. Olave's tower is in course of demolition and three belle which hang from its ancient rafters are to be .given to St. Olave's Church, now being built at Mitcham. SMALLPOX IN CHURCH. After a wedding at Mountain Ash, Glamorganshire, when the bridal party were about to partake of the wedding breakfast, the bridegroom complained of feeling unwell, and eventually a doctor was called in and diagnosed smallpox. The bridegroom was removed to the local isolation hospital for treatment and the bride returned home. The wedding guests had also to return home, but not before they had all been medically examined. The church was disinfected, and the bridal party were strongly advised to be revaccinated to avoid infection. IN CELLAR COOL. Deep down in the basement of a building in Copenhagen there is a cellar known to every Dane. It is called "Andersen's Cellar," and no summer-time visitor to Denmark's capital can claim to have seen "all the sights" without having descended into its cool depths, there to find the long deal table running down the centre of the place groaning under its weight of dishes piled high with strawberries, quart jugs oi cream partly whipped, great basins oi sugar-*-and nothing else. And there to find that for the modest sum of about sixpence one can eat a fill one is not likely to f orgel to the end of one's days. WAR ON THE WEEDS. Weeds are to be eradicated from Canada, They are troublesome and costly, and conferences are now being held at variout provincial schools of agriculture preparatory to a big anti-weed campaign. The conferences are being attended by field supervisors, . weed inspectors, councillors, reeves and other municipal officials as Well as by members of the general public. The latter are given free lectures on the approved methods for the control and destruction of weeds, the unchecked growth of which involves a teavy toll on crops oi all kinds. The air cervices are, of course, doing good work, by spraying. RHYTHMIC HORRORS. "There are few things which make me want to kill anybody, but if a person drums his fingers on the breakfast table I feel positively murderous," said Dr. ! Percy C. Buck, professor of music at University College, in a lecture at Oxford. i "It is the reiterated rhythm which cause* ■ this, for there is nothing in a song which • plays on any person's feelings so much ac persistent rhythm. There are certain i tunes which nearly drive me mad. Sit- • ting dowjn at the piano and playing the 1 hymm 'New Every Morning Is the Love,' entirely brushes me up the wrong way. • because it has no rhythm. It just drones on with no shape or breathing space except when you are compelled to make [ one yourself in order to save your life, ! which everyone does by taking a big gasp \ in the middle and packing up the tune ' as best one ".an." OVERCROWDING PERIL. s Disclosures of serious overcrowding in • the Borough of Bermondsey are made dn , the yearly report of the Medical Officer of - Health (Dr. R.'King Brown), who states . that in 1927 as many as 2763 families were living "in overcrowded circumstances ex- • ceeding the L.C.C. standard of two per- - sons to a room." A census undertaken by t the council showed that in one instance 3 a •family of eleven persons, and in two l cases families of ten, had only a single i room. There were 192 families of five s persons, 585 of four and 1902 of three with . only one room to live in. Commenting on i the seriousness of the question, Dr. b Brown emphasisies the injury that is done to health in the spread of tuberculosis and infectious and zymotic diseases. "There are," he writes, "numerous other diseases i that might 'be classed as social diseases; in - overcrowded rooni6 young children do not ) get proper sleep, and consequently become > nervous and irritable; there is also the , question of morality; and, further, owing t to the lack of accommodation the memi bers of the family are driven to frequent , public houses and overcrowded and unhealthy places of amusement."

AN AIR "WARNING." An air pilot tells of a strange premonition that recently saved hrm from probable disaster. Elying at a high altitude, be was suddenly conscious of a "feeling" that another plane was near him, hidden in the cloud through which his own plane was passing. He could neither see. nor hear the approaching plane, but the sensation was strong, and he dived out of the cloud. As he did so, a second plane appeared and passed close above him. A moment later and a collision could hardly Eail to have .occurred. WHY THUNDER FEAR? The view that at is not the noise of thunder, but the mysterious origin of the noise which disturbs some people is strongly supported by the story told about »n 18th century Court official who occupied a, famous old house on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, which is changing hands. He used to go down to the cellars whenever there was a thunderstorm and stay there till the sky cleared. He always took down with him a drummer, whose business it was to drum as loudly as he could and prevent his master from hearing the thunder. That was a clear case of Dread of the Unknown. * ARCHBISHOP HORSE-BREEDER. The Archbishop of Canterbury's right to grant musical degrees, seldom exercised, has been forgotten. His Grace has allowed one of the duties laid upon bearers of his great office by Henry VIII. to lapse entirely. This is the breeding of "great horses," of which the King decreed that he should keep a stud of 16. writes the "Looker-on," in the "Daily Chronicle." It would cause a little flutter in the Shire Horse Society if the next archbishop decided to carry out this duty, for they could hardly do less than make him their president, though his shovel hat and gaiters would be quite in keeping with his status. BIRD-EATING SPIDERS AT THE ZOO.' Two of the largest bird-eating spiders ever seen at the London Zoo have just arrived from Brazil. . Nearly a foot in expanse, with poison fangs %in long, and huge hairy bodies, they are probably the most repulsive creatures imaginable. One of them is quite docile, but the other will unhesitatingly attack. Its method is to rear itself on the hinder legs holding the front pair in the air ready to get a grip of the hand that seeks it and plunge its fangs into the flesh. Another tactic is to brush its fur with its hind legs, causing stinging hairs to float around, and if these settle on the human skin the effects are very painful. LONDON'S UNCHANGED PRE-GREAT FIRE TAVERN. The Old Wine Shades in Martin's Lane, Cannon Street, London, is probably the only licensed house in the City that, having survived the Fire, has undergone no structural change since that catastrophe. Here, are to be seen the most perfect examples extant of those old wooden "pews" beloved by our forefathers, each furnished with its appropriate oaken table, worn smooth by centuries of use. The labyrinthine cellars are almost certainly much older even than the superstructure. Arches of masonry of enormous strength support massive oaken beams such as in these days are rarely seen even in a timber yard; while sundry bricked-up passages would seem to indicate that this subterranean maze was once of even greater extent than at present. GIDDY FEAT. A young Cologne confectioner's apprentice. Hans Meyer, who last February climbed up and danced on the top of one of the cathedral spires, 512 ft high, has again repeated the daring feat in spite of a barbed wire obstruction put up to prevent such attempts. This ,time he affixed a large flag, bearing the inscription, "Olympiade, Amsterdam," to the weather vane.. On the first occasion the youthful adventurer was acclaimed as a> hero, and the police, who arrested him for • endangering the public and himself, set him free on payment of a small fine and. presented him with a bouquet of flowers. This second ascent, however, appears to have resulted in nothing more than a period of detention in the local lock-up. SAD WEDDING DAY. ■ Two hours after her wedding a Tunbridge Wells bride was mourning the death of her mother, who had been at" the ceremony. When the service had ended one of the wedding party went towards the bride's mother. Mrs. Malpass, who had been sitting in the church to ask her to witness the signing of the marriage register. It was then found that Mrs. Malpass had suffered a stroke. A doctor was called and she was taken to a nursing home. The bride and bridegroom, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Ragge, had left the church for King Charles Hall, where the wedding guests were gathered. At the news of Mrs. Malpass 1 serious condition the guests dispersed after a brief reception. Mrs. Malpass died shortly, afterwards. BACK TO ST. KILDA. A 17-year-old St. Kilda girl, Eacliel Gillies, who, previous to coming to Fleetwood a few months ago, had never left St. Kilda and had not seen a motor car, railway train, horse, tree or cinema picture, has returned**© her native island home. She was not enamoured of the stress and turmoil of life as lived in England, and after the first few weeks of excitement at the strangeness of her surroundings and the novelty of things she saw, she began to long for the quiet, solitary life of St. Kilda. Her desire for return to the life lived by St. Kilda people—who during the winter are cut off from the outer world, save for occasional visits of Fleetwood steam trawlers which seek its shelter during stormy weatherwas emphasised by her anxiety to know "how mother would be going to gather the peat for the winter" without her. CURRENTS CHANGE. A remarkable fact was recently reported by Captain W. H. Parker, the commander of the White Star Hner Homeric, on its arrival at Southampton from New York He stated that it was discovered that the currents in the Gulf Stream from longitude 40 west to longitude 60 west, were running westward instead of eastward, which is the usual direction. It indicated that at this point the Gulf Stream is not consistent. Similar conditions were found by the captain of the Majestic on lte outward trip, many miles to the north £u- the * rack followed by the Homeric, lnis phenomenon is believed to be due to an eddy or eddies caused by the easterly winds, and to be purely local. +U u btrean »'B influence on the weather has, of course, long been the subject ot speculation among scientists. CURIOUS MEETING. London has a butler who is addressed as ' Sir" in the most respectful way by a guest at the house where he officiates, writes a London "Evening News" correspondent. This is explained very simply by the fact that during the war he was a major in the army and the guest served under him in the same regiment as a private. The situation has arisen at a house in Bayswater, W., the occupier of which is a brother of the guest. When the latter first arrived and the door was opened by a dignified figure in a butler's sombre dress he ejaculated in surprise, "Good heavens! Major ! How are you, sir?" From that moment he has always called the butler "Sir." His old awe of his former major, like an "old boy's" awe of his former headmaster, has been undiminished by the passage of years. The butler, upholding the traditions of' his new position, calls his former private "Sir" also, and the two men, who are on excellent terms, "finf- each other; alternately.