MISCELLANEA.

Cromwell Argus, Volume 2, Issue 84, 20 June 1871, Page 7

MISCELLANEA.

e The marriage of the Princess Louise to the e Marquis of Lome was celebrated in good ear- ■, nest by the lighting of a bonfire, the mate--7 rials of which were peat and wood soaked in e paraffin, on the summit of Ben Nevis. A e torchlight procession, in descending the r mountain after igniting the bonfire, followed ; f and the whole effect was very novel and brils liant. How to Preserve Potatoes.—The following £ is a recipe for keeping potatoes for years ; Dust over the floor of the bin with lime ; ' put in about six or seven inches of potatoes, and then dust with lime as before. Repeat , the operation till all are stowed away. One bushel of lime will do for forty bushels of ( potatoes, though more will not hurt them, the lime rather improving the flavour than , otherwise. i On March 6, Ellen Sinclair, wife of a wea- • ver at Stow, near Galashiels, Scotland, cut [ the throats of her boy and girl, aged three and eleven years respectively, and afterwards severed her own windpipe. The girl died immediately, but the boy lingered a few hours. The woman is expected to recover. The only reason assigned for the murder is , that she had been accused of stealing some , articles of grocery. M. Thiers is 74 years old, and succeeds to an Emperor aged 63. The King of Prussia is the same age as Thiers. Von Moltke is ■7O, 7on Roon 68, and Bismarck 57 only. Prince Gortschakoff is 71. Lord Russell is nearly 80; Mr Disraeli, 66 ; Mr Gladstone, 63 ; Guizot, 80 ; De Remusat, 74 ; St. Marc Girardin, 70 ; Dufaure, 73 ; V. Hugo, 69 ; Cremieux, 75 ; in d Jules Favre, 62. The Due de Nemours is 57 years old ; the Prince de Juinville, 53 ; the Due D’Aumale, 49 ; and the Comte de Chambord, 51. Gambetta |is only 32, and the Comte de Paris, 33. | Jules Simon is aged 57 ; Lord Granville, 56 ; 1 and Louis Blanc, 58. A terrible affair has lately taken place in | Soho. A Frenchman and his wife, with their four children, had been living for some years in Pulteney-street; three months ago, two of the children died, and the loss appears to have been keenly felt by the parents. It is also stated that, owing to the siege of Paris, a firm in that city, which the man represented in London, had been compelled to give up their business. Reports of firearms were heard, and the neighbours, on entering their apartments, found the Frenchman and his wife both dead—the woman from a pistol shot through the brain, and the man with a bullet through his heart. It is supposed by some that the man firs); shot his wife and then himself; and by others, that, as two separate revolvers were used, the woman 1 j shot herself, and the man himself. Where the Sun never Sets.—The follow- 1 ing graphic passage is from the description of a scene witnessed by a Mr Campbell and his party in the north of Norway, from a cliff one thousand feet above the level of the sea:—“ The ocean stretched away in silent vastness at our feet; the sound of the waves * scarcely reached our airy look-out; away to j the north the great old sun swung low along I the horizon like the slow beat of the pondu- i c lum in the tall clock of our grandfather’s ‘ parlor corner. We all stood silent, looking at our watches. When both hands came together at twelve, midnight, the full round orb hung triumphantly above the wave—a bridge of gold running due north spanned 1 s the water between us and him. There he 1 f shone in silent majesty which knew no sett- il ing. We involuntarily took off our hats ;i £ and no word was said. Combine, if you can, i the most brilliant sunrise and sunset that | < you ever saw, and its beauties will pale be-1 fore the georgeous coloring, which now lit up j a the ocean, heavens, and mountains. In half j an hour the sun had swung by perceptibly on I c his beat, the colors changed to those of ■ f morning, a fresh breeze rippled over the j flood, one songster after another piped up in j 1 the grove behind us—we had slid into 1 1 another day.” I Accidents caused by horses bolting with I buggies and other vehicles are so frequent, that. t wo are glad to call attention to a new and valu-1 able invention of the Melbourne Carriage Com- | a pany. The object of the contrivance is to en-1 c sure the safety of persons in vehicles when the I horses run away. By a very simple arrange- j ment, the animals can be instantaneously de- rj tached from the shafts. The invention was practically tested, and was found to answer perfectly. The A ryus says :—“ The new invention was made by Mr Thomas, one of the members of the Carriage Company, who, having an order from a timorous clergyman for a buggy, but only on condition that a horse could be detached from it the moment it ran away, accepted the condition, and has new perfected a plan by which not only men, but ladies and children, may drive about without any nervous fears of danger 1 through runaway horses." The cost of attach- a ing the contrivance is nominal. c