SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4072, 9 August 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

The Illinois Watch Company has closed down. Cause : Too much time, too little money. Commodore Garrison is not sick, as was reported. He has been failing in purse, but not in health. San Francisco is not the only afflicted city on the coast. Baker City, Oregon, has a female brass band. The latest society in Melbourne is a Temperance Land and Building Society. All the members are abstainers. Lord Tennyson's son will soon be married to a Miss Boyle. He has declared his intention of treating her tenderly. The scene of Julian Hawthorne's forthcoming novel is laid in Ireland. It will probably contain a dynamite plot. Woman's Eights in California—The right kind of mar., worth all the way from a short bit to a hundred thousand dollars. Tnere in an resthetic young lady in town who always carries a large terra-cotta parasol. She goes by the name of Umber Ella. Murdoch is gradually creeping np in the batting averares of the Australians. He is now fourth, Bannerman having supplanted Scott in the first place. A printers' dispute recently came before the Melbourne Court, and in the course of the hearing Judge Cope stated that he had formerly been a reporter in the London Times office. The Man, a curious Now York publication, demands that all women, on arriving , at the ago of 21, be permitted to use the prefix "Mrs" to their names whether married or not. Victoria now has, thanks to Ministerial patronage, forcing men to retire in favor of Ministers' friends, three ex-lnspcctor-Generals of Prison on half-pay, and another on full pay, all walking about the colony. The judicial statistics of France for the last five years show that there has been a ■yearly average of over three hundred men tried for murder in various degrees, while the average number of executions amounted to but five a year. An eccentric woman hermit died recently at Shirley, England, and among her effects an old piano was sold for half a crown. It turns out to be of the year 1780, 13 years after the making of the first piano in England. Offers of £150 have been made for this antique curio, which is valuable in the history of piano-making. It is feared by the Congregationalist that the " good old practice of talk on personal religion between the pastor and his people '' is going out of fashion. Etiquette in some church circles now forbids a minister to introduce the subject, but to wait until the layman does so, just as a physician docs when a patient calls on him for advice. The Standard Vienna correspondent says a public subscription has been opened for about 200 persons who are sufferers by the burning of the Stadt Theatre. The Jimperor has given 1-000 florins, the Archduke 400, and Nathaniel Rothschild 1000. The two carpenters who are suspected of having caused the iire by smoking in the garret have been arrested. The Ballarat Star mentions that " some people have not yet lost faith in the old Eureka, the scene of the insurrection of 1854, where a good deal of sold was obtaiucd in the early days. Within the past few weeks a couple of small parties have put down shafts on the now celebrated spot, and each body of diggers is sanguine of unearthing some treasure missed by the men of 1854." A woman named Cummins, aged about 15, was removed from a house in Ourzon street, Birmingham, on June 2, to the borough lunatic asylum, as she was evidently of unsound mind and apparently destitute. After her removal, the relieving officer and a police-constable searched the house. In a tin box, concealed iv the collar, they discovered £2,202, all in gold. Professor Clellund, of Glasgow University, said in a recent lecture on terminal forms of life, that man was " a terminus " ; anatomical evidence showed ho had reached the limit of development to vertebrato life. Hence it was in the last degree improbable that in the future there would be a j>rogression in the construction of the human body that would give birth to greater intelligence than was possessed by the sages of antiquity. A young couple in humble lifo were going through the ceremony of civil marriage before the mayor of one of the arrondissemonts of Paris a few weeks ago. "The woman is everywhere to follow her husband,'' said the functionary, reciting the usual formula. "I decline to promise that," said the bride, with great decision. "What do you mean," inquired the mayor. "My husband is a letter-carrier in the suburbs," replied the cautious creature, in a mincing tone. The following biography of Moses was furnished by a board school boy who was competing for ono of Mr. Peck's prizes : — " He was an Egyptian. He lived in an ark made of bullrushes, and he kept a golden calf and worshipped braizen snakes, and et nothing but kwales aud manna for forty years. He was caught by the hair of his head while riding under the bough of a tree, and he was killed by his son Absalom as he was hanging frpm the bough. His end was pease." A correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, writing of Scotch Sabbatarianism says: — This reminds me of a story I have heard Irving tell about an old Scotchwoman (living not far from Balmoral) who criticised the Queen somewhat hestiloly for having ridden out on a Sunday. Met with the retort that Christ Himself plucked ears of wheat on the Sabbath, the orthodox old person (no doubt a member of the Sabbath Protection Society) exclaimed, "Ah, yes; I ken all about that: and I dinna think any the better on Him for it.'" A clock at Brussels has been going for ci°"ht months, and has not required to bo wound up sincG it was first set a-going. In fact, the sun does the winding of this timepiece. A shaft exposed to the sun causes an up-draught of air which sets a fan in motion. This fan actuates mechanism which raises the weight of the clock until it readies the top, and then puts a break on the fau until the weight has gone down a little, when the fan is again liberated and proceeds to act as before. Mr Samuel Berry, of Adelaide, has received information of the death of his son, Mr Fred. H. Berry, in South Africa. The deceased was educated at St. Peter's College, Adelaide. Ho was captain of the Frontier Light Horse, under General Buller, in the Zulu war. After the close of the war he resigned his commission. His next enterprise was ivory hunting while out with a party ho was bathing in the river with several companions, when he was seized by an alligator, and no trace of him was afterwards seen. It is little known (writes a correspondent of the Pall Mull Gazette) that the germ of that fine poem ''The Princess," is to be found in the last chapter of Dr. Johnson's Eassclas:—" The Princess thought that of all sublunary things knowledge was the Lest. She desired first to learn all sciences, and then proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would preside- . that, by conversing with the old and educating the young, slieinight divide her time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise np for the next a«ro models of prudence and patterns of pioty." The latest thing in portraits, and, presumably, the most indestructible and enduring (Frank Leslie's Newspaper says), arc those painted on marble slabs, and afterwards chemically treated and baked in such a way us to force the likeness into and through the solid stone itself. A portrait of a prominent New Yorker done in this way, and recently arrived from London, is valued at 2,000d01. It is on a slab of marble, liv. thick, and 24 x SOiu. in bize. Its surface is as smooth as glass, and of it the owner said : — " You may grind on it all day with pumice stone and you cannot hurt it. So long as oven, a shaving is left the portrait remains unharmed. Split it up with a saw and every isliceis two portraits." During the progressof the drainage scheme being carried out in Pontefvact, some interesting discoveries have been brought to light. Human remains have been discovered within the Castle precincts in a good state of preservation, although buried no doubt during the sieges of the castle (1045 to 1648). A well has also been discovered near the Booths, ■which in all probability was used by the in-

mates of St. Nicholas' Hospital at one time the oldest foundation in Pontefract. In crossing Grange Field, where stood the Priory of St. John the Evangelist, founded by Robert de Lacoy in the time of William Ruf us (1090), some vestiges of the Monastery have been brought to light, and it is believed by some antiquarians that the foundations of the structure still remain intact, buried at no great depth.