SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4127, 14 October 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

London has forty-three theatres. Lady Boavcu is said to bo dying. There is a mosquito plague at Marseilles. Beethoven's piano is on exhibition in London. Coffee was first sold in London, in IGo2, by a Greek. Of the 2000 school teachers in Arkansas, 800 are colored. Japan has only 10,000 paupers in a population of 30,000,000. Snake-shooting is noAV the predominant sport in Connecticut. Potatoes £50 a ton at Wilcannia, as tho result of the drought. The bookmakers cleared about £250,000 at the last Ascot races. Most of the Melbourne Baptist Ministers are said to be smokers. Tavo young ladies have taken one of the Melbourne coffee stalls. Henry Irving has submitted to a fine rather than be vaccinated. The Siberian cattle plague has this year assumed cnoimous proportions. A concert given in Paris for the benefit of Pass de Loup cleared £4000 net. A grandson of the celebrated composer, Bellini, has committed suicide at Nice. An enterprising Melbourne drapery _ firm uses tricycles about the city for deliveries. The school teachers of Vermont arc prohibited by law from using tobacco in any form. It is a Aviso man who can recognise his woodcut portrait in the enterprising newspaper. " Engineer full; boiler empty," is the way a Western paper accounts for an accident. The receipts for foreign missions in tho United Presbyterian Church last year Avere £14,000. Ncav Zealand Carey (of operatic fame) has been variety shoAving in the country towns of Victoria.

The marriage of a twelve-year-old girl to a gentleman of eighty years is reported from Boykin, S.C. Not a single life was lost from shipwreck on the coast of New South Wales during the last year. A Chicago schoolmaster is teaching typewriting to the volunteer pupils of his tAvo upper classes. The competition for designs for the Mozart memorial at Vienna is to be open to artists of all nations.

Mr Henry Irving is reported to havo expended about £9,000 in the mounting of "Twelfth Night."

The Australasian loans to be placed on the market Avithin the next five months total thirty millions.

Penny dinners for school children havo been instituted under the direction of the London School Board.

An oil painting- of the late Sir Richard Torrens is to be placed in tho South Australian Assembly Chamber.

There aro now 52,000 growing trees in Washington, placed at regular intervals along 125 miles of fine streets. During tho past year 14,702 Germans have been sentenced for endeavouring to emigrate to avoid military service. The Midland Raihvay Company has decided to offer premiums for the best kept station gardens throughout their system.

It is said that the American millionaire, Mr Vanderbilt, has offered the Duke of Marlborough £450,000 for the Blenheim Gallery. The very latest is that Mrs Langtry has gone into ecstasies over a 13 year old Chinese boy, tho son of a Avcalthy Celestial merchant.

A number of Jews have been returned to Odessa as destitute British subjects from Cyprus, Avhither they had emigrated to avoid persecution. The 100-ton gun at Gibraltar, recently injured by the bursting- of the shot before leaving the gun, cost the English Government £10,000.

The percentage of recruits in the Italian army who can neither read nor write varies from twenty-seven in Piedmont to seventyfour iv Sicily.

The British Church Missionary Society's income was, at the birth of the Queen, £30,000 ; at her accession, £89,000 ; and is now £232,000.

The death is announced at Marseilles of M. Alfred Audran, a promising tenor, and brother of M. Edmond Audran, composer of " La Mascotto."

Under tho editorial care of Mr Frederic Harrison, the Positivist Society propose to publish a volume to be called The Ncav Calendar of Great Men.

Japan has a fishing population of 1 001,-10 G. At their last national fisheries exhibition tho Japanese showed 3007 articles connected with fishing. A bald-headed man fainted the other day, and was very indignant Avhen lie Avas coming to at hearing a Cockney exclaim, " Give him hair; give him hair !" It is noAV alleged that some of the Jewellery which Casnola says he found under the Cyprus temple cut in solid rock, is machine made, and hails from Newark, N.J. The programme of the new Belgian Minister includes a revision of the School law of 1870, which deprived primary public .schools of the supervision of the clergy. The mean annual increase of adult converts to the Four Free Church Missions in I/h'inn-stone, Africa,, is -100, or more than an average congregation in this country. It is said that Mr Go. so has been fortunate enough to discover an unpublished poem by Gay of some length, which he will print in his forthcoming edition of Gay's works. . Gerald Massey says purity of mmd is essential to a pro-Raphaelite, but ho doesn't toil us that the chief pre-Raphaelite artist ran away Avith tl o wife of the chief preRaplmelite critic. i

An enormous ranche in Mexico has been purchased for £200,000 by a syndicate of English and Scotch speculators, of whom Lord Tweedmouth is one. It extends over 1600 square miles. Dr. Barry, tho primate of Australasia, has strenuously urged the formation of a Christian Evidence Society, to combat with the growth of infidelity as the great enemy to the Christian faith.

A sad accident has occurred on the Calais sands. A boy, 11 years of age, found a shell, and on taking it up to unscrew it, the projectile bust, shattering both the child's logs. Ho died shortly afterwards. An honest Hibernian, in recommending a cow, said she would give milk year after year without having calves, "because," said he, "it runs in the brade, for she came from a cow that neA'er had a calf."

About 2,000 bricklayers and 3,000 labourers struck iv Ncav York on the 21st July for nine hours as a day's work. Tho "bosses " succumbed at once on account of tho number of imperative contracts on hand. Mr. D. S. Drake, the historian of Now England has discovered tho names of 100 persons who took part in the destruction of the British tea in Boston Harbour. He has published the names in a volume called Tea Leaves.

" You told me, Arthur, that your doctor advised you to drink whisky. Has it done you any good?" "Well 1 should say so ! I got a barrel of it two weeks ago, and I could hardly lift it; and iioav I can carry it about the room."

On August 9 Sir George Rose Sartorius, senior admiral of the fleet, completed his ninety-fourth year. Sir George Avho has been upwards of S3 years in the navy, is the only siuwiving officer who took part in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. A Frenchman said to a Berliner: —" Your Iron Cross, the highest Prussian order, is simply ridiculous—it has an intrinsic value of scarce five sous." To which the native of the Prussian capital replied :— '• I don't deny it; but it has, nevertheless, cost you two Napoleons." "The Duke of Cambridge, on St. Switbin's Day, completed the twentyeighth year of his term of office as Com-mander-in-Chief. None of his predecessors ewer hold the post for so long a period." Nor, it may be added, did anyone like the Duke of Cambridge over hold the post before at all.

Mr Charles Edward Neville, avlio served a term for bigamy at Toronto the other day must be a nice sort of young gentleman. The judge sent him to gaol to cure him of his bigamatistical proclivities, Avhen, lo '. and behold, Avhat does he do but elope with the gaoler's wife, having at the time " several of his own " outside the gaol.

A bill introduced into the French Senate by M. Charton proposes to do aAvay with the present mode of inflicting capital punishment, and replace it by a more scientific and less unsightly process. M. Charton suggests that poisoning by prussic acid kills instantaneously, and Avithout pain; and if that mode of destroying life be objected to, lie recommends electricity.

Wheat in 1810 rose to 100s a quarter in England. The Corn LaAV of 1822 named 70s as the minimum. In 1812 Peel tried to fix the price at 555. Iv 1879 a commission was despatched to America to see Avhether it was possible that the United States could continue to land wheat in Liverpool at 42s per quarter. To-day best Adelaide and Victorian—the finest wheat in the Avorld—stands at 335.

The CresAvick correspondent of tho Ballarat Courier is responsible for the following: —A somewhat amusing incident occurred here yesterday. A young man from a rural town walked into a shop in Albert street, which once upon a time was occupied by a barber, but is now used as a dressmaking establishment and in which several young ladies Avere hard at work, when our friend entered, and requested to have his hair cut. Those " darling girls," thinking ho Avas a "young man from tho country," at once agreed, and one of their number soon plied her scissors, and turned him out a regular " mashher." Contrary to his wishes, however, she would persist in docking Ids whiskers, and as she had (accidentally of course) made a terrible gap in them before consulting him, there was no help for it but trim them all round. The young ladies considered the fun sufficient recompense, and refused a fee, but our friend showed his appreciation by shouting a shilling's Avorth of oranges for them, besides leaving enough of his hair to give a lock to every dressmaker in the town.