SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4131, 18 October 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

Henry Ward Bcecher's library is valued at iy0 J o"0O dollars. It is not perhaps generally known that the pension of £2000 per annum which fell vacant on the death of Lord Beaconsfield is still at the disposal of Mr Gladstone. Rumour declares that it is being reserved for Mr Chiklcrs, who is intended to adorn the hereditary chair some of these days. 'On the 30th August a youth in Cincinnati took home an unoxploded rocket which had fallen from an exhibition of fireworks. Ho tried to open it, but failed, whereupon his mother struck it a vigorous blow with a hatchet. A terrific explosion followed, ■wrecking everything around, and fatally injuring the woman and her daughter, aged twelve "years. The rocket was a sixpounder. From Colorado comes the news that Mr John Dillon, formerly a prominent Irish member, is in Salt Lake City. Mr Dillon lias joined a combination of Denver and Lcadvillo capitalists who arc negotiating •for tho purchase of from one to two hundred thousand acres of laud in tho northern portion of Utah, upon which to settle a large Irish colony. Mr Dillon's friends consider him proof against all polygamic allurements. A diver engaged in diving operations off the coast opposite Gibraltcr, with the object of locating a recent wreck, lias discovered at the bottom from eighty to a hundred large guns, mostly 24 and 32----pouuders, and also two large anchors. They are supposed to have belonged to some large line-of-battle ship which sank in tho old war, possibly after the battle of Trafalgar. As thero was no apparatus for the purpose, none of tho guns were brought up, so that it has not been possible to ascertain their nationality. While a cabman was sitting on the box of his cab a few evenings ago in Market - street, Newark, his horses suddenly disappeared. They had dropped into the sewer, which had caved in under them. While preparations were being made to get them out, tho horses became frightened and ran diit'erent ways along the connecting sewer. One was found a few hundred yards from the break, and backed to that placo and hoisted out. The other had run half a mile alonf the sewer, and was returned to the place of accident with considerable difficulty. It also was extricated finally without"serious injury.

The steamer Retriever, says a lato number of the Panama Star and Herald, was engaged in repairing a break in the West Coast of America Telegraph Company's submarine cable, when a whale measuring from 70 to 75 feet in length, fouled its-elf in the wire. In its struggles to get free the cable cut into its right side, the entrails and large quantities of Wood issuing from the wound and floating round the ship. In the last dying struggle of the captive it parted the cable, and floated away to windward of the steamer. Some days afterwards the Retriever returned to pick up the piece of cable in which the whale had been entangled. It was then found that tho fish had drifted away, and that the cable was twisted up in a most curious fashion. In no fewer than six dill'ercnt places it had been bitten through sufficiently to stop all communication. Tho Chinese Minister at Washington addressed his countrymen in New York the other day. Ho said:—" Attend to your business carefully and conscientiously, no matter how humble it may be. Lot the citizens of this metropolis know how honest and capable our race is. They will find ere long that, however superior thcy_ may be to us in the arts of war and of machinery, ■we still can teach them lessons iv that morality and fairplay which in the long run rule the world. I also counsel your return, after you havo succeeded in your business, to your native land. However much you may become Americanised, you aro ever a stranger in a strange land. The laws, religions, customs, and habits will ever be foreXn to you, and more or less barbarian. Only°iu your native land can you find harmony and peace, for which we all yearn. I find in conversing with the magistrates here you have a good record. Of the 10,000 Chinamen ""in New York and its neighbourhood not one has been arrested for "drunkenness, for pauperism, or for being a nuisance, and in ten years only eight have mado themselves amenable to the law for misconduct "

The following are, we believe, among tho changes that will be found in the Revised Old Testament, which will probably be published in the spring of next year:— The " unicorn," which never ex'sted outside the English Bible, will at last be killed, and tho "wild ox" substituted. The " Book of Jasher " will be changed into the ". Book of tho Upright." Sabbath-school children will be no longer troubled by the questionable ethics of the Israelites in "borrowing" jewellery from the Egyptians and then running away with it ; tho revised translation will rightly state that they asked for gifts, not loans. Joseph's manycoloured " coat" will become a " tunic." The passage in the book of Job, " Yet iv my ilosh shall I see God," will read, " Yet out of my flesh," kv. " Judgment also will I. lay to tho line, and righteousness to the plummet," becomes "I will make judgment for a line, and righteousness for a plumb line." In Psalm vii. the passage " Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," will read "Thou hast made him a Tittle lower than God." In Psalm xxxvii. the passage, "Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil," will he changed to "Fret not thyself; it tendeth to evil." An adventure iv the Conway Tubular bridge.—Once upon a time—a good many years ago—a lady and gentleman got permission to walk through the new tubular bridge, which was then a curiosity. A railway porter was with them, and told them no train was expected on. that lino, so they went into the tube and darkness. A strange o-eiitlcman who had joined them went on first, because the lady could not go so quickly, and of course the husband remained to assist her over the rails, and stones, and the "irders which support the sides. But when the lady and gentleman had got half way through, the first man was at the end, and saw the down Irish mail approaching on the very lino on which his acquaintances were! Ho called out—" Take care of yourselves, a train is coming!" and then he waved his hands to the engine-driver. The lad v and gentleman iv the "tube" could not" stand up at tho side, and so they hurried back. It was a terrible race. The "Wild Irishman." whistling and roaring, hissing and straining at the brakes; in front only a few yards to the station, but such longyards ! On came the train, and just as the gentleman rushed from the "tube" and clnifged the lady down, the express came out grinding and growling. They were only just saved by two yards from a terrible death.—Little Folks' Magazine.

No romance is stranger than this brief p;ige of history. When tho Tweed ring ruled supreme in New York, the youngest damrhter <>f Boss Tweed had a superb m:irrnXo, hor bridal gifts alono tolling lo over £25,00(1. Tho costliest present of all was "ivou by Thomas Field?, a king of ihe ring, whoso wife that night in her dazzlim' beauty and queenly mien eclipsed every woman "in the magnificent and dia-mond-decked assembly. That is scone the first. Tho Tweed ring broke ; Fields, no longer a financial king, fled from the law into the wilds of Canada,_ and with him a notorious courtesan. His deserted -wife took to drink. The drosses and jewel» she had secreted found their way

into pawn; and in two years, the magnificent queen of tho Fields' mansion became a common drunkard and a street tramp. Ono winter's night, when sleet and hail drove citizens to their homes, a vagrant in a thin calico dress was seen by a policeman to drop down in the freezing slush of the street. Next day, scene two closed with the burial of Mrs Thomas Fields in a pauper's grave. When Fields deserted his wife, he had placed their daughter, then eight years old, in a convent. But the money for her education ceased to come -and she had to leave. Unable to find employment in New York, her few dollars melted away, and sho was turned out of lodgings in the city to starve. Standing faint and shivering in the very street where her mother had fallen, the girl born iv a palace and reared in luxury, took her haggard beauty to the police station and begged to be taken in, to save her virtue and her lifo. Tho entry in the police-sheet told the closing scene of this romance of New York.