SCISSORS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4162, 24 November 1884, Page 4

SCISSORS.

In Kansas a man cannot sell his land without the consent of his wife. Cornwall has the largest consumption of snuff of any county in England. Only one voter in fire can write his name in the Southern States of America. England has 65,000 acres in hops, of which 40,000 arc in Kent. The first London play-house was erected in 1570. Eight hundred churches are destroyed annually by fire in the States. Switzerland possesses 10,000 watchmakers who turnout 1,G00,000 watches annually. A prize of 2000fr is offered by the Temperance Society of Paris for the best work on drinks, both temperance and alcoholic. A colonel of tho British volunteers has called upon his men to shave off their moustaches and beards. •^Grand Duke Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt is again giving trouble to the Queen of England. His latest fancy is a lady connected with the Ducal Court at Darmstadt. Princess Louise, eldest daughter of the Prince of Wales just out of the nursery, has two suitors, one the eldest son of the King of Sweden, and the other the Crown Prince of Baden. The Hon. Francis George Hay, who died recently in London of typhoid fever, was a man of somewhat varied experience of life. He served before the mast for threo years in the Navy, and, at the time of his death, was in the service of the British India Steam Navigation Company. One, at least, of his adventures is worth recording;— One of the company's steamers was a few miles off Aden. Mr. Hay was in command of the watch about 1 a.m., when he fancied he noticed a boat drift by, and that he heard a faint scream. He at once stopped the vessel, lowered a boat and proceeded to search for the castaway. Ho was rewarded by discovering tho dead bod}' of a lady and a living child tied together in a boat, which ■was half full of water. The child he adopted, and she is now in the charge of his family. Oddly enough, ho was never able to discover her birth or parentage, and even the name of the vessel on which sho had been a passenger. This sounds like a chapter from a sensational romance, but it is true, notwithstanding. Among the reigning belles of Washington at the beginning of the present century were the Misses Caton, of Baltimore. The eldest, when young, was married to Robert Patterson, a wealthy Baltimore merchant, with whom sho travelled in Europe, where she attracted the attention of Sir Arthur Welleslcy, afterwards Duke of Wellington. Ho followed her from city to city in Europe, and by his unguarded devotion incurred not a little scandal. After her return', her admirer wrote to her by every sailing packet a diary of the society movements 0 iv London. When she became a widow she visited England, but the future hero of Waterloo had meanwhile married, and was unable tj offer his hand. He, however, introduced his elder brother, tl>e Marquis of Welleslcy, who had early in life cordially supported American Independence, and ho soon afterwards became her husband. Sir Arthur continued, through his glorious career, to be one of the warmest of her friends until her death, near London, in December, 1853. One of her sisters was married "to Colonel Hervoy, who served on the Duke of Wellington's staff in the battle of Waterloo, and becoming a widow she subsequently married tho Marquis of Carmarthen, afterwards the Duke of Leeds. Another sister married Baron Stafford, aud 'mother Mr M'Tavish, who was for many years the British Consul at Baltimore.— Boston Budget. ~,_,,-,, ~ In tho diary of Mr Frank Power, the Times correspondent sit Khartoum, reference /says the Argus) was made to the fact that General Gordon had hired the large mission premises on the Nile. To this we may add that recent hies of Roman Catholic iouraals contain a letter from the Right Eev. Monsiguor Sogara, Roman Catholic Bishop of tho Soudan, stating that General Gordon had occupied the Catholic mission station at Khartoum, with the intention of making-it his headquarters. The bishop says that tho mission station is the strongest building in Khartoum and moreover, occupies a splendid strategical position for defensive purposes, having the river on three sides, so that it could only be approached from the town, on one side. From his intimate knowledge of the place, the bishop thinks that, eyen if Khartoum should fall, Gordon would be able to hold out for a while in the mission station. A friendly native informed the bishop that the priests and nuns who were taken captive by the Mahdi were bUU alive, but suffering great hardships. .