MISCELLANEOUS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 439, 16 September 1870, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

A curious marriage occurred recently in St. Louis. A stone-blind bridegroom was led by his blushing brile to the altar of a justice of the peace. That benevolent functionary felt it to be his duty to inform the poor blind man that the nosen r f his heart was really one of the ugbest women in the world, and that she had already, to his certain knowledge, bin i id two husbands. To this the bridegroom vespon :ed that he had seen the lady a great many year ago, and that according to the best of bis recollection: she was then “ a thing of beauty,” and - ‘a form of life and light.” A puppy of the retriever breed created some considerable consternation in a booksellers shop by entering the window, on literary investigation bent, and turning over a number of val liable books anti prints with bis muddy paws. Coaxing was resorted to in vain, and at length the intruder, having been captured, was ignominioualy ejected, after the administration of such a lesson as he— although ostensibly in the pursuit of knowledge—was evidently unwilling to learn. Mr. Henry Bessemer (the inventor of the steel process ) proposes to do away with at once and for ever with ser-sickness. By an application of the principle upon which a ship’s compasses are suspended, he provides a roi'iu which will be perfectly free from the rolling or pitching motion of the vessel. The suspended chamber is hemisperical in shape, and can be made with a glass roof. It moves inside a guard to protect it from any wave washing on to the deck, and as applied to such a vessel as Mr. Fowler proposes to construct, would seat comfortably two hundred passengers. A break is fitted to it which in case if need would fix it, and permit it to answer to the motion of the vessel. The “ Broad Arrow ” writes Some few months since, Mr. Childers, in his determination to cut down the navy estimates, decided on discharging five hundred stokers from the navy j but no sooner was his degree executed than it wasfound thatthe services of stokers were indispensably necessary in all steamships. It was accordingly decreed that the stokers were to he enticed back to Her Majestic’s service ;hut. blind mortals they are they wont return—all have been quickly absorbed in the service of the great steamship companies, where, at any rate, they expect to find thatthe engagements entered into with them will be rigidly kept. At present the reservers of stokers are so short that whenever a ship has to be navigated from port to port, stokers have to be hired for the job, at the rate of five shillings per diem, with the travelling expenses paid back to their homes from the port of destination. This is another foolish system, inaugurated (we will not say by the present Board of Admiralty) by the infatuation with which Whigs and Tories alike have been seized to aid for the votes of th° masses by swearing that the pockets of the taxpayers of the day are the highest objects of a state-man’s concern. Efficiency of the services is our cry, and efficiency means economy, and neither are to be compassed by folly or injustice.