ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 778, 16 March 1877, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

—o— Wedding presents are going out of fashion across the Atlantic. It is now usual to put in the corner of the wedding it citation card “No presents accepted." American brides, also, now rarely wear white, while no lady over twenty-two is entitled by the present fashion to a bridal veil. The difference of political opinions on the two banks of the Seine in Paris is marked by the literature of the cab-drivers. On the right bank they are all Reds, and whilst sitting waiting on their boxes, read the Radical Rappel, but on the lofc side, in the aristocrat Fanboiirg St. Germ lin, they study the more moderate Republic Francake. “We must not alarm our Conservative fares hero,” say they. The Presidential electoral fever across the Atlantic was running so high when the mail left that one Republican lady positively refused to use a Democratic journal for curl papers. “ When this happens,” remarks a Transatlantic contemporary, “ it is time to pause in our mad career of political discussion.” The relics of the Polcaris Expedition, brought to England by Sir George Nares, have been sent to the American Government. When the Marquis of Salisbury first wont to Constantinople the Turks, believing ho had come to deliver them from Muscovite clutches, called him “ Tchal snpurge ” the “now broom.” Now they find he echoes the sentiments of their enemies, they term him “ Salt Boron ” —“ only a trumpet.” It is said that soVnc new evidence in favor of tlic Tichborno Claimant now in Dartmoor is about to bo brought forward, in the shape,of a letter published in a Spanish newspaper in 1854, in which one Ramon Ortozegni gives, an account of the scuttling of the P.olla, his escape therefrom in company with “ a French or English Count” and three other persons, and their subsequent rescue by the Osprey, which landed them in Melbourne. Ortozegni, who has I recognised the celebrated Chili daguerreo*j type of Sir Roger as tlio likeness of tho “ Count " with whom he was wrecked, is expected to arrive in London in a few • days.

At Woolwich a druggist’s assistant named Christian is iu custody on a ehargeof having attempted to murder a woman whoso daughter had refused to marry him. Jlo is said to have entered her bod-room while sho was asleep and to have held a bottle contabling sumo deadly drug to her lips. Tho daughter, who was in the same bed, scratched his face, and the marks she made with her nails are tho chief evidences of identity, A grocer at Leeds, who advertised that a glass of wine would ho “ given ” to every purchaser of a quarter of a pound of his tea, has been fine:', for a breach of the Licensing Act, the magistrate holding that the wiuo formed part of the contract, and was sold as well as the tea. A curious fish dinner was recently given at Philadelphia by the American Fish Culturists’ Association, when tho hill-of-faro contained fifty-eight different dishes of tho finny tribe. Among the greatest rarities were dried octopus eggs from China, dried fish maws—another Celestial dish—sword fish from Portugal, oolachaus from Alaska, kau-ten pudding, a preparation ot Japaneso seaweed, and a British sole and turbot specially brought over from England. Dr James Maelaren, ot the Stirling District Asylum, Larhert, Scotland, in writing to thank ns (Graphic) for sending him somo some of our coloured pictures and engravings, says :—“ I wish you could have seen the eager delight of a favored few to whom. 1 showed them this morning. It would be difficult to say which picture excited most interest and pleasure, for they all were examined with the utmost delight. One effect, however, I must not let pass without mention and that is the genial, involuntary, hearty laugh that came from one patient, who lias not smi’ed for months, when her eye lighted on tho ‘ fascinating fehow’ disporting him- ’ self so inimitably in ‘La Pastjiirelle.’ Wo asylum physicians have to deal with a very, sensitive and delicate and shattered brain. If you think or” the effect of external objects on mind, you can imagine how much more acutely every discomfort is felt by it when it is prostrate and weak. Thus it is that all that gives pleasure to us blessed with sound minds has a tenfold and most substantial value in tho treatment and care of tho insane, and so gifts such as yours become potent and healing medicines in tho hands of those who can use them aright.” At Bristol the other day a man was tried, convicted, and sentenced to a year’s hard labor for theft. After he was taken off to gaol and his hair had been cropped it was discovered that the grand jury had ignored the bill against him. He was accordingly at once discharged, hut he very' naturally talks of an action for defamation of character and false imprisonment. A man named John Hunt has just been released from Dartmoor after being floggeu and serving three years of a sentence of ten years’ penal servitude for a gavotto jobbery of which it is now clearly proved he was entirely innocent. It is, of course, out of tho power of the Government lo givo back to John Hunt the three years of bis ■ life which have been worse than lost to him, i or to wipe from his memory tho bitlerncs of that degrading castigation. He can never ho fully compensated for the moral injury inflicted upon him, and through him upon his relatives and friends ; but in addition to this they must have suffered a great pecuniary loss, and it is only a matter of common honesty that they should be recouped by mi ample Parliamentary grant. An editor is described as a man who is 1 liable to eirors of grammar, toothache, typographical errors, and lapses of memory, and has twenty-live thousand people watching to catch him tripping—a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief; poorly estimated, yet envied by some of the great men he has made. —Printers’ Misce'lauv. Should hostilities ensue between Russia and Turkey, it is proposed to establish iu Loudon a penny illustrated daily paper entitled tho War. A Chicago paper has tho following local item;—“A balmy resident of this city, a few nights since, undertook to ascend tho closet shelves at his hoarding-house, think-

ing he was going up-stabs to his sleepingroom. The shelves wouldn’t stand it, and they, ho, and the d'&’ies, came tj grief. Loss, fifteen dollars , no insurance.”