MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1896, 22 March 1880, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Nothing seems impossible in this scientific age unless it be to secure the payment of borrowed money. Most everyone can be stylish and serve dinner in six different courses it the hired girl is posted on beginning with water and ending with baked apples. An average of 600 children are more or less scalded every year in this country by sitting down in kettles of hot water while mothers are gossiping over the back gate. A Boston woman cut her dress from a pattern in a magazine dated 1873 before she discovered that it wasn’t 1879, and it took three doctors to tide her over that long, lonely night, Sawdust Brandy.—We are sorry to learn that a German chemist has succeeded in making a first-rate brandy out of sawdust. We are friendly to the temperance movement, and wish it to succeed ; but what chance will it have when a man can take a rip saw a»d go out and get drunk with a fence-rail! What is the use of proposing to close the publichouses it a man is able to make brandysmashes out of the top of hie tables, or if he can get delirium tremens by drinking the legs of his kitchen chairs ? An inebriate may be shut out of taverns, but if he can become uproarious on boiled sawdust and dessicated window-sills, any effort at reform must necessarily bo a failure. Temperance reformers should butcher the chemist before he makes his invention known to the world.— “ Yazoo Blade.” His Dbsikb. —He was a short, thick-set man, with dyspeptic side whiskers. His gait was about as lively as that of a sick cart horse, and his hat was covered with grass spots. He ambled slowly into the editorial rooms of the “ Sand Flat Snakefang,” took a seat, and said, “ I just dropped in, Mr Editor, to see if ” “I am very busy at present, call in to-morrow,” replied the editor. “ ‘Never put off till to-morrow what can be done today,” is an old time motto, which I always wear in my hat. Would you like to look inside of my hat ? ” “I haven’t time to talk to you, sir,” said the editor again. “ You shouldn’t he so rash. Now, you don’t know who I am. I may bo the head of a convention coming to inform you of your nomination for Congress, or I may be a shabby old miser who has selected you as his heir to a large estate.” “ Will you leave, sir ? ” “You needn’t get mad in that style. I didn’t come here to tell you that I have long been a reader of your valuable paper, or ” “ Who are you, anyhow ? ” asked the editor, jumping to his feet. “ Well, I’ll tell you who I am. I’m the evolver of a patent pill, and I have been having verses written on it which I am going to insert in the papers at advertising rates. The verses are mostly of a bucolic turn ; for instance : If you would feel as lively as June’s sun kissed daffodils. Be not an hour without a box Of J. Maguffin’s pills. “ Hero is another ”: Thou who life serenely huegest, If thou burdened are with ills,

Purchase J. Maguffin’s pills. For sale by erery druggist. “Now, then, I’ve got one more; this is a regular old copper-plated pastoral: If you’d be as gay as the dewy phlox, Which the garden with perfume fills, O purchase J. Maguffin’s pills, They’re twenty-five cents a box. “ Yery nice," said the editor, in tones which showed that he was conscious of the fact that ha had made a sad error, and that he yet might get the yerses to publish in his paper. “ Yes, I know, but they are too nice for the ‘ Snakefang.’ I was going to give about 4000 dollars per year, but now I won’t. You are not polite enough. I only advertise with polite men. I’ll go and have these verses painted on the fences ; that’s what I’ll do. Fence space costs nothing,” and he made a majestic exit.—“ Brooklyn Eagle.” So far as I know, says Napier, in the S.D.N., this story of the white elephant, the king, and the circus proprietor has never been told, and I am sure readers will admit that it should be. There was, then —it is said—not many hundred miles from the south side of Westminster bridge a circus proprietor who owned a white elephant. There was no mistake about its whiteness, especially on Mondays, when the color was renewed by the aid of a big brush and a pail of whitewash, but after a time the elephant grew leas white, because it was found that the mixture got into the pores and interfered with the elephant’s health. An astute personage, to whom in contemporary literature high military rank has been awarded, observed this with amazement, and one day when looking closely at the elephant discovered that the color came off. Although not so white as before, the creature was white, just as white, in fact, as chalk could make it. The astute personage was angry because he had been deceived, and he began to think big thinks, and find out a plan to cause anguish to the circus man who had deceived his trusting nature. Soon after the discovery had been made the circus man received a letter, and found that the correspondent was none other than the King of Siam. That potentate wrote to say that he had heard of the fame of the noble elephant, and he longed to possess it. He must have it, indeed, for to be without a white elephant would be an absolute source of weakness to his dynasty, and he begged the circus man to name any terms he liked, but to send the elephant. And here the circus man was in a quandary. What could he say ? To send the white elephant was out of the question, as it would have ceased to be white long before it reached Siam. In wondering how best to turn it off to account he suffered as much as the astute personage could have desired, but in the end he hit on a happy plan. He went into the ring and addressed the people. He had received, he said, this tempting offer from a monarch whose only regret was that he could not come over and see the circus, of which he had heard so much, and with the enormous expenses daily incurred in providing such unparalleled entertainments the offer of £20,000 was tempting. But, tempting as it was, he could not find it in his heart to deprive “ the nobility and gentry of the Borough road ” of their favorite animal. For their sakes he had refused the kingly offer, and decided to retain the white elephant, which would next appear in its unrivalled performance. Enter the the elephant. Exit the astute personage wondering whether he had got much the best of it. [Cheers.] Thb Pioneeb Backet. —“ Yes, gentlemen,” said a seedy looking customer with a long beard, who had rung in on a party of tourists in the Baldwin bar-room the other evening, “ I was the first white American that ever set foot on the site of San Francisco. Many the night I’ve roasted hem-steak for supper and slept with the sand for a blanket rignt* here where the hotel now stands. I owned the entire country clear down to San Jose, and I trad'd the whole business cneday for ten pounds of tobacco.” “ Five pounds !’* put in the bartender sternly. “ I guess I know how many pounds,” said the oldest inhabitant, somewhat abashed. “You said five pounds last night,” retorted the barkeeper ; “ and I’ve told you mor’n fifty times that if you intend to work the pioneer racket in this ere bar, you must stick to the same story. If you don’t I’ll let Joe Barker work the house instead ; you hear me ?” And the relic of the good old Argonautic days drifted sadly off to the lunch counter. —“ San Francisco Post.”

A lady who has had her period of celebrity in Paris—Mme. Louise Lucene —has just attained her hundredth year. Under the first Empire her salon was as brilliant as that of Mme. Recamior, whose intimate friend and rival in beauty she was. Mme. Louise Lucene, however, mixed herself up with poli • tical intrigues —a course which brought her into a scrape, and dignitaries and officers were invited to abstain from pulling in an appearance at her salon. But she went herself to the Tuileries and pleaded her own cause and the interdict was removed. Preaching the Gospel does not seem to bring large pecuniary reward in Japan at pressnt. We see it stated that at Thihohu a new Presbyterian church has recently been opened, and a graduate of Kioto, who in the service of the Government could commend per month fifly or one hundred dollars, has become the pastor of it at the pitifully small salary of four dollars a month. The importation of opium into China is gradually increasing, as is also the cultivation of opium in the country itself. The imports in 1878 were 71,492 p'iculs. (1 picul equals 1331 b.) Most of the opium finds its way into China by Hong Kong, and the greater portion of it Is of the Malwa kind, the remainder being from Patna, Benares, and other parts of India. About 1100 chests of opium are forwarded every year to the United States for consumption by the Chinese living in California. The value of this export is estimated at 330,000 tads, or £96,250.