Miscellaneous Extracts.

Hastings Standard, Issue 219, 13 January 1897, Page 4

Miscellaneous Extracts.

*■ AN EDUCATIONAL REFORMER

.Joseph Lancaster was one of the earliest and most earnest educational pioneers, and he suffered imprisonment for the heinous crime of teaching poor people to read and write, but with a contumacy characteristic of all ardent reformers, he went on teaching in spite of persecution. Eighty-two years ago he established a school in the Borough Road, Loudon, out of which institution the existing Borough Polytechnic has been evolved. There he taught many poor children entirely free; and among other marvels he achieved was that of securing from George 111. and his family subscriptions to extend the work, which the King's Ministers and all the bishops frowned on so severely. A brass memorial tablet has been set up in the Polytechnic where he opened his school, and this was unveiled the other day by Sir .Joshua Fitch, who has himself been an ardent educationalist throughout his long and busy life.

UTILISING THE FALLS OF NIAGARA.

At one minute past midnight on a recent date the Mayor of Buffalo ordered a salvo of 21 guns to announce the fact that the electric power generated by the Niagara Falls had reached the city. Twenty-six miles away "a lead off" from the great cataract was turning a turbine at a speed of 2-"<0 revolutions a minute, and developing yOOO-horse power of electrical energy. There arc three of these turbines in action, and thus the Falls are perpetually transmitting along the wires an energy of 15,000 liorse-power. In future the tramways in Buffalo will all be worked by the Falls, as will also the chief factories in the city. It is expected that in time the whole of the twenty-six miles between the Falls and Buffalo " will be built solid with smokeless factories," and that the Niagara region will become the greatest manufacturing centre on the continent. Of course the plan will be widely imitated. Perhaps we shall ask in the future not " Has the country got coal?" but "Has it got waterfalls ?"

THE BETTING CRAZE

The New Zealand colonists are great on betting, but the Americans go mad on th<2 vice. How else can one account for the idiotic wages that were made between partisans of Bryan and McKinley ? Men who are still at large made bets with each other on the result of the election that they would shave their heads, half shave their faces, or not shave themselves at all; that they would color their bald heads with silver or gold stripes ; that they would walk through crowded streets with bare feet or with sandwich boards: that they would wear each orther ( s clothes, or wear their own turned inside out, or ride in perambulators sucking feeding - bottles like babies; they would stand in public places while others pelted them with eggs ! Husbands made bets with their wives that they would do the family washing for a month, or that the wives .should chop the wood for the same period. And one lunatic wagered his wife against a thousand pound house, the wife herself agreeing, if her spouse lost, to get a divorce and marry the winner ! Such are a few only of the mad freaks that have been recorded in American newpapers.

A CHINESE VIEW OF CHRIS

TIANITY

The special correspondent of the Morning Post, who sailed on board the Empress of China with Li Hung Chang from Vancouver to Yokohama, gives an interesting account of an interview with the Viceroy. Li Hung Chang holds strong views 011 the subject of foreign missionaries in China. He does not believe in them. Tn conversation with an American missionary he argued that as long as Christianity was represented by so large a number of opposing sects in the; country it could make no real headway. " Which sect was the poor Chinaman to believe in ' he asked, adding that if the Chinese were to send missionaries to New York to convert the Americans to the Confucian doctrine, such men would, at all .-vents, lie agreed, and preach one religion, good or bad. " lint," said the missionary, " we are agreed on many of the essential points." " Well, then, replied his Excellency, " when you have settled on the other details among vourselves that will be soon enough for vou to come ;tnd convert us." Li Hung Chant,' does not personally objert j to missionaries, and admits that their | hospitals have been of material service, j but he resents their endeavors to eduj cafe Chinese women. He said that, ! ri"fit!y or wrongly, the Chinese did not believe in education of women, and followed ibis up with the astonishing statement that nothing could persuade the average Chinaman that the girls' school were not immoral institutions. ■■ If missionaries," he added, " wish to I be unmolested in China, you must i aboli-h the schools for girls. You : inii-t not trample on all our prejudices. , America is a free country, and you can ! educate anybody there if you like, j China is not ; nothing you can do will I make it m)."

| INVENTIVE GENII'S.

! Takf om inventive vermis, say* the American Artisan, aiul thi-> would be a sorry world. A men- i numeration of «tne of even tin- 1»-m r wonders that a wave < f the wand of Yankee ingenuity ha* fjivr-n the world h full i of Hen- i- a little wrinkle of invention that h simplicity itself. The larvae of nocturnal ninths have always !*■« n a l*te noir to apiarist-*. as they have a predilection foe honey and young bct.-j. Automatic macljmery run by clockwork (or op«u-

1115 and closing these hives would be unite expensive. Inventive genius tackles this problem and hnds a ridiculously simple solution. When the hens go to roost, their weight on the perch may bo utilised for actuating a mechanism which shuts the doors of the beehives. When the shrill chanticleer welcomes the dawn of another day with his cock-a-dcodle-do and the hens fly down to go worm grubbing, the doors of the beehives open again. In this connection, it may be mentioned that only a few months ago a patent was issued to a man who had invented an apparatus for automatically lifting one's hat. The contraction of one's eyebrows started the machinery.

TWO VENTURESOME GIRLS

Two young women had a somewhat sensational experience in a boat the other evening (says the Wyndham Farmer) on a river not 100 miles from the banks of the Mimihau. They determined to have a spin on the water all to themselves, and free from the obtrusive offices of a male escort. Seizing the oars and letting go the moorings, they set to rowing with a will, and, although it was their first experience at the business, they made good progress, gliding down the stream. After they had covered sevei'al miles they attempted to head the boat up the river again, but, as might be expected, it was a woeful failure. It was a lonely situation, and to make matters worse, darkness came upon them, and rain descended in torrents. At length their craft got beached, bat on the wrong side of the stream. W'here they landed they knew not, and their sad plight can better be imagined than described. Friendly dawn next morning brought relief to the ladies, and they ultimately reached their homes at 8 a.m. drenched to the skin and hungry as schoolboys.

ST. PETERSBURG TO INDIA

The Novoye Vremya says : —" The question of establishing a gigantic waterway from India to St. Petersburg is once more on the carpet. From the confines of Afghanistan this route would pass by the Amou Darya and across the Caspian Sea to reach, by way of the and the Marie river system, the capital and the Baltic. The whole project depends on the possibility of directing anew the waters of the" Amou Darya into their ancient bed leading to the Caspian. After the occupation of Krasnovodsk in 1869, and the capture of Khiva in 1873, a number of expeditious were sent into the Turocman steppes to examine the ancient beds of the Amou Darya. After Lieutenant-General A. Glonkhovskoi's five years of unceasing labor the said expedition reported in favor of the restoration of the ancient bed of the majestic Amou Darya, which would restore their ancient fertility to the bases of the country, and by reestablishing the irrigation of the Turcoman steppes wonld procure for the whole region abundant crops. The establishment of an unbroken river route from the Baltic to Afghanistan would open up to us at the same time the markets of India, which are up to the present inaccessible to us, and would assure for the whole world the shortest road by the Caspian Sea and Russia, by which the commerce between the richest country of Asia and the States of Enropo would largely benefit. Last August a new expedition under the same General Glonkhovskoi was sent, on the initiative of the Ministers of War and of Communications, to the valley of the Amou Darya, with the object of ascertaining what changes had taken place in the course of the river since 188-1, and also in its minor channels, so that the question of the best direction for the new course of the river might be settled."

ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL WOOL LEN FACTORY.

Of the host of companies that Oamaru has launched on an indifferent community, (says the North Otago Times) none has passed through its childhood with more certain signs of death from financial aiiiiniia aeconi-

panying it than the Oamaru Woollen Factory. Yet the factory to-day is living a vigorous life, and promises as prosperous a career as any similar concern in the colony. It now pays its shareholders 8 per cent., and at the same time makes provision for improvements in machinery, depreciation, &c., and a large sum was carried forward. The factory employs 100 hands at the present time, and it has paid in wages since its inception the sum of £73,742 13 sd, which with interest and dividends totalled £95,700 19s 7d. It is true that it has not been sunshine altogether with the shareholders, who have more than doubled their capital in the company through the absence of dividends ; but it is satisfactory to realise that what promised at one time to be a total loss is now a profit-earning concern, capable of giving back to its shareholders much of the money they have surrendered by the investment. The Oamaru Woollen Factory has established itself as a colonial institution, inasmuch as its manufactures a,re readily disposed of in the colonial markets.

A SHOCKING EXAMPLE

A case that will have peculiar interest for the Rev. L. M. Isitfc and his fellow-prohibitionists, was brought before the Sheriff of Oban a few weeks ago. A man named Turner claimed £SO damages from a local distillery company for the injury done to his poultry by the company allowing intoxicating material to flow into the Laggan burn. He alleged that for some years past he had been making a considerable income from keeping poultry, but that since the starting of the distillery he had made little or nothing. His hens and ducks would not eat. They were, he stated, almost always more or less under the influence of drink, except on Sundays, when the distillery was not working. On Sundays their condition was pitiable in the extreme. Mondays were their-worst days, for then the hens drank excessively, fell into the burn frequently, and lately he had to keep a boy to look after them on Monday mornings. They took no food unless they first had a walk to the burn. Their conduct was generally reprehensible, and the ducks were no better than the hens. It took the poultry some time to discover the burn. He thought it .was a hen he had bought at Fort William that made the discovery first, and that she had led the rest atray. The Fort William hen was produce 1 in Court, while Turner was in the witness-box, and the examination of the plaintiff proceeded, according to local newspaper, on the following lines -W T as this hen at the distillery burn this morning '? Anyone could see that. How. are the other hens to-day ? Worse than this one. Was this the only one you could take to Court ? Yes. W r hy '? The rest were too drunk. So that on the whole the Fort William hen is not the worst ? That is so. How do you account for that ? She can stand it better. What do the hens do when they return from the burn ? Sleep. Anything "fclse ? After a sleep they generally fight. Have you no sober hens at all'? Yes, but the drunk ones break their eggs. The defence set up was that the condition of the hens was due to gapes or influenza, but as the one brought before the Sheriff betrayed a strong taste for intoxicants, his Lordship sagely pronounced it " a peculiar case " and reserved his decision.—Lyttelton Times.