LONDON TOWN TALK.

Kumara Times, Issue 995, 8 December 1879, Page 4

LONDON TOWN TALK.

[from the correspondent op the MELBOURNE ARGUS.] It has been quoted as an instane of extraordinary presence of mind that whon the keeper of the Scarborough Aquarium was attacked last week by the octopus, who fastened his tentacles around his leg, that “he hit upon the expedient” of slipping his but, upon which the animal stuck to his boot for 20 minutes, and then dropped it, as if, though there “ may be nothing like leather,” calf was better. But the intelligent device of the keeper, however praiseworthy, was not original. A similar instance of intelligence is said to have occurred in Borrowdale, Cumberland. One of the simple farmers of those parts beheld for the first time a saddle in Keswick market, bought it and returned home in triumph, having put it to the use for which it was intended—only, unfortunately, his heavy wooden shoes struck in the stirrups and he could not get out of them. His sons were for putting him into the stable, but his wife, a person of great natural intelligence, suggested that they should take the saddle off, which was accordingly done with her husband on it, and he was kept in the kitchen all the winter carding wool. When his youngest so, however, who was a student of St. Bees, came home for his summer vacation, he at once exclaimed, Why on earth did you not take father’s shes off ?” The happy suggestion was acted on at once, and has long supplied in that district an argument in favour of university education. An Italian professor has discovered that scents have a varvellous effect on the moral faculies. He caused 75 girls (says the New York Times) to be subjected to different perfumes, where musk produced amiabilty; geranium, decision of character; violet, gentleness and religious fervor ; and' patchouli, moral depravity. I don’t believe one word of this, but even if it were true, it would not be the first time when young persons, and for that matter, old ones, have been led by the nose. There is bad news from the Cape for the teetotallers. Lord William Beresford’s horse has gone out of his mind, without dobt from indulging in that stimulant which has heretofore been thought “to cheer but not inebriate.” It now appears that that recommendation is only a poetical license, and that nothing that requires a license, is more intoxication than tea. A staff cook having left home tea in a sack, Kaffir groom filled it up with corn and served it out to a troop of horses. Lord Bererford’s charger got the tea, and consumed it greedily. Thsn it began to ‘ plunge, kick, and gallop in circles,’ till it leapt down a precipice and was killed. The post-mo Hem appearances indicated “extreme cerebral congestion.” Among the various objects deposited the nther day under the ifoundation stone of a schoolhouse in Massachusetts is a specimen of Mr Sankey’s voice. It is not, I need not say, in the form of soundding brass or tinkling cymbal, but phonographically preserved in tinfoil.” A thousand years hence the antiquary may be astonished by hearing “ Hold the Fort,” which is the specimen selected, proceed out of that hole in Mr Sankey’s best manner. One has read of “Sermons in Stones,” but a hymn in granite is quite a novelty.