MISCELLANEOUS NOTES,

Kumara Times, Issue 1165, 23 June 1880, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES,

It might be imagined that the gift of prophecy, enabling its fortunate possessor to foretell the winning numbers in a State lottery, would be likely to ensure him an uncommon measure of worldly prosperity. Such, however, has not been the lot of Father Ambrogio, a mendicant Neapolitan friar, whom adverse destiny burdened with the reputation of; unerring insight into the future. Shortly before the drawing of the last great State lottery at Naples, two speculators in “terni” ap plied to the worthy Padre for special information with respect to the prize numbers. Upon his modestly disclaiming the supernatural power of vaticination attributed to him, his interrogators fell upon him with such fury that he subsequently died in the public hospital of the injuries he had sustained at their hands. Shortly before his death, however, he casually mentioned the numbers 13 and 65. "Why he did so does not appear, but the fact got into the local papers, and several large investors in lottery scrip proceeded forthwith to back those numbers, adding to them the cabalistic cypher 37, which stands for “ monk ” in the Lottery Dictionary of transmuted terms. By a surprising coincidence the three numbers in question came out as a terno, whereby the Italian Government finds itself called upon to pay up some two millions of lire to tho gamblers who followed Fra Ambrogio’s dying inspiration. Surely the too-reticent friar would have acted more wisely to communicate his secret to the inquisitive gentlemen who took his refusal so ill, than to defer his disclosure until his death hour.

Never was the ancient adage “ there is no accounting for tastes, ” more quaintly illustrated than by a surprising story which reaches us from Neustadt, in Bohemia. One Peschka, an innkeeper of that town, was bitten some weeks ayo by his own house dog. Unwilling to slay the animal on bare suspicion of its sanity, he consigned it to the town gravedigger, enjoining that functionary to take care of it until further orders respecting its ultimate fate should be imparted to him. A few days later, however, Peschka was atattacked by hydrophobia, of which horrible malady he died in excruciating agony. The sanitary authorities of Neustadt forthwith applied to the gravedigger for the mad dog committed to his custody, intending to have it destroyed Their astonishment may be more readily conceived than described when the sexton, in answer to their requisition, calmly observed, “ The mad dog ? I have eaten Mm !” “ You have eaten the mad dog V’ incredulously exclaimed a horror-stricken sanitary official. “ Better that than he should eat me !” rejoined the philosophical gravedigger. It would appear not only that this man of strange appetites had swallowed and digested the rabid animal, but that it had agreed with him; for, as the story runs, he is still in the enjoyment of robust health, and pursues his professional avocations with unabated vigor.

During the Crimean war Czar Nicholas deigned to borrow vast sums of money of the wealthy Russian monasteries, and among others of the Petshorkaia Laura, a renowned cloister built over the Kiev catacombs, which was nearly destroyed by fire only a fortnight ago. The patriotic fraternity of Petsherkaia lent his Majesty five millions of roubles, for which they received a bond written by hia own august hand. When the Emperor Alexander last visited Kiev he took occasion to inspect the famous Laura which contained inestimable treasure, in the way of documents connected with the early history of Russia. The prior, deeming the occasion opportune for obtaining payment of the loan granted some twenty years previously to his Majesty’s father, extracted the bond from the jeweled casket in which it had been reverently preserved, and handed it to the Czar with a profound obeisance, Alexander pressed the parchment to his lips, exclaiming “In this you possess, indeed, a tflasure worth ten times the sum jt represents,” and gazed fondly on the lines traced by his father’s pen. The prior’s heart beat high with hope that his Sovereign would keep the bond and straightway ordain payment of the loan, perhaps even of the accumulated interest upon the original principal. To his crushing discomfiture, however, the Emperor handed him the bond, ejaculating, in a, voice shaken by emotion, “ No, no, I will not rob you of this priceless treasure. Keep it as a thing holy, of far greater value than all your relics of saints and martyrs. It is my father’s own handwriting—you have not purchased it too deariy !”

According to the Moscow correspondent of one of the German papers, the Russian colonel, Grodekow, who is on a survey expedition in Central Asia, reports that, in consequence of the almost able difficulties that lie in the way of a march from Merv to Herat for a large army corps, he is of opinion that the positions of Merv and Herat cannot be said to command each other, and consequently that Russia would not derive the same advantage from the occupation of Merv as would England from the occupation of Herat. Merv has other advantages for Russia, quite independent os Herat. The correspondent adds that as a fortress Herat is next to worthless, having no other defences than walls and moats, there being no exterior fortifications' The defence of Herat against European troops, he states, ia out of t' e question, as the town is commanded by the surrounding heights.