MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 42, 30 December 1884, Page 6

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

An Impending Galamity. The astronomers of the Greenwich observatory have been making calculations, as to th<s pace of the star Arctums in his progress toward fchfi earth. They find as the result of twenty-one observations, that this beautiful scintillating star is coming for us at the rate of fifty miles and seventy-eight one hundreths per second. This amounts to about 3000 miles a minute, 180,000 miles an hour, or 4,300,000 miles a day. If Arcturus makes a straight shot we will probably be knocked into smithereens, but not for 93,000 years yet.

A Young Chinaman's First Shave. When a Chinese boy baby is one month old his head is shaved and a bladder is drawn over it, and as his head grows the bladder bursts and the cue sprouts forth. The first shave is made the occasion of a magnificent banquet, and the guests are expected to make the host a handsome present in coin for the newly shaven baby, with which a bank account is started to its credit. This is tne most pleasant feature of the affair ior the baby, as the razor always pulls and he cannot take part in the feast. Reform in Head Covering;. There can be little question that the continued close covering of the head with hats and caps is one very constant cause of baldness. Women, m our own communities, seldom lose their hair, except from sudden causes ; and among those nations where the head is habitually left bare or but slightly covered, baldness is practically unknown. At the same time the beard, which is of the same class of hair as that of the scalp, but which is always uncovered, does not fall with age. A reform in our style of head gear is very desirable, but it is not at all likely to be accomplished. — ' Scientific American.' The " Hasks " on Which the Prodigal Son Fed. '< The husks upon which the Prodigal Son fed are not, as the reader is apt to imagine, the husks of maize, that is, of Indian corn. They are the fruit of the Kharub tree, and are from their shape called in the Greek little horns. From the popular notion that they were the food of John the Baptist they are called St. John's bread. Dr Thomson describes them as *• fleshy pods, somewhat like those of the honey locust tree, from six to ten inches long and one broad, lined inside with a gelatinous substance, not wholly unpleasant to the taste when thoroughly ripe. I have seen large orchards of the JEharub in Cyprus, where it|is still the food which the swine eat." The Most Unbearable EmotionWhat is shame? Well, in its most pronounced and active form it is a very painful condition of the faculty of approbativeness over that peculiar quality of man's nature, by which the good opinion and the praise of his fellowmen are very pleasurable, and the contrary disfavor and disapprobation of his fellowmen are very painful. When we are "ashamed of anything," in common language, we mean we shrink from it because the perception of what will cause shame to us leads us to avoid it. The thing itself, philosophically considered, is one of the most pungent and unbearable of all. There are a great many griefs, springing from various fountains of f he human soul,, but that by which men feel that they are brought under the descision and contempt of their fellowmen is the most acute and most unbearable of any emotion of the mind. — Henry Ward Beecher. The Hypercritical Play-Goer. Your hypercritical play-goer is probably the most unhappy of men. He cannot see a play, however admirably it may be performed, without brooding over some little flaw, real or imaginary, to thejjexclusion of all enjoyment, of obvious aad admitted merits. One of those woe-begone critics wrote to Mr Irving after the production of "Much Ado About Nothing," and complained about the introduction of cedars amongst the scenery. *' Cedars," he said, " were not known in Europe till some few years before the date of the play." This is not so good as the objection made to the trees at Hampton court in " Charles I," i which it was said were false to nature, because during the period of the play the real trees had not attainf d the luxuriant growth represented by the scene painter. The idea of anybody distressing himself over the precise age of trees in the days of Charles I. is overpowering ! — ' Boston Transcript.' One of Froude's Stories of Carlyle-

It is no exaggeration to say that if one of the stories in Froude's "Thomas Uarlyle " had been published during the historian's life, no woman, unless possibly one of his kinsfolk as Lard as himself, would ever have spoken to Mm again. His wife, suffering from the combined effects of chronic neuralgia and a terrible fall, with the nerves and muscles of one side entirely disabled, lay on her bed, unable to close her mouth. He came into her room, looked at her, while he leaned against the mantelpiece — an act intensely irritating to a jroman not vain, indeed, but proudly desirous not to look ill — and said, " Jane, ye had better shut your mouth. Jane, yell find yourself in a more compact and pious frame of mind if ye shut yotir mouth." That Mrs Garlyle' endured tins gibe and afterwards remained near the man who inflicted it upon her, says much for her constancy ; but no woman who reads its crude brutality can afterwards be opon to conviction that there was anything good about Carlyle. ! HierusalemThe following quaint and ancient version o£ a familiar hymn is printed by the 'Boston Transcript 1 : — •' Hierusalem, my happie home, When shall I come to thee ? When shall my sorrowes have an end ? Thy joyes when shall I see? In thee noe sicknesse may be seeue, Noe hurte, noe ache, noe sore ; There is noe death, no uglie Devill ; ' There is Life for evermore. There oinomon, there sugar grows, There narde and balme abound ; What tongue can tell, or hearte containe, The joyes that there are found ; There David stands with harpe in hand, As master of the Queere ; Tenne thousand, times that man were blest That might this musicke heere.

Our Ladie sings Magnificat, "£r With times snrpassing sweete ; And all the virginns beare their parte, Sitting above her feete. Te Deuni doth St. Ambrose singe, Saint Augustine doth the like ; Ould Simeon and Zacharie Have not their songs to seeke. There Magdalen hath left her mone, And cheerfullie doth singe With blessed saints whose harmonic In eyerie street doth iinge. Hierusalem, my happie home, Would God I were in thee ! Would God my woes were at an end, £hy ioyes that I might pee J"