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Manawatu Herald, 15 December 1904, Page 3

Interesting Items. A West-end agency has originated a system of “ good conduct ” prizes is the hope of doing something to solve the perennial “ servant problem.” To domestics seeking situations, the manageress intimates that, in order to encourage her clients to give satisfaction to their employers, she will present a gold watch to any servant engaged from her agency who remains in the same situation for two years; and a brooch to those who have served in the same house for one year. * * * By a. aeries of experiments conducted in his back garden, a gentleman has discovered an answer to the conundrum, “What becomes of pins ? ” He found the pins were resolved into dust. Hairpins which he watched for 154 days disappeared by rusting away at the end of that time. Bright pins took nearly 18 months to disappear; polished steel needles nearly two years and a half. Brass pins had but little more endurance ; steel pins at the end of fifteen months had nearly gone while their wooden holders were still intact. * * * * Casting a shoe after a newlymarried couple is one of the oldest customs of this up-to-date life. Centuries ago, nay, thousands of years ago, it was one of the means employed by the people of antiquity to indicate ownership. When a piece of land was purchased or given to one, or a man acquired ownership of a house, a cow, or took unto himself a wife, it was the established custom to cast a shoe over the land, the building, the animal, or the woman, thus asserting to the world that he had acquired all rights of ownership. Few who do it probably know why they cast a shoe after the newlymarried, but in this ancient custom is its origin found. t- * * In England, a man may keep wolves as a hobby when they are under control, but not pigs. This seems to he the upshot of a discussion at the Henley-on-Thames District Council, on account of a sanitary inspector’s report of the receipt of complaints of two wolves being kept in an old cottage in Church street, Wellington. He had visited the spot, and found no nuisance injurious to health, but the people in the neighbourhood were alarmed lest the animals should escape. The inspector sard they could not get free unless they made their way through the walls. The owner purchased the old cottage in question to carry out a hobby. The Chairman told his brother-members that the Council had no power to prevent a man keeping wolves so long as they were under perfect control. “ But we should not allow pigs to be kept there,” said a councillor; pigs would constitute a nuisance. Unless the wolves could be brought under the same category, they (or their owner) might defy the inspector. The officer was, however, instructed to keep his eyes open, and if a “ nuisance ” arose to act at once.