NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2149, 13 July 1920, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

A French woman named Boulmc, who was condemned to death by a court-martial sitting at Marseilles,' for the betrayal of a French soldier to the Germans at St. Quentin, dropped dead shortly after hearing the sentence pronounced. A famous Russian dancer wanted to insure her feet for £20,000, and her hands for £20,000, but the insurance company would not insure both feet and hands. The dancer therefore decided to insure her hands rather than her feet, feeling that the hands were more important in Russian dancing. An infuriated cow caused considerable excitement and alarm in Liverpool. Breaking away near St. Martin’s Market, it dashed down Lawrence Sti’eet, and turned into a narrow court, and up the steps of a house. The occupier of the house was nursing her baby in the kitchen, and the door was closed, but with a powerful thrust the. cow smashed its way through. The woman became frantic with alarm, and ' attempted to get out of the window, when she swooned. Jxist then the cow backed out into the court, and was pursued to safety, but in making its way through the door it had broken a quantity of crockery, and it: brought away with it one of the chairs.

A woman shopkeeper in Sheffield, returning after a few hours’ absence, found her servant girl gagged and bound with stockings to a chair. The girl declared that a man, whom she described in detail, had entered the shop, dragged her from behind the counter-, thrown her into a chair, gagged and bound her, and then went upstairs. The shopkeeper found that £3 had been taken from a cash-box in a bedroom. When the police were ('ailed in the girl repeated her story, but under crossexamination she confessed that she was the author of the alleged “holdand that she had hidden the money in the chimney in her bedroom, where it was found.

A gruesome discovery was made by a working-class couple living in an outlying district of Pains when they returned homo from work one day. Alax’med at not Hading their two childx’en, both of whom they had locked in a x’oom of their house that xnoxuiing when they went out to work, the parents made a careful seax’ch of every room without result, till it occuired to them to look in a large trunk. They were horrified to find their elder daughter, a girl of nine, inside in a state of almost complete asphyxiation. The child was rushed to a chemist, where attempts were made to revive her, but she died soon afterwards. The other child was also in the trunk dead. The theoi’y is that the girl climbed into the trunk with her brother, in play, and, the lid closing automatically, they were suffocated.

The Rev. G. W. L. Evans, the founder of the National Clerical Union, states that the organisation is a kind of trade union of the clergy, but would have to employ methods suitable to the calling. It could not, of course, resort to anything in the nature of a strike. The Liberal Catholic Union have invited Dr. Evans to give an address in accordance with one of the objects of their union, which is “to demand the frank and complete democratisation from the xuinor organisations of the parish up to the lop, involving (among other reforms) its abolition of the palaces and the excessive nominal incomes of the bishops and of large rectories and vicarages, the drastic reform of cathedral chapters, the approximate equalisation of all clerical stipends on the basis of a genuine living salary, the abolition of pew rents, and appropriated seats, and the creation of a complete saystem of really representative coxmcils of the laity as'well as the clergy. In the Middle Ages the best treatment for a “black eye,” we are assured, was a poultice made with the blood of a tortoise. Serpent’s skin steeped in vinegar and applied to the aching tooth would stop the pain, while nervous patients were advised to try a concoction of eagle’s brains. Fright could be cured by taking a mixture of asparagus and white wine, and, in those old-fashioned days, one could get rid of gastritis by wearing a plaster of roses.