GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2296, 30 June 1921, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

A lire alarm sounded in Windsor recently for an unusual purpose. Believing that they had to attend an outbreak, member;- of the brigade answered the call quickly, but discovered the gong was a summons to the wedding of their chief officer, Mr Harry Hall, and Miss Pounsford. All the firemen put oil their uniforms and helmets and drove to Clewer Church on the new motor fire engine. After the wedding they formed an arch of axes outside the church, and then, with bells clanging joyously, proceeded to the bride’s house, the newly-married couple being given seats on the engine.

Not a few eyes were attracted by the sight of a dainty little jar with “Biscuits for the Bedside” enamelled on its surface in the middle of a painted garland of wild flowers, exhibited in the window of a London shop recently. Other luxuries for bedroom sybarites which a London press representative —once started on the quest —found displayed for sale in a ten-minutes’ walk included: —Tiny lamps and kettles to en-

sure a supply of boiling water at any hour of the night for an “emergency” cup of lea; bracketed bookrests to pull out from the wall so that midnight readers need not tire their arms; extracts from the world’s philosophies . bound in matchbox-size covers, and probably intended as an invitation to sleep. Has the Board of Agriculture found any commercial use for ratskins? Colonel Sir Charles Yale asked in the House of Commons recently. Sir A. Boscawen, in reply, said that on a small scale ratskins had been utilised for the manufacture of gloves, slippers, and similar articles. Experiments had been undertaken by the rat officer to the London City Council, but up. to the i'resent the experiment had not been carried sufficiently far to enable'any. definite conclusion to be drawn as to the commercial value of ratskins. A. woman named Gladys Gordon, a native of Melbourne, who arrived in Paris after serving a sentence at Lyons for fraud, began an' extensive traffic in drugs, principally in the night haunts of Montmartre. She was arrested, when the police discovered that she had a stock of cocaine , opium, and morphine valued at £12,000. She told the police that the drugs belonged to another woman, still serving a sentence in Lyons Gaol, who had commissioned her, when released, to go to her flat in Paris, take the drugs, and dispose of them. Sir Janies Cantlie, in a lecture at West Hampstead, said that in the First Book of Samuel we learned that rats carried the plague. Yet until quite recent times scientists did not know that fact. Why did a woman scream when she saw a rat ? Because she knew if carried disease. Women had that instinct of abhorrence from God. Men would pick up a rat; the fleas flying from it worn! bite him. The man would then go home, taking the plague into his own household. “Therefore,’ Sir James added, “I would advise the women to go on screaming.”