GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2408, 23 March 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Famous sociologists and clergymen declare that American manhood is decadent. They fear that men may take to raffled breeches, earrings, corsets and vanity cases. They note a weakening of the fibre that pushed across mountains, built railways, conquered wildernesses. Man can weaken as he may, it is added, but the women will carry on. George Patterson, a London octogenarian, asking for a separation from his wife, said that she jeered at his bald head. The magistrate said the lady should have more sense than 1 to do such a thing, to which Patterson answered: “That’s it, Your Worship. I am proud of my bald head,. You cant’ have hair and brains as well —look at women.”

Despite the rain, cold and fog prevailing at the time, a father and grandfather plhced a nine-months-old son and grandson on top of the weathercock on the steeple of the Leicester parish church, 200 ft. high. Herbert Neville, aged 04, and his son Herbert,‘aged 33, climbed the steeple, the latter carrying the child in his arms, while the anxious mother and grandmother watched them from the church tower. At the top of the steeple Neville stood the baby, a fine boy weighing more than 201 b., erect on the spot occupied by the weathercock.

If von are jealous of your wife’s visitors, do not shoot before you make certain you are right. As a result, of not observing this simple precaution, Joseph Lampin, of Lille, is now in jail charged with manslaughter. Returning home from a copious banquet recently, Lampin saw a pair of trousers hanging on the bedroom door. Visions of a-‘ stain on the family escutcheon inspired, him to rush into the room with a drawn revolver, and when he realised a man was under the covers he fired twice, both shots reaching vital spots. When he pulled back the covers he discovered that he had made a mistake in the house, and had killed a friendly neighbour. John D. Rockefeller, Junr., of the multi-millionaire family, who returned to New York recently after a trip to China and Japan, related the adventure of the borrowed frock coat to a group of reporters in his office. “We were asked to an Imperial garden party in Tokio,” said Mr Rockefeller, “and at these affairs foreign men are supposed to wear frock coats. Ambassador Warren asked me if T were going. I said I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a frock coat. ‘That’s, all right,’ he said, ‘I have two, and I’ll send one of them around.’ And he did. I wore it, and it fitted me almost as well as it did him.”

An enterprising chicken thief visited B. F. Strange, farmer, near Seldon, lowa 7 , on a recent Sunday afternoon, and asked the agriculturist to crate up 1,000 chickens so that lie' could call for them Monday. Sunday night the fake buyer returned to the Strange farm while the owner and his family slept, and stole the crates filled with chickens from where they had been stored in the Henhouse. The buyer, whom Strange describes as well dressed, stood by and flicked dust from his white gloves while the farmer, his wife, and hired man caught and crated the chickens as he picked them out at the time of his first visit.

The array of powder puffs in the lost article department of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, is imposing, according to William Skinner,' head verger, who after forty-five years with the church staff, has been put in charge of the new department. The forgetfulness of devout people leaves the church staff in possessiom of such an embarrassing number of small articles that lost property offices have become necessary both at St. Paul’s and at Westminster Abbey. Umbrellas and walking sticks are most frequently forgotten, but the shelves are laden with prayer books, Bibles, gloves, spectacles, and even over-shoes. Women frequently leave their handbags, purses, and jewellery. Mr Skinner says women leave more than men because more women go to church. He adds he often restores lost articles to persons in other countries. 1