NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2425, 6 May 1922, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

Paris wants a giraffe badly. The famous giraffe of the Jardin des Plantes is dead and the Jardin is unable to buy another one, owing to the expense such a purchase would entail. The only available specimen is- now in Hamburg, but the pi’ice asked is 100,000 francs. An inquiry among the: French animal dealers that other animals are cheap, a lion with; a fine .mane priced under £IOO, a Java black panther £6O, and a tiger dearer at £2OO. The cheapest hippopotamus costs £4OO, while elephants are a drag on the market. Crocodiles, warranted amiable, are to be had at from £6 upwards. Only giraffes and ])olar bears are .unobtainable. One polar bear imported from Norway last year sold for £IOO.

Guildford’s Mayor is seeking a bride for an Indiana grocer named J. S. Burrow, who served in the Canadian Army and was sationed at Witley, near Guildford. The wouldbe bridegroom’s requirements are : Age 20 to 24, height sft. or a little over, refined, able to cook and ran a home. His own virtues are : Height sft. sin., comfortable income, quiet and refined disposition. As to his appearance Mr Burrow is somewhat bashful. His letter concludes: “As to. looks, well, I will leave that to the party aforesaid.” Particulars of the offer were made known at a meeting of laundry employees by the Mayor, when the unanimous verdict was that he was too short.

“Woodrow Wilson was greatly concerned about the. freedom of the seas. lam greatly concerned about the freedom of the knees.” In this manner Dr Elizabeth Thelberg, physician to the 1,400 girls at Vassar College and instructor in physiology at that institution, paid her respects to the Parisian-:proposal to lengthen the skirts. “1..h0pe,” continued Dr Thelberg, “that the old wasp waisted high corset never comes back. 'Today backache is-almost unknown among women. In fact, it is my observation, after thirty-four years as Vassar physician, that the women and girls of to-day are much healthier than, those of twenty or thirty years ago were. I know of nothing prettier than the calf of a young woman.”

“If your daughter ever gets married again without your consent you spank her good,” was the order of Justice Seeger in the .Supreme Court at White Plains, New York, lo Paul Dimintini, father of Mrs Marie Stevens, of Port Chester, who received an annulment of her marriage to William C. Stevens of that city. Justice Seeger also admonished Stevens not to give an incorrect, age of his bride if he remarried. Marie Stevens testified she was 15 when she was married to the defendant on December 10, 1920. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Dr Schrikert, pastor of the Baptist Church in Westchester Avenue, Port Chester. She said she gave her age as 19. She had known the defendant only a week and a-half at time of the marriage. “If you want to be married properly arrive at the church in time.” This is the edict just published by the cures of big Paris churches like Madeleine, Notre. Dame, St. Pliillippi de Roule and St. Augustin, who have become annoyed by the constant tardiness of couples seeking to be married. Whether the fault is due to the brides wanting to pul on another dab of powder while on their way from the civil ceremony to ilie church for the ecclesiastical ceremony or to the hesitancy on the part of bridegrooms in assuming the hardens of married life, appears uncertain, but the cures insist there has not been a marriage by them in six months where the couple was less than fifteen minutes late for (lie ceremony. “Split that infinitive if yon want to.” Sir Sydney Russeli-Wells told the Modern Language Association at Cambridge in speaking of this bogey to most writers. The majority of people, he said, used it daily in their talk, but mo f st people feared to employ it in writing because the pundits had pronounced the fiat “Thou shalt not split infinitives.” ,He added that no logical reason had ever been advanced for banning it, and said that it bad been employed by celebrated writers in every century, including Pepys, De Foe, Dr Johnson,- Coleridge, Lamb, Wordsworth, De- Quineey, Ruskin, and Browning. Sir Sydney said that modern languages were the highest development- of human speech and wei’e superior to classic tongues. He said that Chinese saved the mosi labour and was the most practical instrument of thought, and that next to Chinese came English. An old Maori legend, preserved by the late ,Mr Percy Smith in bis “Wars of the Northern against the Southern Tribes,” published eighteen years ago, is set out in the Taranaki News: “Ii is, strange,” says Mr Smith, “hut prior to the advent of the white man the Maoris appear to have had an idea that they were to receive the visit of some strange race. The following is the prediction as told by Pangari, of Ilokianga, somewhere about the year 1820. At that time Pungari was an old man, and ho had heard the story when a little child, as related by the old men of the NgaPuhi ( : ‘ln the days of old when Maoi was alive he told this story: Maoi was a- tohunga, a priest, and when he approached his end he said to Nga-Puhi, “It will not lie very long before I die, nor very long after I am dead -that a god will come to the crest of the wave, and ghosts (keliua) will be on his back. That god will be like the canoes in appearance, but be will be much longer, and be will sail all over the ocean, sail everywhere. He will never be mistaken in his course over the ocean; he will sail away and will not-be seen by the people. After a long disappearance another god will appear, who will be like the former one. The first god will come by the aid of sails, but the latter by aid of fire.” It was not until twenty years after Pangari spoke of this prophecy that the first vessel arrived in New Zealand.