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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 84, 9 April 1874, Page 2

One of ouneifim -citizens, writes the Southern Cross, recentiy made a rather strange experiment. On New Year's Day last, he stamped his name upon the iollowing coins — a half-crown, a shilling, and a sixpence. He put them into circulation the next day, and on Monday last, the 23rd , March he found that during the time they had been out, they had returned to him as follows: — The half-crown was paid to him three times by grocers and other tradesmen, and twice by hotel-keepers; the shilling had been given to him once when collecting for a charitable purpose, and it had likewise come into his possession three times through tradesmen; he had only seen the sixpence on one occasion, and that was when a friend asked him to have a drink, and paid for the drink with the marked coin. His object in trying the experiment was to see how often the pieces of silver would return to him. "Atticus" writes in the Melbourne Leader as follows: — " In San Francisco last year there were 2000 marriages performed, and 253 divorces obtained; and as divorces are on the increase, it may be safely assumed that one marraige in every eight is made, like pie crusts, only to be broken. The Californian judges appear to bring their personal feelings, for or against a dissolution of the conjugal bonds, into court with them, for I find that Judge Wheeler granted every one of the eightyfour divorces applied for, in some cases unmarrying couples within two weeks from the initiation of the proceedings; while other judges proceeded more cautiously to work, delaying the emancipating decree for several months, and frequently refusing it altogether. The Californians appear to have reversed the old English aphorism about marriage; they divorce in haste, and I hope rejoice at leisure, but such a peculiar way of dealing with what we are accustomed to consider a sacred institution sounds queer with a people speaking the same language and having the same literature as ourselves." The Japan Mail, an English paper published in Japan, says the sending of Japanese youths to America and Europe to educate them as civil servants, is a failure. They return with a mere smattering of knowledge, a high conceit of their abilities, a strong taste for beef and beer, and a prodigious contempt for their own country.