Clippings.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 226, 8 January 1876, Page 6

Clippings.

DR. DAY’S TREATMENT OF SCARLET FEVER. (From the Melbourne Daily Telegraph.) The Central Board of Health having received from the Local Board of Health for the city of Melbourne copies of certain notes, by Dr. Day, of Geelong, on the use of “ozonic ether” in scarlet fever, have directed a copy of the same to be sent to each local board of health and registered medical practitioner in the colony; the marked success which has attended this treatment in Dr. Day’s hands, not only in the recovery of the patient, but in the prevention of the spread of the disease, rendering it, in the opinion of the board, very desirable that it should, at the present time, be generally known. Dr. Day’s paper gives notes of the treatment of fifty-one cases, some of them resident pupils in ladies’ schools, and in all of them he records a “ good recovery,” while in nearly all the infection was prevented from spreading to the other children, or persons in the house, the exceptions being cases where this treatment was not adopted at the outset. The treatment adopted by Dr. Day was simply having the whole surface of the body well rubbed over three times a day, with a mixture of ozonic ether and lard, in the proportion of one part of the ether to eight of lard; this treatment being continued for about three weeks.

In several of the cases the patients were nursed by persons who had not had scarlet fever-, but the nurses did not take the infection. In one or two cases where the throat was very sore, he ordered, in addition, the use of a gargle of 2 drm. of ozonic ether mixed with 8 oz. of water; but the use of the gargle was discontinued- in a few days when the throat got well.

The following remarks are added by Dr. Day to the notes above referred to : “ Dr. Day claims for this method of treating scarlet fever the following advantages : “Ist. The patient, during the whole course of the disease, is enabled to breathe a pure atmosphere, instead of, as under ordinary circumstances, an atmosphere contaminated by the poisonous emanations from his own body. “ 2nd. That, in consequence of the rapidity with which the scarlatinal poison is destroyed as it escapes from the surface of the body, desquamation of the cuticle, with its accompanying dangers, seldom occurs. “ 3rd. It places in the hands of the medical practitioner a positive means of arresting the spread of the disease. “ Dr. Day is aware that, during the last few years, the old practice of. anointing the bodies of scarlet fever patients with suet, lard, olive oil, and other greasy substances has been rather extensively revived by medical practitioners, both at home and in this colony. This mode of treatment has been pursued with the avowed object of mechanically fixing the poisoncharged particles of cuticle, which are thrown off during the period of desquamation, and of thus preventing the spread of the disease. He, however, believes that their beneficial action is not of a mechanical, but of a purely chemical nature, for ho has succeeded in demonstrating to the satisfaction of Professor A. S. Taylor and other well known men of science the previously unrecognised fact that’ all fats and oils possess the property of absorbing oxygen from the atmosphere, and converting it into peroxide of oxygen—a substance remarkable for its power of destroying zymodic poisons. Now, peroxide of hydrogen is the active principle of the so-called ozonic ether, which does not contain a single particle of ozone, but is, in reality, a strong solution of peroxide of hydrogen in ether, and it is in the external application of this powerful oxydiser and disinfectant, in a concentrated form, that he relies for the destruction of the poison-germs of such diseases as scarlet fever and smallpox as they are given off from the surface of the body.” A DOCTOR’S DIARY.

The Sanitarian says :—A pocket diary, picked up in the street of a neighboring city, would seem to indicate, from the following choice extracts, that the owner was a medical man : —“ 240. Mary An Perkins. Bisness washerwoman. Sickness in her hed. Fisik blue pils a sooperfik ; aged 52. Ped me one dollar, 1 kuarter bogus. Mind get good kuarter and mak her tak mo fisik. Kase 231. Tum-

mes ICrink. Business, Nirishman. Lives with Paddy Molodey, what keeps a drap—Sikness dig in the rib 3 and tow blak eys. Fisik to drink mixter twict a day of sasiparily bere and jellop, and fish ile, with asifedity to make it taste fisiky. Rubbed his face with kart grese liniment, aged 39 years of age. Drinked the mixter and wouldn’t pay me bekase it tasted nasty, but the mixter ’ll work his innards, I reckon. Kase 232. Old Misses Boggs. _ Aint got no bisness, but plenty of money. Sikness awl a humbug. Gav her some of my celebrated ‘ Dipseflorikon,’ which she sed drank like cold tee—wich it was too. Must put somethink in it to make her feel sik and bad. The Old Wominen has got the roles.” THE FRENCH NAVY. (From the Army and Navy Gazette.) The following is a statement of the work to be executed in the French Navy in 1876, according to the votes passed by the Chamber. The credit allowed amounts to 30,000,000 francs, and will be applied to fifty vessels, the construction of which is either to be finished, continued, or simply commenced. Of these fifty vessels, there are to be seven ironclads of the first-class, five ironclads of the secondclass, eight ironclads for coast defence, of which five are to be of the first-class, and three of the second-class; four gunboats of the first-class, nine cruisers, four avisos, eight transports, and four gunboats capable of being taken to pieces. The vessels which have to be finished in the year 1876 are the following:— The Colbert and the Trident, ironclads of the first-class ; the Triomphante and the Victorieuse, ironclads of the second-class ; the Tonnerre, ironclad for coast defence of the first-class; the Lutin and the Lynx, gunboats of the first-class; the Tourville, cruiser of the first-class; the Dupetit-Thouars, cruiser of the second-class; and the four gunboats which are to be capable of being taken to pieces. The greater number of these vessels are being or will be built in the Government yards at Brest, Cherbourg, and Toulon; some, however, have been given to private firms, notably two ironclads, one of the first and one of the secondclass, two transports for the colonies, and the four gunboats. THE ADVANCE UPON PAPUA. (From the Spectator.) Some ardent aspirations will be cooled, and some more practical mercantile hopes will be disappointed, by the news that the expedition to New Guinea, under the command of Mr. McLeay, which started from Sydney about four months ago, “has become disorganised, and is returning” to New South Wales. The failure of this enterprise will probably damp the passion with which the Australian Legislature have thrown themselves upon projects of annexation in the South-Eastern Seas. For several months past the Australians have advocated annexationist schemes directed against Papua with a zeal which, however, is seen to be properly tempered with discretion, when the adventurous colonists disclose their resolution to east all the risks and expenses of exploration and conquest upon the broad back of the Mother Country. We do not say that it is not our business to annex New Guinea, but we certainly are justified in protesting against the right- of our Australian fellowsubjects to settle that or any other Imperial question for us in a peremptory fashion. Some day or other—and perhaps on an early day—we may be tempted, or forced, or halftempted, half-forced to conquer Papua, but it will not be because the people of the Australian colonies think it desirable to annex that country as a sugar-growing preserve, and shrewdly conceive that the cheapest and shortest way of doing the business is to get the Mother Country to carry out the scheme [as an extension of the Empire. The energy with which the Australian newspapers and Australian politicians advocate an annexationist policy in the Eastern Archipelago is suspiciously conjoined with an equally energetic repudiation of any responsibility in this matter for the colonies. We do not think that such a responsibility should be thrust upon colonists, who have usually quite enough to do in organising their own social system, without looking for raw material elsewhere, and we never approved of Lord Kimberley’s notion that the people of New South Wales should go into a sort of partnership with the Imperial Government in the annexation of Fiji. But when colonists are thus exempted from all the charges and all the dangers of an addition to the Empire, while they are close at hand to reap the greater portion of the gains, it is impossible to admit their right to attack the Imperial Government with violent and often scurrilous language, because the cost and risk of conquest are as clearly visible to successive Colonial Secretaries as its advantages. The defeat of the Sydney Expedition under Mr. McLeay and Commander Onslow may, perhaps, encourage rather than dishearten other explorers and adventurers. A “ New Guinea Colonisation Association ” has been established “ somewhere in the City,” on a basis which, in these days of feebleness, has the merit of audacity. Lieutenant Armit, who has been employed in the coast surveying exploration of Papua, is to be placed in command of the expedition, with a force of 200 volunteers, who shall be, we are told, “in every respect amenable to the Naval Discipline Act and the Queen’s Regulations,” but who otherwise will be unfettered by any conditions of service. They are to receive no pay or any other remuneration, except an outfit and free rations, unless they succeed in establishing themselves on Papuan soil, when each volunteer is to be endowed with “ four square miles of land,” probably without any formal conveyance from the Papuan claimant. The exploring adventurers, having settled on themselves a modest competency of 800 square miles, will proceed, according to the project that has been so favourably received by merchants and missionaries, to annex an “available site” for a town on the coast, and after building a fort and a

church, to open a trade with the natives. By-and-by, when the work of organising the colony has been carried forward to a tempting point, the Imperial Government will be invited to take over the settlement. This is an inviting scheme to bold spirits who chafe under the restraints of civilisation, but it seems to have been concocted without any special reference to the conditions of life in New Guinea. If this island were a tabula rasa, on which imaginative speculators might draw pictures of young nationalities and gradually developing powers, after the manner of the author of “ Le Robinson Suisse,” the plan might be worth attention, but even then the climate of the tropics would be almost prohibitive of European colonisation, as distinguished from their conquest by adventurous violence, or occupation by the power of a civilised State. Papua, however, is by no means a virgin soil, as Captain Moresby and Mr. Macfarlane have explained this week. YVe should add that tlieir explanations were published before the news arrived that the McLeay Expedition had been baffled and turned back, and the fact establishes the value and impartiality of their testimony. Mr. Macfarlane dates his letter, “ On board the Ellangovven, Yule Island, July 11th,” and he does not disguise his missionary views and leanings. But he asserts that he “ very heartily sympathises ” with all attempts to open up Papua to European intercourse and to develope the resources of the island, as being likely if successful to lead the natives to receive Christian teaching the more readily. He has been moved, however, by the florid accounts of New Guinea put forward at Sydney and elsewhere, to warn intending emigrants, and his warnings ought to be weighed here, as well as in Australia. It was against the exaggerated prospects held up before the McLeay expedition that Mr. Macfarlane felt himself called upon to protest, but his warnings are equally applicable to the scheme of exploration at the head of which Lieutenant Armit is to be placed. The idea of the Sydney explorers was to effect a settlement at Yule Island, where they were told they should find “ cocoanut oil, palm oil, sandal-wood, mahogany, cedar, ebony, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace, arrowroot, sago, and sugar-cane,” as well as “ beche-de-mer, pearl-shell, turtle-shell, and trepang.” Mr. Macfarlane pities the emigrants “if they come relying upon anything of the kind, for they will not find any one of them.” On the other hand, they will find plenty of epidemic disease. The missionaries have not yet found any part of the Papuan coast free from fever. “ There is positively nothing,” he says, “to be had on the southeast peninsula, so far as we know, which is of any commercial value. Pearl-shell and beche-de-mer may be found on the coast, and gold in the interior, as in Australia. Cotton, coffee, &c., may be cultivated, but labor would have to be imported. Missionaries, scientific and prospecting exjieditions, are the only persons who should visit New Guinea for some time to come. None should come here who are not well supplied with provisions, and with the means of leaving the island if necessary.” Such are a few of Mr. Macfarlane’s warnings. Captain Moresby, who commanded the Basilisk in her surveying voyage around the coast of New Guinea, is slightly more hopeful in his tone ; he is certain that there would be an immediate source of profit in the cocoa-nut crop, and that cotton might be profitably grown ; but he agrees with the missionary that the climate is not 'suited for European labor, and is of opinion that the work of cultivation would naturally fall into the hands of the Chinese. Captain Moresby, like Mr. Macfarlane, does not trust to the colonising impetus of a “gold rush,” and indeed speaks disparagingly of the mineral wealth of Papua ; but he is evidently inclined to think that if a great influx of Europeans is to be desired, this, after a time, will be the operative force. At present, however, nothing is known of any Papuan gold, and if Lieutenant Armit’s Expedition should not be discouraged by the failure of Mr. McLeay’s, it must go out relying mainly on the modest profits to be made by trading in cocoa-nuts. An exploring expedition on the Armit plan may be a good as well as a bold enterprise, but its object should not be the personal gain of the explorers. They must take their lives in their hands.

MOTHERS AND THEIR SONS.

(From the Peace Society’s Papers.) A modern essayist observes that “ the intellectual influence of woman is closely connected with her moral or educational influence over the children whom she trains. Here lies her chief power, and our chief hope for the Avorkl’s peace. The children are in her hands. The ideas of the coming race may be the fruit of her endeavors. The seeds of peace and order sown in young hearts will flourish and become goodly trees. When we consider the training which boys generally receive, we can feel little wonder that the cause of peace makes slow progress. Take the life of a British boy of the upper or middle classes, who receives no special training for the military profession. His first infancy is soothed by warlike songs, and enlivened by the sight of military grandeur. His first toys are guns, swords, and wooden soldiers, with which he makes imaginary Avar ; and the most brilliant prints in his picture book are representations of horse-guards and dragoons. His next step is to play at soldiers Avith his brothers or companions. His histories are generally a series of battles, sieges, victories, and defeats; his biographies the lives of distinguished conquerors and generals ; his story-books tales of adventure, in Avhich shooting and slaying form the principal and most attractwc part. He goes to school, Avhere he learns that the highest courage consists in a stoical indifference to pain, Avhich, while it encourages physical bravery in himself, tends also to foster indifference to the pain of others. Here, separated from home influences, he serves an apprenticeship in schoolboy rudeness, and learns that his honor as a young Briton is to fight boys older than himself, and to refer all disputed points to the test of brute force.

He puts the life of adventure and brilliant renoAvn on the highest pinnacle of his admiration. Meamvhile his literary food still consists of histories in aa hich those Avho have caused endless misery, ruined countless homes, and retarded the Avorld’s civilisation, are surnamed the Great, the Noble, the Christian ; and very rarely do his teachers take pains to point out to him the difference between these heroes* talents as men, and their Avork as conquerors. At college, much the same training is carried on, and both there and at home his recreation is not seldom taken in the form of volunteer service, Avhich, though not commenced in a, panic of patriotism, is uoav too often continued as a means of aping a military life. During this time the boy or youth hears feAV whispers as [to the unlawfulness, the injustice, or the inexpediency of Avar. He is accustomed to connect Avar with humor and patriotism. Its horrors, its miseries, and crimes are not thought of by him, or are passed over lightly as the necessary shadoAV in a brilliant picture.”

EARLY LABOR QUESTIONS IN ENGLAND. (From the Fortnightly Review.) PreA’ious to the middle of the fourteenth century, whatever improvement there may have been in the condition of the English laborer Avas so gradual as to attract no notice, or at least to create no alarm. But after the Black Death, such was the demand for labor and the scarcity of laborers, that for the first time apparently the laborers insisted on a decided advance of wages. This alarmed the gentry, Avho thought they themselves Avere most likely to suffer in the long run ; and accordingly Acts of Parliament were passed to punish the insolence of the laborers Avho asked more Avages after the plague than they were accustomed to receive before. An Act of Richard 11. states the object of such legislation with pleasing frankness : —“ Because that servants and laborers will not, nor by a long season would serve and labor without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and laborers in any time past, so that, for the dearness of the said servants and laborers, the husbands and land-tenants cannot pay their rents, nor hardly live upon their lands, to the great damage and loss as Avell of the lords as all the commons.” The principle of that statute—that it Avas a crime for a workman to seek higher wages—continued the settled policy of our legislators for more than four hundred years, and even so late as 1720 an Act was passed to keep down the Avages of the tailors of London and Westminster. Any master who gave more than was allowed by the Act was liable to a fine of £5 ; every workman who asked more Avas to be imprisoned for two months. A curious evidence of the effect of such laws may be gathered from a remark that fell from Lord Kenyon in 1799 on a trial that took place before him of some journeymen shoemakers for conspiring together to ask an increase of wages. It Avas urged in their defence that many of the masters in the same town had voluntarily raised the wages of their workmen, and there could be nothing unreasonable in asking the other masters to do so likewise. Lord Kenyon said these ’ more liberal masters ought to be cautious of conducting themselves in that Avay, as they Avere as liable to an indictment for conspiracy'as the Avorlcmen, and there was a case where a master, from showing too great indulgence to his men, had himself become the object of a prosecution. Such was the attitude of the English laAv and of English judges toAvard Avorkmen so late as the beginning of the present century. AN EPISODE OF THE INDIAN MUTINY. One day, in one of the enclosed buildings near LucknoAv, a great number of prisoners Avere taken, nearly all Sepoys. After the fight they Avere all brought in to the officer commanding my regiment, and in the morning the order came that they should all be shot. It chanced that it Avas my turn to command the firing party. I asked the prisoners their names and regiment. After hearing some five or six, one Sepoy said he belonged to the regiment, which Avas that my son had been in. I of course asked him if he had lcnoAvn my son, Anuntee Ram, of the light company. He ansAvered that that Avas his OAvn name; but this being a very common name, and having always imagined that my son, as I had never heard from him, must have died of the Scinde fever, it did not at first strike me; but Avhen he informed me that he came from TilloAvee, my heart leapt in my mouth. Could he be my son ? There was no doubt of it, for he gave my name as his father, and he fell doAvn at my feet, imploring my pardon. He, Avith all the other men in the regiment, had mutinied, and had gone to LucknoAv. Once the deed Avas done, what was he to do ? Where Avas he to go, if he had ever been inclined to escape ? At 4 o’clock in the day the prisoners were all to be shot, and I must be my son’s executioner. Such is fate ! I Avent to the Major Sahib, and requested I might be relieved from this duty as a very great favor ; but he was very angry, and said he Avould bring me to a courtmartial for trying to shirk my duty ; he Avould not believe I Avas a faithful servant of the English Government—he was sure my heart was in reality Avith the mutineers—he Avould hear me no longer’. At last my feelings as a father got the better of me, and I burst into a flood of .tears. I told him I Avould shoot every one of the prisoners Avith my own hands if lie ordered me, but I confessed, that one of them Avas my son. The major declared Avhat I urged was only an excuse to get off shooting my OAvn brotherhood. But at last his heart seemed touched, and he ordered my unhappy son to be brought before him, and questioned him very strictly. I shall never forget this terrible scene; for one moment I never thought of asking his life to be spared —that he did not deserve. He became convinced of the truth of my statement, and ordered me to be relieved from

this duty. I went to my tent bowed down with grief, made worse by the gibes and taunts poured on me by the Sikhs, who declared I was a renegade. In a short time I heard the deadly volley. My son had received the reward of mutiny! He showed no fear, but I would rather he had been killed in fight. Through the kindness of the major I was allowed to perform the funeral rite over my misguided son —the only one of the prisoners over whom it was performed, for the remaining bodies were all thrown to the jackals and vultures. I had not heard from my son since just after my return from slavery. I had not seen him since I went to Cabool, and thus I met him again, untrue to his salt, in open rebellion against the master who had fed his father and himself. But enough—more is unnecessary. He was not the only one who mutinied (literally he was not alone when he mutinied). The major told me afterwards that he was much blamed by the other officers for allowing tlie funeral rite to be performed on the rebel. But if good deeds wipe away sins—which I have heard some sahibs believe as well as we do—his sins will be very white. Bad fortune never attends on the merciful. —“ Autobiography of a Sepoy ” in Contemporary Review.

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN GERMANY. (From the Pall Mall Gazette.) Some interesting information as to the present state of commerce and industry in Germany is communicated to the German St. Petersburg Gazette by its Berlin correspondent. It was natural, he says, that after the close of the French war all industrial undertakings in Germany should have acquired a new development, for business had for a whole year been at a standstill, the existing stocks had been disposed of, and people reckoned on a long period of undisturbed peace. The extensive requirements of the War Department for replenishing the army stores which had been exhausted by the war, and the resumption of many railway undertakings interrupted during the progress of hostilities, produced an abundant crop of orders ; the old establishments were enlarged, new ones were formed, and the sudden demand for workmen of all kinds caused a rapid increase in wages. But the German manufacturers made no distinction between casual demands and permanent requirements ; they arranged their establishments as if the enormous consumption of the moment was to continue for years. The receipt of the indemnity, moreover, opened an unlimited credit to all industrial undertakings. Money had never been so cheap ; the prices of all goods consequently rose, and, so long as the demand was maintained, extraordinarily large profits were made. A further stimulus to speculation was given by the law of 1870, dispensing with the Government concessions, which were formerly required before a joint stock company could be formed, and which had accustomed the public to look upon shares as being really of the value stated upon them. Numberless establishments were formed into joint stock companies which were much better worked when in the hands of private firms ; the share capital often amounted to two or three times as much as the concern was worth, and the profits were divided among the promoters. Such establishments managed to get on so long as there was a large demand for the goods they produced; but directly business grew slack they collapsed. This began to be the case in the latter half of the year 1873. The exhausted stocks had been replaced, the supplies for the army had been re-established on their former footing, and the diminishing receipts of the railways made them unattractive to private capital. The increase in wages had made all manufactured goods much dearer, but no better. On the contrary, as the wages of the workmen rose their work became less thorough and complete. The Socialist propaganda (observes the correspondent) has done much less harm by its strikes than by the spirit which it infused into the workmen. They no longer prided themselves on doing good and solid work, but rather on getting the highest possible wages for the smallest possible amount of labor. This almost excluded many German goods from competition in foreign markets ; no one will buy goods which are both bad and dear. Wages are now going down ; but the process is necessarily a slow one, for the cost of dwellings and food is still very high, and many employers, gather than shut up their establishments, pay their ■ workmen at rates which absorb all their profits. The work, however, is still badly done ; the correspondent says that he has been assured by many manufacturers that no good work can be expected from the present German workmen, and that the only hope of improvement is to be looked for in the growth of a new generation uncorrupted by Socialist ideas. The iron manufacture of Germany has especially suffered. The great engine factories of Berlin have dismissed a considerable number of their men, and more reductions will follow as soon as the orders which have been for some time on hand are execrated. In Westphalia and on the Rhine many blast furnaces have ceased to work, while the foundries which are still open make but little profit, as the general over-production has caused a great fall in the prices of the year 1872. This unfavorable state of things is still further aggravated by the present state of the Customs tariff. In 1873 the Imperial Government proposed the abandonment of the remaining Customs duties on iron goods. Unfortunately this proposal, which was entirely in accordance with the commercial policy pursued by the Zollverein in the treaty concluded with France in 1862, was modified by the Reichstag, so that most iron manufactures, agricultural machinery in particular, should be charged one-half of the old duties until January 1, 1877. The representatives of the iron industry of Germany, in soliciting this concession, protested that they would regard it as a final one ; but paw the time for the abolition of the duties is j

approaching a powerful agitation has been set on foot for their continuance. The promoters of this movement, who have a considerable amount of capital at their command, allege that Prince Bismarck favors their policy in opposition to the Ministers Delbruck and Camphausen.

THE FRENCH MERCANTILE NAVY. (From the Anglo-Australian, October 1.) The French mercantile navy is now composed of 80 vessels of 800 tons and upwards, 70 from 600 to 700 tons, 124 of from 500 to 600, 253 of from 400 to 500, 322 of from 300 to 400, 674 of from 90 to 300, 1373 of from 60 to 100, and 10,036 of 30 tons and less. The number of steamers included among these vessels amounts to 455, with an aggregate of 42,942 tons and 57,513 horse power ; 100 of these steamers are of 200 horse power and upwards, 89 of from 100 to 200, 97 of from 60 to 100, 83 of from 30 to 50, and S 6 of 30 and less. The number of vessels annually entering and leaving the French ports amounts to 119,000, and their tonnage is estimated at more than 10,500,000. Of these vessels, 91,000 trade between the ports of the Channel and the Atlantic, and 25,000 in the Mediterranean. The coast fishery employs 9250 vessels, with a total tonnage of 71,850 tons, and manned by 40,609 fishermen.

HOW JERRY CRONIN WAS “ LAMBED.”

The Border Post has the following narrative of a disgraceful scene in the far-away bush: —- A more generous or warm-hearted specimen of an Australian shearer never entered a shed in the Murrumbidgee than Jerry Cronin ; year after year he worked like a “tiger” on every floor in the district, and being dexterous at the shears, he was readily employed by every flockmaster who desired to have his sheep shorn in a workmanlike manner. He had every season in common with the majority of his associates religiously “knocked down” his cheque at the first shanty that he found on his route. However, these heavy debauches left sad traces on his countenance, and he resolved that his earnings for 1875 should not be recklessly squandered. All his mates were astonished at this resolve, and the news was spread at all his old haunts. Even Mr. Elijah Sharp, the cock-eyed host of the Swagsman’s Arms Hotel a miserable wattle-and-dab shanty, roofed with bark, on the Magpie Gully —heard of it, and was sorely perplexed after having been informed that Jerry had a £4O cheque which he determined upon hoarding. “By the great guns,” soliloquished Sharp, “Jerry Cronin does not pass the Svvagman’s Arms Hotel with a forty-pounder cheque in his pocket. The fellow will set the Murray or the Federal City on fire unless he is lambed down.”

Three days after Mr. Sharp had thus discoursed with his noble self, who should he espy coming over the hill but the veritable Jerry and another shearer, both in heavy marching order, and looking as sober as a pair of American Crusaders.

Sharp_ (on their approach) : Good day, mates, are you in want of a job ? Jerry (looking significantly at his companion) : Don’t mind ; what is it at ?

Sharp : Oh !it is easy enough. I’m going to a prize quoit match next week, and I want to keep my hand in ; so if you will play dummy with me till Saturday night, I’ll give you £1 each, with plenty of drinks and good tucker (i.e., board). The bargain was struck, and the trio were engaged at quoit playing until Saturday evening, when they adjourned to the bar, where mine host of the Swagman’s Arms discharged his obligations by giving each a pound note, and liberally “shouting” three or four stiff decoctions of his “ fermented and spirituous liquors.” At this juncture an accomplice entered the hostelry, who, with much swagger, pulled out a “ Brummagem” cheque and shouted for himself and the landlord, at the same time surveying the quoit players with a look of the most withering scorn, and upbraiding the landlord in more forcible than polite language on his extravagance in encouraging a pair of loafers hanging about his place hungering after drinks and sponging on hard-working, honest men. Cronin (whose blood was up) could not stand this taunt: Who do you call a loafer to ? I’m a darned sight better nor you with your bit of a cheque. What do you think of that ? Suiting the action to the word, he brought his £4O cheque down with a thump on the counter. Sharp (picking up the cheque and pocketing it) : Hold your tongue or out you go. He is an honest man, and shan’t be insulted under my roof.

Two or three additional glasses settled Jerry Cronin. Suffice it to say he steered his course from the Swagsman’s Arms on the following Saturday morning without cheque or change, and is now confined for eight days for medical treatment. No doubt, when he recovers the use of his reason, he will never again engage in a quoit-playing match with the crafty host of the Swagsman’s Arms.