HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 79

HERE AND THERE.

— Confessions of a Wholesale Bigamist. — A curious human document is published by Christian C. Johnson, alias John Madson, a swarthy man, 55 years of age, who was sentenced in New York recently to seven years' hard labour for bigamy. Johnson gives the names of 17 women in different States whom he has married and deserted since 1905. From each one of them he obtained sums varying from £100 to £500, and in every case he had no sooner gained possession of the money than he fled to another town for the purpose of contracting a fresh " marriage." "I do not pretend to remember th© names of all the women I dumped," runs his remarkable confession. " Those I could 1 get money from without marrying I did not marry. I only went through the marriage ceremony in cases where it was impossible otherwise to obtain the cash." Johnson has a great contempt for women. As he was being led to the State prisonat San Jose crowds of women pressed forward along the line of route to secure a glimpse- of him. "Look at them," he observed.. " What fools women are ! If any man should come along and say nice things to any of them here most of them would smirk and smiie until the poor man would take pdty on them and propose." In Jiis written confession Johnson explains the success of his career as a bigamist in the following words :— " I am not a hypnotist, but I only have to meet a woman a few times aawl I know just how to manage iher. The women I met fell in love with me after I had talked to them two or three times. I found- it did not pay to be soft and sweet with a woman. Treat her somewihat harshly, be a littfo distant, and she will come to you. If I saw a woman I really liked I never failed to make h&r fall in love with me. My advice to women wfoo want to marry is : Never do so through a matrimonial agency. You never can tell who you are going to meet. Many of them met me, for instance." Johnson states that his matrimonial advertisements finequeaitly brought replies from 500 different women, " all apparently crazy to get married." — African Superstition. — Dr Neil Macvioar, writing in the Slate on " African Native Superstition and Edtucation," says ; "I have known a simple religious address to have the effect of entirely ridding a dying girl of the belief, embittering her end, that she was being done to -death by .spells employed against her by another young woman. One the other hand, I have known hysteria induced by inflammatory preaching, and cases of hysteria are to natives the never-failing proof of the reality of witchcraft and of t)he power of the witchdoctor. One would expect education to do something to uproot superstition. But until education is consciously directed to this end its effect does not seem likely to be great. At the present time in the Cape Colony there a.re young men holding teachers' certificates, and others who have passed the School Higher Examination, who yet remain quite unconvinced of the fallacy of their ancestral belief in witchcraft. The belief in witchcraft, as in omens, appears to be essentially the result of a ored-ulous or u>niscientdfic st/udy of the relation between cause and effect. It is intelligent to the extent that it admits that visible effects must have causes, even though the latter are not obvious. It is religious and scientific, too, in that it insists upon the existence of unseen and, therefore, mysterious forces at work in the universe. But as a system it is false, because the facts of which it takes cogn'sance are too few and too inaccurately observed to justify the conclusions it has come to. The remedy, I take it, is not simply to argue with the people who hold "this belief. There rs little to be gained by arguing with people whose training ha& led them to reason loosely and to accept the evidence of dreams and' the ravings of hysterical persons as more worthy of credence than plainly -observed facts. What is want-'d to kill superstition among the natives is sur-ely ju»=t what has dony it among intelligent people in Europe — more facts brought to their knowied-ge and a more reasonable attitude of mind cultivated. Thanks to the missionaries, th-^re now exists in South j Africa a. cla.?s of natives who aie able to | judge of the pretension? of the witchfinders and of the whole system of witch-craft-faith with entire fioedom from prejudiice. — Du.>t and Influenza. — Sir Henry Thompson u.-ed to say that he alv. iiys caught cold when he began to explore ih° shell es of hL; library. The inference \vz* that th° du*.t harboured the j;erms of infli'MT-za or catarrh. It is not likely that cold»s are caught through circulating libraries as often as they are acquired through restaurants or overheated i theatre ; but ths'.e is always a possibility j tint a stray gtfim enshrined therein may j seize a favourable opportunity of propagating his specks in the person of a literary ho=it. The uossLbility becomes greater if tire bock 1 * liave been circulating at a period of tome epidemic, and in euch circumstance* some method of disinfecting them is prudent, if not imperative. A process has been d«vised by M. Marsoulan, of the Paris Municipal Council, by which he thinks libr-nrv books may be sterilised in large quantff-ies ar.d quickly. The operation is twofold. arA requires two sets of apparatus. Thr first apparatus is c?U-ed the "beater." It i= composed of a frame, on which the volumes are cHbpo&ed. and of a powerful ventilating fan, tbe pir current from which blows open thie page?, while a pump draws up the dust Vetwe^n them ard carrier it into a ves=el of water charged with carbolic acid. It is. in fact, n vacuum -cleaning process, followed by d : sinf?ction of the products of the operation. The second .apparatus h«s b?«n named the "cell." It is a metallic cage of several tiers, made

in skeleton, on which -Una volumes are' hung by clips, the covers being .held back so t/bat the leaves are open widely. The cell thus charged, the device, which is mounted on rails, is pushed into an oven, j heatedi to 167deg P., where it remains for a sufficient time. The books come out ! clean, aseptic, and ready to be placed \ without danger in the hand® of a new borrower. This operation in no way damages iUte paper ; it is very economical, and, if -not absolutely effective, at least quite sufficient in practice. — Ancient Unionism. — In reading the remarkable book by the eminent Egyptologist, Mr W. M. Flinders Petre, on** "Janus in Modem Life," we (Pastoralists' Review) have fallen across the following passage, which is suggestive of the undesirable approximatior of Australian trade unionism to the compulsory classincation of labour in the declining years of the Roman Empire : — "By -270 a.o. the Emperor Aurelian had made unionism compulsory for life, so as to prevent the able men from withdrawing to better themselves by free work individually. He also gave a wine dole, and gava bread in place of corn, to save the wastrel the trouble of baking. .- In the fourth century every memtber, and all his sons, and all his property, belonged inalienably to the Trades Union. By 369 a.d. all property, however acquired, belonged to the union. Yet still men would leave all they had to get out of the hateful bondage, and so the unpopular trades, such as the moneyers in 380 a.d. and the ' bakers :n 408, were recruited by requiring that everyone who married the daughter of a unionist must join his father-in-law's business, and thus the Roman Empire was an immense gaol, where all worked not according to taste, but by force. There was but one end' possible to this accumulation of move upon move, on the false basis of compulsory trade unionism, and work under oosfc for the proletariat. The whole system was so' destructive of character and of wealth that it ruined the Empire. The one movement which grew steadily as Rome declined, and which was intimately connected with every stage of that decline, was the compulsion of labour and the maintenance of the wastrel as a burden on society. It was that which pulled down the greatest political organism by the crushing of initiative and character, and by the steady drain on all sorts of wealth." Australians should read, mark, learn before it is too late. Fools only learn by their own experience. WiFiß men learn, by the experience .of others. — American Sensitiveness. — • Judging from the rather acrid tone of many Americap journals the Spectator has done some temporary mischief by- its too effusive effort to embrace Americans anJ aseure them that they are bound to the fide of Britain against the naval preteii sions of Germany. The Springfield Republican describes its English contemporary as "opening a kindergarten class in the Monroe Doctrine for the benefit of th.3 American people." The Washington Herald goes further, and remarks • " It is dangerous to the continuation of the 'silent and unrecorded Anglo-Ameri-can alliance' for an English journal to assume an air of supercilious and insultiuz condescension in dealing with those who may happen to dissent from its conclusions. The time has arrived when English journals must be made to understand that neither the American people nor the American press will tolerate that kind of offensive and patronising condescension which is supposed to hive expired with Dickens and Sydney Smith. The world power on this side of tbe Atlantic is perfectly conscious of its position in the family of nations, and perfectly capable j of maintaining its dignity and self-re-spect. It is quickly responsive to the touch of self-interest, and it knows how to appreciate an argument that points in the right direction. But it must be approached with perfect respect ; it must be addressed upon a plane of perfect equality, ! and. above all, it must not be told in advance th.it it is a Farmer Hayseed who is astonishingly ignorant of foreign affairs." — Bonuses for Babies. — The family man is now handicapped. There is a cood time coming when his position will "be one of privilege. France, which has most need, proposes to hasten the advent of that happy era. Various proposals tending to the increase of the population are being put forward, and two I — a big proposal and: a small one — deserve i particular attention. The former depends , on a scheme devised by Professor Richet, of the Academy of Medicine, who believes thai the State should pay bonuses on every baby except the first-born. A second child would brin? a payment of £20, n<T.id every succeeding child a bonus of £40. The cost to the State would be about £12.000.000 a year, which M. Richet would raise by a heavy death duty of 50 per cent, on all collateral inheritances and all estates left by parents to an only child. Along with this heroic scheme Franca is to be offered a penalisation of civil servants. Th« suggestion ie that no official emplojed by State or town should be definitely appointed to hi* office until he is the parent of three children, the stipulation applying to women officials ac well as men. — Novel Ground for Bivorce. — Cm the representation that his wife had become intolerably thin in order to accommodate her figure to a modish dress, a Silesian judge has been awarded a decree nisi. The petitioner said that when he married his wife was naturally of good figure. This year she decided that she must be thinner to keep pace with the fashions. She began a strenuous "cure" which reduced her by 311b in three months. She rode on horseback for threw hours each morning, played tennis for two hours, took several daily walks lasting an hour each, and "ate like a bird." Her rosy complexion was gradu-' ally cbimged to chronic paleness. She dwindled away until her weight, though

she was sft lOin in height, was only 9£sK She attained her ambition, however, and could wear a "really fashionable" gown. The judge, the Mail says, -contended that j his wifehad "deceived" him, because he had bargained to marry a lady of '"natural ! and ample proportions." As she had \ sacrificed herself merely in response to the dictates of "mad fashion,"' h. claimed the right to be rid of her. — Danger of Ventilating Fare. — The use of ventilators with revolving fants has become very common in large public buildings, especially restaurants and shops. In most eases these ventilators communicate with the outside, and they are' installed, of course, with tho idea of ventilating and purifying the air within by increasing the rate of exfhaaige wdtb the external atmosphere. But revolving fans aine also frequently used, especially in hot weather, simply to produce a cooling effect by setting, up a _ current of air inside. Brs A. Sartory and A. Filassier have examined the bacteriological effect of fheee fans and ventilators upon, the- atmosphere within, and have communicated tbeir results to a recent meeting of the Societe de Biologic. They find that fcheee appliances enormously increase the bacteriological content of tfc« air. Their experiments were numerous and varied, but it will suffice to refer to one or two. Thus in a restaurant of 400 cubic metres analysis of . the air before the fan was working showed 12,500 bacteria per- cubic metre ; after working the fan for one hour 23,000 bacteria, and efter two hours 45,000 bacteria. In another cafe of 600 cubic "metres the number of bacteria rose from 12,000 to 39,000 after the fan was working fox one hour. In every instance, in fact, the number of bacteria per cubic metre was doubled, or even quadrupled. As the authors point out, witJh these facts »uoh appliances cannot but be regarded! as dangerous and detrimental to the public health. — A Post-card Romance. — The picture post-card craze is credited with tlhe romantic story that a marriage has been brought about by a picture postcard seen by a young miner in the goldfields of British Columbia. At a summer festival in the pretty Coraiastl- village of Tregehan last year a travelling photographer snapshotted a group, and soldi prints as picture post-cards. A villager, Mrs Phillips, sent one to her son, a miner in British Columbia, who showed it to comirades in camp. A young miner named Antonio MeUu>Ka, whose father is Italiam and mother English, was so fascinated by. Miss Harper's appearance tlhat he prevailed' upon Phillips to let him enclose a note "to her in his mext letter home. Correspondence passed between the two, and( - finally Metassa turned his back upon the goldfieldis of British Columbia, aaid set out on a 6000-miles' joujrney to Cornwall, where tine lovers met, and were happily married amidst great local excitement. — Clergyman His Son's Brother-in-law. — ' The wedding has just taken place at. Wood Green, London, of the Bey. J. Thomas, a retired clergyman,, whtx Has v passed his eighty -fifth >*«a.r, and -Misa Louisa Florence Nipper, his housekeeper, whose .age is giv«n in the marriage register as 35. The aged bridegroom became vicar of St. Michael's, Wood Green, in 1866, and was incumbenit there until two years ago, when he retired. On ihat occasion Jie was presented with a cheque by the parishioners. He had previously ibe«m curate at Redcair, Appleton-Wiske (Yorkshire), Ossett, Rochdale, Great Clacton, and Tottenham. The bride has been with Mr Thomas's family for many years. j Two or three years ago one of her sistera married Mr Thomas's son, who thus becomes brother-in-law to his stepmother and brother-in-law to his father. — A Centre of Scottish Learning. — In Cassell's Magazine for July there ia a beautifully-illvLst'rabsd article by A. Ireland Robeo-tscm on Edinburgh University, in which the«.writer points out: — Edinburgh has differed in 6ome ways fiom the otlher Scottish universities, a difference due pa,rtly at least to the peripd'of, and the circumstances connected with, ita foundation. The three older usiive-rski<s were all founded in the fifttenth century, and in virtue of Papal Bulls. They passed^, from the Catholic Church to the Reformers ; Edinburgh was under the control I of the Reformers from the first. The i founders, as Loxxl Roseberj remarked on i one occasion, were simple, humble, and honest men, who feared Gcd- and probably did not greatly lion.oui the"' King. They were the Town Council and the nvirn.^tfrrs of the city, and this fact accounts for certain peculiarities. It was " Oure Tounis Col ledge," and was modelled 1 to fome extent after the pattern of that of Geneva, where the municipal council was supreme. A oharter of James VI, dated April 14, 1582, used to be regarded as tbe original charter, but 6ome authorities suppose there was another, of slightly earlier date, which was lost. To begin with, the Edinburgh institution was realljr a college. Jiot a university. But from the first it Jiad, or assumed, the power to confer degree®. It was opened m October, 1583, with an attendance of between 80 and 90 students. James VI took a keen' interest in it, and, characteristically, was inclined to imagine himself a greater benefactor tha<n be really, was. In 1617 he ordered it to be called "tfoa Col ledge of King James," and pxomisedi it a "Royall GcxJbairn's gift." The, promise did not materialise', but the dhristea* ing took effect, aad above the main entrance to the university may be read tbw inscription, " Academic Jacobi VI, Sootorum Regis." An act of 1621 conferred upon the college all the righta enjoyed! by uhe other Staottkih universities': Tho provieiions of his act were ratified by the Treaty of Union and the Art of Security Gradually " the Colled** of ' King James »» came Co be styled tihe TJodvasrsity of Edinburgh*