SCRAPS FOR THE CURIOUS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 8, Issue 26, 29 March 1907, Page 3

SCRAPS FOR THE CURIOUS.

In a Peshawar cemetery, in India, is the following amusing epitaph" Sacred to the memory of Rev. ■ , Missionary, aged , murdered by his chowkidar. ‘ Well done, hou good and faithful servant.’” One of the many curiosities now exhibited n the British Museum is a Chinese bankrote, issued during the reign of the Emperor flung Wu, A. D. 13GS-99. This isthe earliest specimen of a banknote known to exist in my country. It is 300 years earlier than .he establishment of the first European bank which issued notes, Out of 143 locomotives on the Grazi and I’saritsin Railway, South-East Russia, 32 rave now been compounded. These coinround locomotives, which consist of three flasses, all burning petroleum fuel, have nade a total mileage of over one million niles since their conversion, and show a nean economy of liquid fuel of 18J percent. It is generally understood that one of the nost distressing symptoms of the influenza is he mental depression which it produces. This is confirmed by one of its latest victims, Hr. Leng, M. P. According tothemember or Dundee, “You feel as if you were to be tondemned, untried and unheard, for all the ;rimes in all the criminal codes that were ;ver written,” and this after you have endured all the physical agonies that can be described or imagined. With moderate care and good usage a horse’s life may be prolonged to twenty-five, thirty-five, or forty years. An English gentleman had three horses which died in his possession at the ages of thirty-five, thirty-seven, and thirty-nine years respectively, The oldest was in a carriage the very day he died, strong and vigorous, but was carried off by a spasmodic colic to which he was subject. A horse in use at a riding school in Woolwich lived to be forty years old, and a barge horse of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company is declared -to have been in his sixty-second year when he died, Hobson's Choice. —'* Hobson’s choice means this or none." And the saying arose from a curious practice of a certain Tobias Hobson. He was the carrier and innkeeper at Cambridge, who erected the handsome conduit there, and settled " seven lays’’ ol pasture ground towards its maintenance, He kept a stable of forty good cattle, always ready and fit for travelling; but when a man came for a horse he was led into the stable, where there was great choice, but was obliged to take the horse which stood nearest to the stable door; so that every customer was alike well served, according to his chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice. The first duties of ivery maa are ths duties of home.

THE CLEVER COMIC EDITOR.

Enter poetic-looking young man : " Tv. called with this manuscript." Clever comii editor: " Shove it in the waste-paper basket please. I’m very busy just now, and haven'* time to do it myself." P.-L.Y.M. (throwing the MS. in w.p.b.); " I’ve come from tin ; -Theatre, and the manuscript I hav« just thrown in the waste-paper basket is vour 'comic' drama, which the manage, h’gs me to return to you with thanks— man% lhanks. He suggests you should sell it tc an undertaker, to be read at funerals.* [Exit poe-tic-looking individual gently until ing.] THE PRICE OF RELICS. A tooth of Sir Isaac Newton sold foi 1 790 > to set in a ring; and when the bodies ot Heloise and Abelard were removed to the Petits Augustins, an Englishman is said to have offered xoo.ooof. for one of Heloise's teeth. The hat which Napoleon wore at Eylau sold for i,920f. Sterne's wig brought 200 guineas at auction, and the pens with which the Treaty of America was signed sold for /500. It may, however, be noted that these prices were paid at a period when the " curio" rage was more virulent than now. A few years ago, Thorvaldsen’s hairbrushes went for a good deal less than an " old song" fetches at a London book sale. Blucher's sword scarcely brought the price oi old iron, and it is painful to remember that the white kid nether garments of George IV. were disposed of as a "job lot." HEROES OF THE VICTORIA CROSS. Perhaps the greatest proof of courage md presence of mind is to seize a shell with i burning fuze ; yet there were several men who penormed this feat at the siege of Sebastopol. Sergeant Alfred Ablett, 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, was Jin the trenches on the 2nd Sept., 1855, when a ■hell fell-close by him into the midst of some immunition cases and powder. He immediately seized it and threw it outside the trench, the shell bursting as it reached the ground. In the same month a similar exploit was performed by Private George Strong, of die Coldstream Guards. The hero of a ;hird feat of the same description was Private Wm. Coffey, 34th Regiment, who threw a live shell, which had fallen into the trench, over the parapet on the 29th March, 1855. A fourth case of shell-lifting was that d! Private F. Wheatley, Rifle Brigade, on the 10th October, 1854. When he was on duty in the trenches, a shell fell into the mijst of his party. With extraordinary coolness he tried to knock out the fuze with the butt-end of his rifle; but finding his efforts unsuccessful, and time pressing, he quietly lifted up the shell, and threw it over he parapet. It burst the next instant. A ffth instance was given by Private John Lyons, of the 19th Regiment, who on the loth June took up a live shell which had alien amongst the guard of the trenches, >nd hurled it over the parapet. Nor is the ist exhausted. On the night of the 23rd fune, Private Charles McCorrie, of the 57th Kegiment, picked up a shell and threw it aver the parapet. Every one of these six reroes received the Victoria Cross. ORIGIN OF CHESS. By some authorities it has been asserted hat draughts is of greater antiquity than ;hess. According to Sir W. Jones, the atler is at least 4,000 years old, and others sretend that the Egyptian monarch, Rameses he Great, is pictured on the walls of the Memnonium at Thebes engaged in a game )f draughts. On the other hand, chess is generally said to have been the invention of die crafty Ulysses, who planned that game is a pastime for the Greek warriors during he siege of Troy. The idea at present ;eems to be that chess originated in the East, either in Persia or China, whence it was introduced into Europe (Spain) by \rabs about the time of the Crusaders. The treat authority on Eastern literature, Probssor Max Muller, remarks thuslf we .vished to know who taught us the game of ihess, the name of che'ss would tell us better than anything else that it came from Persia. In spite of all that has been written to the 'ontrary, chess was originally the game of kings, the game of shahs. The great object of the chess-player is to protect the king, uid when the king is in danger, the opponent is obliged to say ‘check,’ i.e., shah, the ring." The expression " check" is therefore iquivalent to "mind your king," and checkmate (shah mat) means literally " the king s dead. ’ ’ There are some persons who seek or the origin of chess in Hindoustan. By he Hindus chess was called cheturanga the four angas), i.e., the four members of he army, viz,, elephants, horses, chariots, md foot soldiers. If chess owes its birth to India, it may certainly claim to be the most indent of games known to the present day. THE CAVE TEMPLE OF KARLI. The cave temple of Karli, India, a city bout 600 miles from Calcutta, is rightly :onsidered one of the wonders of Asia. Before the entrance to the temple, and just ;o the left, stands a monster stone elephant upon whose back is seated a colossal goddess hewn from the same block. Like the goddess and the elephant, the temple itself is a part of the mountain side, a building of immense proportions as cut by the hand of man out of the solid stone. Like the temple walls and the outside ornaments, every article of adorning sculpture on the walls is hewn from the native rock, The nave is 124 feet long, 45 feet broad, md 46 feet from floor to ceiling, There are aisles on each side separated from the nave by octagonal pillars. The capital of each pillar is crossed by two kneeling elephants, on whose backs are seated two figures representing the divinities to whom the temple is dedicated. These are of beautiful features, is, indeed, are all the representations of Jeilies in this peculiar temple. The repulsiveness so characteristic of modern Hindoo and Chinese pagodas is here wholly wanting. Each figure is true to life, there being no mythological half-horse, half-man, or beastbirds depicted in this underground wonder of Karli. Behind the altar, which bears a striking resemblance to that in a Christian Church, are seven mammoth polished pillars, there being altogether 38 columns and pillars in the temple, the grandest of which is the lion pillar in front, which has sixteen carved sides, and is surmounted by four carved figures of lions. All this great recess has been cut from solid rock, which seems to be the hardest porphyry. The statuary is in massive relief, each figure standing on its original base, having been cleft from the solid rock when the temple was in course of construction. The greatest columns and pillars (elegant and proportionable in the extreme) bear w’tness by both base and capital that they have not Ijeen introduced, but are a part of the floor and ceiling, cut, like the other figures and the temple itself, from the stone of winch the whole mountain is composed. The cave temple of Karli has been a standing puzzle for European and Asian archaeologists for the past 2,500 years, and is as much an enigma to-day as it was in the days of Confucius. Iris often said that second thoughts are lr *.,t—so they are in matters of judgment, but not in matters of conscience. In mailers ol duty, first thoughts are commonly bet they have more in them than the voice ol - —J [I. Kt'trnuni.