MISCELLANEOUS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7068, 14 February 1893, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

II ib admitted that ‘ Uncle Sam is worth 61459,000,000301." It must afford much correlation to the tattered and penniless tramp to know that he is one of Uncle Sam’s children. A schoolmaster in the North received, this curious epistle from a parent who objected to his son being taught drill :—“I Bent you Word Before not to Drill my children let me Catch you at it a F ’ain and you will have the Pleasure of Seeing me I am a Working man But my children are not Public Propoty and further if you Beat them I Will take them from you and Send them to the other school." It is estimated by the wholesale fruit dealers and the auctioneers of Melbourne that during the busy portion of the year (January, February, March end April) the metropolitan consumption of fruit averages 270 tons per day, or 1620 tons weekly. During the re maining eight months of the year an average of 110 tons per day, or 660 tons weekly, is calculated by the trade to be the consumption. If Melbourne consumed fruit at the same rate as San Francisco, its consumption would be 625 tons a day. Ihe author of the following deserres a seat in the front rank of the writers of fiction : “ A man fed bis fowls upon rice, but finding that the house sparrows dropped down in clouds and robbed the poultry of most of their food, determined to get the better of them and substituted maize. He was astonished to observe that the sparrows, finding the grains too large to swallow, carried them to an adjacent railway line, and waited for the train* to pass by, when they were enabled to nick up the crushed meal.” Half-a-dozen needlewomen recently applied to a London magistrate to help them to get payment of their wages. They did sewing for an employer who supplied the War Office, and through some red tapsism or clerical hitch they could not get paid. One old lady has 9s 7id owing to her, and the rate of pay it transpired, was-. Making trousers, BJfd per pair; making thirteen belts, with tapes and button boles, Is. The magistrate ordered enquiries to be made, “pending which," eays a provincial paper, “ the poor woman must starve without being able to demonstrate iu the open street,"