MISCELLANEOUS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7070, 16 February 1893, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

A gentleman who was accidentally thrown into Jay Gould's company some time ago, and had a long chat with him “on everything but railways end stocks," said he had appeared to be as ignorant of other matters as a child, exposing an inconceivable amount of ignorance of things which are usually taken as ajmatter of course by the ordinary run of people. In a discussion in Victoria on the Sunday labour question it was pointed out that the service which employed least Sunday labour in proportion to the passengers carried was the railway department. A cab requires one man to convey some half dozen people ; a tramway with two attendants may take a couple of dozen ; but in a train two or throe men m«y convey 500 passengers. It follows that, upon the Sabbath desecration theory, the conveyance of passengers by rail on Sunday should be encouraged. That the weather changes with the phases of the moon is one of the most persistent pieces of folk-loro. Vet a thorough investigation of the question, so far os Europe is concerned, has clearly established the fact that there is really no connection between the two. Professors Merriman and Hasan have, however, arrived at the conclusion that so far as Bethlehem and the adjoining region of Pennsylvania are concerned, there is a preponderance of rain at the time of new moon —a result also come to from a series of records kept at Newhaven. That the moon drives away clouds teems well established ; but it must be borne in mind that the minimum of cloudiness occurs in the evening, or before midnight, and this complicates the phenomena. * Educational plunder, says a Home paper, has always been an irresistible solvent of middle class snobbery in England, and there is no depth of moral or social degradation to which the middle class parent will not subject himself and his child —even if it involves the wearing of a charity livery, as in Christ’s Hospital—so long as there is a chance of his looting the educational heritage of the poor. We are not sure that the rich middle class parent sticks always at perjury even in his eagerness for this sort of booty. It is one of the grim jokes of the town that the parents of the boys in Christ’s Hospital have to make a solemn declaration of poverty. But we hope’ it is not true that they sometimes sign it in a palatial mansion with a gold pen mounted in a porcupine quill studded with diamond sparks—though a story to that effect has been told by wicked and profane democrats.