MISCELLANEOUS.

Southland Times, Issue 1534, 6 February 1872, Page 3

MISCELLANEOUS.

Motto for a French exile — " Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder." A young man who keeps a collection of locks of hair of his lady friends, calls them his hairbreadth escapes. A neighboring city is just now honored by a gentleman who singa so high that he is obliged to slip his suspenders before he can get down. An old farmer said to his sons — " Boys, don't you ever speckerlate, or wait for summat to turn up. X"ou might just as well go an 1 sit down on a atone in the middle of a medder, with a pail atwixt your legs, an' wait for a cow to back up to be milked." " Are these rooms to let ? " said a polite gentleman to a handsome young lady. " Tea, sir." " And are you to let with them ? " " No, air, I'm to be let alone." A French writer on gastronomical subjects has defined indigestion to be " the ingratitude of the stomach." ' Tell the mistress that I have torn the curtain,' said a gentleman lodger to a female domestic. ' Very well, sir, mistress will put it down as rent.* It is related that when Beecher was in the country last summer he lost his hat, but found it in about a week in a barn where he had left it, but with four eggs in it. This is as it should be. Beecher had just written an eulogy on the hen ; and why shouldn't the hen reward Beecher ? The weather must hare been hot in America. The Albany paper Bays — " We j saw a woman do her ironing with no other fuel than sunshine. When we came away she was hanging the kettle out of the window to get the tea ready." The Tichborne claimant's popularity is showing itself in the usual absurd way. We have hardly got over the " Lome" mania — Lome ties, boots, scents, pickles, and dog-collars — before everything is assuming the " Tichborne" designation. The greatest offenders in this way, to my knowledge, are the Brighton Town Councillors, who hare just altered the name of a wretched street in their town from " Pimlico" to " Tichborne street." Readers will have seen how the name of " Tichborne" is being applied to lozenges, blacking, and other luxuries. They cannot, however, all have seen the advertisement of a Yorkshire upholsterer who proclaims the merit of a new couch in this wise : " The celebrated Tichborne Bedstead! Warranted to withstand the flop of 26 stone ! A marvel of combined cheapness and strength !" Brighatn Toung is experiencing the truth of the proverb that troubles never come singly. Prosecuted by the Federal authorities, he is loudly accused by his unofficial opponents of peculation and embezzlement on the grandest scale. The Review, a paper started lately at Salt Lake City, following the example set by the New York Times, is firmly demanding from the municipal council an account of the city finances. With the Tammany frauds before its eyes, the Review makes the startlingly bold statement that the Salt Lake City Council has in proportion to the wealth at its disposal received more mony and done less with it than any corporation in Christendom. Will be. — The Philadelphian who kissed his hired girl while his wife was peeping through the key-hole will be able to be out about Christmas. Vert Sevebe. — " Atom," of the Harvard Advocate, visited the French fair, and thus reports his experience : — Young lady — " Sir, wouldn't you like to buy some tickets in a punch bowl ?" Atom — " No, thank you, I never drink." Young lady (insinuatingly) — " Well, wouldn't you like to buy some cigars, then P" Atom (with a very grave face) — " No thank you, I never smoke." Young lady (losing patience) — " Well, I'd offer you some soap if I thought you ever washed." SuiraTSOKK. — We copy the following from a letter to the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette : — " I notice that several correspondents in the daily papers have recommended straw hats, or a cabbageleaf, as a protection against sunstroke. The theory involved in the suggestion is diametrically opposed to the prevailing practice throughout the East, where the natives generally wear a thick turban, especially when travelling in the sun. In like manner the roving Bedouin, in addition to his long hair, covers his head, face, and neck, with a thick doubled kefliah, bound round the head with several coils of rope made of camel's hair. Our countrymen in India, civil and military, have learnt to imitate this custom by investing their ordinary topis with a padded covering of white cloth, to which a flap is attached protecting the nape of the neck. But does sunstroke result direetly from the sun falling on the head ? My impression is that it does not, but that it is rather, in the first place, a consequence of physical exhaustion induced by fatigue, or otherwise, in very hot weather, thereby leaving the system powerless to resist the direct action of the sun. If this view is correct, then the best precaution against sunstroke would be to guard against exhaustion. Laborers and others, when exposed to the sun, should not be overworked, and when at work should be provided with plenty of good water to drink, which is one of the best preventives against ex- j haustion under such circumstances. Allow me to illustrate this by a striking instance in point. The town of Mosul is about ten miles distant from the village of Telkeif. Year after year numerous casualties from sunstroke occurred among the wayfarers between the two places. There was not a drop of water to be found on the road, and the villagers generally were too lazy or indifferent to carry it with them. At the suggestion of a medical man the Pasha of the district ordered a supply of water to be provided midway between the town and village from a convent at some distance off the highway. I can testify from personal knowledge that for several years after cases of sunstroke on the road were of rare occurrence."

Another claimant for the original idea of Macauley's New Zealander looking on the ruins of London has appeared. Captain Marryat's daughter writes aa follows to the London Athenaum:— " The fame of Lord Macauley's * New Zealander ' baring almost passed with us into a ' household word,' I think I may be excused for calling the attention of your readers to the following passage from Captain Marryat's novel, ' Frank Mildmay ; or, the Naval Officer.' ' There was a beauty, a loveliness in these venerable ruins which delighted me. There was a solemn silence in the town ; but there was a still, small voice that said to me, London may one day be the same — and Paris ; and you and your children's children will all have lived, and had their loves and adventures ; but who will the wretched man be that shall sit on the summit of Primrose Hill, and look dowa upon the desolation of the mighty city, as you, from this little eminence, behold the once flourishing town of St. Jago ? * Lord Macauley's words were published in 1840, my father's in 1829.— Fiobencb MabbyjlT Church."