GLEANINGS FROM THE PAPERS.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 76, 19 April 1879, Page 3

GLEANINGS FROM THE PAPERS.

When you hearan evil story of one you know to be good, discredit it, and say so. Crapes are not gathered from thistles; neither do thistles grow upon a grape vine. The fruit tells from what tree it came ; but you know also what fruit a tree is likely to bear. One you know to be good and kind, sweet and noble, is not likely to have done had or cruel or spiteful or petty things. Why should you believe a tale of him that is, after all, merely the culmination of tho game of scandal.?

The most perilous hour of a person's life is when ho is tompted to despond. The man who loses his courage loses all; there is no more hope of him than of a dead man. But it matters not how poor ho may ho, how much pushed by cricumstanees, how much deserted by friends, how much lost to the world—if ho only keeps his course, holds up his head, works on with his hands, and with unconquerable will determines to be and to do what becomes a man all will be well. It isnotlijng outside of him that kills; it if what is within that makes or unmakes.

The idea that religion is a kind of slavery to which none can submit' without sacrificing the natural enjoyments of life has evor been the greatest hindrance to its advancement among mankind. How much wiser and better should wo be if we eould carry along with us, from infancy to old age, the full conviction that happiness is tho substantial eultivotion and oxorcise of tho Chris'.ian virtues.

Number of Russian priests continue to nrrivo in Bulgaria, and it is Stated that moro than 200 churches in that province are alreudy iu charge of these ouiigtant ocelesiastics.

It i» to be helped that tho following paragraph, which We cut from tli>HemeM Telegraph, mav be authoritatively contradicted : —"One of the o.u£Tegation writes to us : 'I was present last Sunday morning at a .service held in Zion Chapel, -•{tterclitFe. During the service the officiating minister took op fß'W'ni to pray that our armies might not be successful in the unjust and cruel war which we were now waging agninst a weak and almost defenceless heathen country.' " The next statement, extracted as it is from a full repoit iu the Manchester Cuardian, must, we fear, be taken to bo correct: —" Last evening the Uov. Paxtoii Hood delivered a discourse to a crowded congregation in the Cavendish Chapel, in this city, upon the present crisis and the duties of a citizen in connection therewith. He condemned in the strongest language the action of the Government in entering into a war with the Ameer of Afghanistan, and said he would like the nation with one voice to demand of the Queen tho removal of Lord Beaconsfield fromolßoe. He would say, as he said two years ago in London, ' Your Majesty, for your own safety, for the honour of your Crown, you must get rid of this man.' He would like a mighty roll of all the millions of names of this kingdom to be laid at the feet of the Queen, saying, ' Your Majesty must get rid of this man.' Say to her, 'By the rights and sanctities of your womanhood you must get rid of this man, who laughs with contempt at tho brutal butchery of hundreds of helpless women and girls. 15y the sceptre which should be glorious, since the sun is said never to set on its dominion, you must get rid of this man. By tho honour ol the British name, which has been permitted to be trailed through the blood and mire of atrocious massacre, you must get rid of this man.' At the conclusion of the address, and at the request of Mr. Hood, the congregation joined in the singing of ' God Save the Queen."— Pall Mall Gazette.

It bos beon stated in some of our best biographies of Nelson that he went into the battle of Trafalgar with orders uml decorations on his coat, that his officers pointed out to him that these would attract the attention of the enemy's marksmen, and requested him to change his coat, and that he proudly answered: "In honour I have won them, and in honour I will wear tlieiu," or in words to that effect. Upon this Professor Airy recently wrote: —'Some years past my friends Mr. Francis Jiaily and Admiral \V. 11. Smythe came in contact with Sir Thomas Hardy Captain Hardy of Nelson's flagship), and inquired of him as to the accuracy of this report. Ho replied distinctly that Nelson did decorated coat, and that ho (Captain Hardy) did represent to Nelson the danger, but that the character of Nelson's reply was materially from that reported. He "only replied peevishly, ' This is not a time to talk of changing coats.' I heard this from my friends very soon after their interview with Sir Thomas Hardy I think it probable that Nelson was, at the time, in great anxiety. The hostile fleet lay in a deep horseshoe form, open The smaller British fleet, in two nearly equal divisions, advanced in nearly parallel lines into the horseshoe. Tho wind fell to a very light breeze, and the British advance was very, slow. During this time the British fleet was exposed to a heavy fire from the enemy, which they could not return. Had the wind sunk to calm, the British fleet might have perished. There remained, however, enough of breeze to carry them on, and, when once mixed in mole's, their success wa-s no longer doubtful. Tho Australasian, in alluding to tho discovery of a missing portrait of Shakespeare, painted 1611, says:—The mention of the discovery in Sydney of a portrait of Shakespeare on panel, hearing date 1011, has led, curiously enough to the production of another, also on panel, bearing datu 1010. It has beon in the possession of Mr. Kllis, of the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel, High-street, St. Hilda, for the last rive and twenty years and he says that he can trace it back for ninety years previously. In the upper right-hand corner of the picture, wheio the date appears, there is an inscription indicating that tho subject of it was then forty-six years of age, as he was in that year, and below it is the name of the" artist, 0. Lynde, or Lynds. What is most remarkable about it is the vory strong resemblance it bears to tho features of tho bust on tho monuinont at 'Stratl'ord-on-Avon, while the colouring agrees with what we know to have been that of the figure before it was white-washed by Malono. Tho noso is shorter than it is in the ordinary portraits ami tlds is a characteristic of the same feature in tho bust, while another point of resemblance is to he found in the full under lip. The eyes and hair are brown, and tho oomplexin florid. The poet wears a brown jerkin, with a small white collar turned down at the throat. In the right car, which only one visible, there is an earring, which is also one of the characteristics of tho Candos Shakespeare. Of courso there is evidence to show that the portrait was painted at tho date named; but, on the other hand, there was no adequate motive, a hundred years ago, to forgo a picture of this kind. But whether a portrait from the life, or the copy of an original painting, the work is oortainly an interesting ono, and is in a vory fair state of preservation. Acting on Sir Redmond Barry's advice, tho owner of it proposes to placo himself in communication with the chairman of tho Shakespeare Tercentenary Committee in London.

The King of Dahomey has returned to his evil ways. Ho compel* the PortaConsuls and seven soldiers, whom In- lias taken prisoner*, to go through a scries of evolutions for tlie parpou of amusing him. Ho lias forbidden the English •gente at Whydah to dispatch letters from that town. Finally, he has permitted tho sacrifices known ■•"Grand Customs," and over 500 human being! were immolated within one month.

A Quee- staid paper, referring to the power of the telephone, tells, a curious story of a married lady living near Touwomba, who had been completely deaf since childhood, and has been enabled to hear by means of a simple string telephone being placed with its one end on her forehead—thus, it is contended, communicating the sound direct to her brain independently of the ear. That fact, it is agreed, shows (says the writer) that *' the organ of hearing may he actually closed, and still a sensation of hearing of a delicate nature, be made known to the brain." •

Messrs. Brncklebank's vessel Tonasserim, which arrived in Liverpool on November SO, was the scene of a terriblo tragedy on October 13. On board that vessel tb'eje was a coloured steward named Sherrington, and he was regarded by the crew all through the voyage with something of suspicion. The feeling was intensified owing to a fire having broken out on board, which was attributed to tho coloured steward. Early on the'day named, Sherrington suddenly seized the carpenter's axe, and with one blow cleaved the head of the first officer—a Scotchman named M'Phail. In a moment afterwards he dealt a blow at an apprentice, and almost out him in two. It is needless to say that death in both cases was almost instantaneous. The coloured man then made a rush over the ship's side and was never seen afterwards. Buoys were thrown overboard, but both buoys and man were seized by the sharks that followed the vessel. No cause, beyond a few words on the part of the mate us to the fire on board the vessel, can be assigned for the double murder. Tojeotnplete tho catalogue, of horrors on board the vessel, it may be mentioned that when off Tuskar an Italian committed suicide by jumping overboard on the 24th Nov.,

An American paper states that 360,000 acres of whiteoak timber and mineral laud in Western Virginia were sold in N«w York tho other day in large lots for about one cent, an acre—probably the cheapest sale of land on record.

The Emperor of Russia is the richest monarch in Europe, if not in the world. The total income of the imperial family reaches the extravagant sum of £2,430,000. The Emperor is in possession of the whole revenue of the domains' consisting of more than a million square miles of cultivated lands and forests, besides gold and silver mines in Siberia, producing an annual revenue of 4,000,000 roubles, or £571.500. The expenditure of this semi-barbaric court amounts to £1,(1000,000; but this sum does not include the appendages, which amount to about £540,000. Of the total income of tho Czar about £430,000 is annually spent on charities, schools, theatres, &0., so that after oil there is a sum of £2,000,000 sterling left in the coffers of the ruler of tho Muscovites.

Accustom a child as soon as ho can speak to narrate bis little experiences, his chapter of accidents, his griefs, his fears, his hopes; to communicate what he has noticed in the world without, and what he feels struggling in the world within. Anxious to narrate, ho will lie induced to give attention to the objects around hini~ and what is passing in the sphere of his observation, and to observe and note events will becomo one of his first pleasures : and this is the groundwork of the thoughtful character. The wife of Mr. Pope-lli-nnessy, the Governox.of Hongkong, draws the line of social distinction at merchants and traders, and consequently refuses them the entree within the charmed circlo of Government House. If this exclusive system lie insisted upon in Sydney the colonial soft-goods magnates will soon he up inarms. They might excuse Mr. llennessy exhibiting signs even of lax Conservatism, but that they should bo deemed pariahs of society by Mrs, Hcnnes y—never. The Bins of the wife will he visited upon the husband, and lie will be made to feel the malignity of that party who, By repoatod proofcico, have becomo adopts in the art of torturing Governors.—" Atticus," in the Melboumo Leader.