GLEANINGS FROM THE PAPERS.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 92, 5 July 1879, Page 3

GLEANINGS FROM THE PAPERS.

A Catholic priest of American birth recently gave an Italian gentleman a sound thrashing in a fashionable beershop in Homo. The priest, who sat in his place very quietly and apparently was indillercnt to tho people about mm was addressed by tho Italian in impertinent and harassing terms. He wore tho dress of his order and remained quiet for sometime under the sarcasm of his neighbor, but at last roused himself and an altercation ensued beginning in Words but ending in hard knocks. In a short time the assailment found he hail caught a tartar, for the priest was skilful with his fists and used them where the}' did him the most good, liotii men were arrested taken before a police magistrate, but after being reprimanded were discharged. It has fallen to the lot of a Lutheran clergyman named Baltzty—where living report says not—to ascertain to his own full satisfaction the dimensions of heaven. It is, he says, square and contains somewhat over* 940,000,000 000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Each person who goes to heaven is to have an apartment about the size of an ordinary hotel bed-room, and of 166,000,060,606,666 with a fraction of two-thirds of a room remaining I A noteworth instance of commercial morality (says the Liverpool Mercury) is announced by Mr. Peter Bancroft, of Apsloy Buildings, Oldhallstreet. On Saturday last he received an unsigned letter in which was enclosed a bank note for £IOOO. The only information vouched by the sender was that the amount of an old debt and accumulated interest, which he was sorry not to have been in a position to forward to Mr. Banoroft before. " Ticket, sir," said a conductor at a railway terminus in the city to a gentleman wdio, having boon a seasonticket holder for some time, believed his face was so well known that thero was no need for him to show his ticket

"My face is my ticket," replied the gentleman, a little annoyed. " Indeed!" said the conductor, rolling back his wristband and displaying a most powerful fist. " Well, my order* are to punch ull tickets passing on to this platform."

Latest Atrocity.— Scone— Railway -arch Maxwell-street, Glasgow; two street Arabs arc quarrelling over a game of pitoh-aml-toss; and old gent interposes. Old Ocnt.—" Come, come, you shouldn't quarrel in that way; its very wrong. What have you done, my lad, that he should strike you f" First Street Arab —" Neathing, sir." Second Street Arab—- " Yer lie! Yo ca'ed me a bank director!" >— Bailie.

"The gOvereOMSt of the world," said Lord lieaconstield, after the Lord Mayor's feast, "is carried on by sovereign? and statesmen, and not by anonymous paragraphs, or by the harebrained chatter of irresponsible fri\ olity." This (say.s the Pall Mall Gazette) is a -null fur the newspapers; and it is all the more painful because, whatever faults the Press may have committed, two at least of its most influential organ*" are constantly engaged in the somewhat difficult task of bolstering up Lord Beaoonstield and hi? Government by paragraphs—amioymous, it in true but framed in language! that it is absolute desecration to describe as the " harebrained chatter of irresponsible frivolity." The Press comes in occasionally for hard Uows, and that frnni unexpected quarters, At the Wellingborough County Court last week in a case in which a man sued an auctioneer tor hit day's expenses for attending a sale that was advertised but did not take place, tlie Judge, referring to the advertisement of tho sale in a newspaper, said to tho plaintiff:—do not believe anything you see in it, and then you will lie much tho happier. Papeis are only printed to confuse people." Without disputing the judicial dictum, it may be allowable to say,—and Lord Beacinsfield will hardly dispute it—that tho art of "confusing people" is not monopolised by the Press. Late mails via San Francisco brought news of the death of " Heller the magician," whose real name was Henry Palmer. In the New York Tribune some curious particulars of the defunct magician's will are given. He directs that his executrix, under the direction of Hajdee Heller, " shall destroy, break up and beat out of shape all the secret apparatus and mechanical "devices connected with ray business, so that no one may have tho benefit of my brains after my death." He|further directs that so much of his estate as shall yield a yearly income of £025 shall be so invested as to yield to Haido Heller £125 a year, to his wife, Annie Maria Palmer, £SO) a year £125 of which shall be paid to her as long as she shall remain single, and £:t7s to be applied by the wife, or at her death by the guardian of the children to the support and education of the children, Mary A. Palmer, Annie Palmer, and Joseph IL Palmer. The testator also directs the bequests to Haidco Heller, of " one clock, one liquor stand, and all the jewellery which 1 may die possessed of, except my gold watch and one clock ; also all carpets, gas brackets, and any and all articles of furniture about which there is no mechanical device or business secret.'' The rest of his property is given to his brother, Angelo C. Palmer, of Hamilton, Australia. His sister, Mrs. Emmie Gibbs, of Seven Oaks Kent, England, is made sole executrix and trustee.

Professor Tidy, of tho London Hospital, in a letter to the Times, says:—" I have made n point of remaining in the neighborhood of the electric light for at least three hours, in order to observe its effects upon me after being exposed to its action for some time. For a time nothing struck me except the intensity of the illumination and the darkness beyond. But, beforo long, my eyes became entirely blinded to all rays except tho blue and, as a result, everybody and everything appeared of a ghastly blue tint. For hours after I returned home tlui blue rays haunted me ; but, what was still worse, I Bufl'orcd from what I am rarely a sufferer from—an intenso headache, especially seated about the region of the eyes. As a medical man, lain convinced that whatever may be the advantage of the electric light as an illumiiumtion for large outdoor spaces, it oan never be used as a room illuminaiit or even as a general street iUuminant, with advantage, save to tho medical profession generally, and to opthalmic surgeons in particular." The Paris correspondent of the Melbourne Daily News describes a pump of very peculiar construction, which he says is of infinite importance to squatters, free selectors, and others. Tho modus operandi is this. On an elevated station, Mich as tho top of a hill, or the trunk of a tree with its branches looped on", is placid tho wind-mill, which, acted upon by the wind, works an air pump cau be forced through ordinary pis pipe, say of 1 in. bore, a quarter or half a mile to whore tho actual water pump is. This water ; pump consists of two buckets, with valves at tho bottoms. These buckets are joined together like tho Siamese twins, ami through the connecting link work on a fulcrum, so that they look like two boys on a rail, playing at seesaw, and it is tliat motion exactly which takes place when the air from the windmill air-pump- is forced to them. These buckets, seo-sawing on the iron fulcrum, and tho fulcrum, connected with a compact iron frame, ate sunk in tho creek, river, lagoon, or well, and as tho air from the air-pump is forced into one bucket, that particular bucket goes up, shuts a valve, and its vis-a-vis goos down ; tho false bottom lets the water in, and brings tho bucket into such n position that a Valve opens aud admits the stream of sir in, which forces tho water through an outlet pipe, sap a long, and up a height of say 130 ft. When then the water is being forced out of one bucket, and it is lilling with air, it rises and depresses tho other, whioh receives water through its false bottom, and the same process is repeated ad infinitum. Tho pump, anno sot, requires no more attention. Silently, but elloetiiially, the windmill oatches tho gentle hrcc7.es, and day and night into tho squatter's tanks the wator is poured. This is one of tho ingenious things in the exhibition, and will be exhibited at both tho Sydney and Victorian International exhibitions.