MISCELLANEOUS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2016, 6 March 1890, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS.

A peculiar thickness o£ the under lip has been hereditary m the Imperial House ®f Hapsburg ever since the marriage, some centuries ago with the Polish family of Jageelon, whence it came.

Abbotsford, once the residence of oxr Walter Scott, is still so popular a resort that the fees paid by tourists usually exceed £4OO a year, so that it is twice as profitable to show the place as to let it, for the rent is only £2OO a year.

Two gentlemen disputing about religion in a coffee-house, one made a bet that the other could not say the Lord’s Prayer. “Done!” said the other; and he immediately recited the Thirty-nine Articles. “Well,” said the opponent, “ I own I have lost. I really did not believe you could say it.”

“ Papa, didn’t you whip me once for biting baby ? ” “ Tes, my child; you hurt him very much.” « Then, papa you ought to whip that gentleman who is in the parlour, for I saw him bite sister right on the lips; and I know it hurt her, tor I saw h«r put her arms round his neck and try to choke him.”

The Empress [Frederick and her own daughters ascended Vesuvius, going on foot to the crater, which is at present very active.

Bless your innocent, girlish heart, Ethel, no ! It could i not possibly be [deemed amiss were you to call your pet fawn a “ little deer.” Quite natural is it that an enamoured youth should consider the petite fair one upon his knee a “ little bird.” Of course she’s a-nesting. A Scotchman asked an Irishman, “ Why are half-farthings coined in England ?” Pat’s answer was, “To give Scotchmen an opportunity of subscribing to charitable institutions.” Very young children are not sensible to pain to a great extent. Dr Geuger calculates this sensibility is seldom clearly shown in less than four or five weeks after birth, and before that time infants, do not shed tears.

Two officers observing a fine girl in a milliner’s shop, the one, an Irishman, proposed to go in and buy a watchribbon in order to get a nearer view of her. “ Hoot, mon,” said his northern friend, “ nae occasion to waste siller ; let us gang in and speer if she can give us twa sixpences for a shilling.”

“ Some men in the world hold themselves mighty high. On what! no one can tell. They are only men. God made us all. And we’re all mighty small creatures when it comes down to individuals. Individually we don’t count much in the world. No man amounts to a great deal by himself, He is dependant on the others. Therefore ho has no occasion to feel better than any one else.”

The women who milk ten cows each night and morning, in the West of Scotland, get only 2s a week for their work. In the face of such a state of things, colonial domestic servants have reason to think themselves happy ; and yet their discontent and the difficulty experienced in their proper control and management take rank as one of the social problems out here.

There must be something radically wrong in a community which can make herpes of such ruffians as those mentioned in the following paragraph from an'American paper:—Thomas.Shea, of Boston, started out to kill John L.

Sullivan Saturday, and found him in a barber shop with Thomas J. Kelley, a prize-fighter. Shea commenced the quarrel and Kelley, seeing Shea move to take a pistol, took a razor from the barber’s hand and cut Shea’s throat. Shea cannot live.”

A writer in a contemporary states that George Alexander Darliag, a brother of the heroine of the Eddystone Lighthouse, is still alive, and in needy circumstances. ihe following story is told of him ;—George, when fifteen, was at sea

as a ship’s carpenter, and whilst in a shipbroker’s office in Leaderihall street, the story of bis sister's heroism being all the talk, a man came in, and produced from his pocket a bunch of yellow hair.

Be offered it for sale as a lock from Grace Darling’s head, which he had got from a friend in the north, “My monkey was up at once,” says George, “ and 1 kicked the fellow into the street, to the intense delight of eight or nine clerks, who, not knowing that Grace’s hair was brown and not yellow, seemed about to invest,”

When I think of the towel, the oldfashioned towel, that used to hang up by the printing house door, 1 ! think that nobody in these days of shoddy can hammer out iron to wear as it wore. The tramp who abused it, the devil who used it, the comp, who got it when these, two were gone, the make-up and ''foreman, the editor, poor man, ea ( ch rubb<?d some grime off while they put a heap on. In, over, end under, ’twas blacker than thunder, ’twas harder than poverty, rougher than sin ; from the roller suspended it never was bonded, and it flapped on the wall like a banner of tin. It grew thicker and rougher, and harder and tougher, and daily put on a more inkier hue, un'il one windy morning, without any warning, it fell on the floor »nd was broken in two,—Burdette,