General News.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4614, 18 October 1883, Page 2

General News.

If they have not many, they have at least some extraordinary psople in Loath, N.S.W. " A champion egg-eater " is the latest novelty they can boast of. Mr T. boards at a local hotel, and when eggs are served at any meal, disdains t J look at less than five. The evening before last he had demolished this number, together with some other things, which made up the meal, when a discussion arose between Mr T. and his landlord, as to how many eggs he was capable of stowing away. The former declared he was equal to twenty four .'—and then and there declared he would eat 19. These were at once provided, the result of failure being that he would have to pay for the lot. We have it on the best of testimony that the whole of these nineteen eggs duly disappeared, after which this remarkable eggconsumer asked for more! But as eggs are worth about 3a per doz., landlord couldn't see the fun of it. Now, as authorises say that an egg is equal to a ilbofmeat, it follows that this man ate what was an equivalent to 61b of meat. Mr T. will probably now be distinguished as the man with the rapacious maw.

Marseilles will presently see pass through her city the members of a singular expedition. There has being organised at Paris, under the direction of the learned Abbe Moigno, -the founder of the Cosmo, a society having for its objeot the dragging of the bottom of the lied Sea and the Bitter Lakes to find chariots and treasures of the army of Pharaoh, supposed to be at the bottom of these waters covered by saline deposit?. A sum of 750.C9D frances has been subscribed for the expense. Divers will search the Eed Sea and the Bitter Lakes to discover the arms, the armour and the precious stones that were in possession of the Egyptians when they were engulphed.

An inquirer into the subject of Austra* lian languages wanis to know—"Cau there be a connexion between the Australian word ' Gin,' for woman; and gyne; between lubra and muliebris; between gibba and gebel, written also tebel, and having the same meaning. Is the Anaki of the flat-topped hills, the You Yangs, seen from West Melbourne, traceable to the Anak of the Pentateuch P Is there anything common, both to the mystery of the white pebble carried about by aborigines of the Murray River and the Broken Ewer, and to the white stone of Revelation ? "

In giving his evidence before the Education Commission, Victoria, the Rev. T. Cahill, S.J., said when Catholics, in this country saw one of their own poor schools alongside one of the expensive structures built by the State at the cost of several thousands of pounds, their feelings must be much the came as tho3e experienced by the Irish peasant prior to the disestablishment of the Irish Church. They were compelled to support doctrines in which they could not believe. The feelings of the Irish Catholic a3 he looked upon the two churches were beautifully expressed by the poet Moore in the following lines— " Cold in the eai fch at thy feet I'd rather be, Than wed what I love not or tarn one thought from th:o."

It seemed to him that the lines would also apply to the circumstances of Catholic ■> in Victoria. '

„ The perennial freshness of Banyans Pilgrim's Progress, and the unfailing; hold it. has on persons of all shades of religious opinion, and on the people of all Web, is a proof of oneness of the race in the needs and struggles and longings of the sin-, burdened souls. One of the good things in which the rationalistic Bishop Colenso was engaged up to the time of his death,, was the preparation of " a Zulu translation of Pilgrim's progress, which was being printed on his own press by Kaffir com-* posifcors." The biographies of Professor Palmer, the martyred explorer asd Orient" alist, tells of the interest which that unquie scholar took in the Pilgrim's Progress when it was first brought to his notice. And attention had been recently called to a Cbiace oditon of this wonderful book, with characteristic Chinese illustrations. 1' What would the Bedford tinker hare said to all this ? If he had " dreamed "of such au audience, his Bedford Gaol drezm ' wouldn't have been worth a3 much as it is. The writer's unconscious simplicity is a m ii element ia his powe:\ . ;