TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7960, 10 February 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Japan has the cheapest postal service in the world. Letters are carried all over tbe Empire for two sen, about seven-tenths of a cent. This is the more remarkable when we consider tbe difficulties of transportation over a mountainous and irregular country that has only about a hundred miles of railway, while only a few of the chief roads can be used for waggons, and the steamships connect but a small number of stations on the coast. Mark Twain, who has just attained the age of 70, and is hale and hearty, was reoently interviewed on the subject of longevity. When questioned on the subject of exercise, he said: "No exercise at all. For weeus at a time Ldid not leave my home up in thejmoiintains. Often I lay in bed all day and wrote. It's a great luxury to arrange your desk in bed and write as long as you like. I've spent whole weeks that way. I don't feel the lack of exercisje. Perhaps lam exceptionally lucky. 1 may not need it. 1 never fail to run upstairs. That is exorcise enough I And. You know it's a gre.it mistake to say a fellow is lazy because he doesn't like to rush around and be active in your own kiud of activity. The average man whom we call lazy is probably not lazy at all, but is simply storing up energy which he will burn up in some form of work which doesn't happen to apoeal to us."

A striking featurw of the Australian bush fires baa been the way in which both wild and domestic animals rushed in their alarm towards the habitation of man. Tbe Age states that horses and cows flocked round the homestead, and, when that refuge became hopeless, they followed their fleeing owners. In the ruins of many of the houses th« charred bodies of bares and walla-

biea were found, and in the case of ' one deserted dwelliug whioh had escaped the llamos the inhabitants when they returned found it in the occupation of two opossums and a native bear. Mrs Singleton, woen escaping from ber home, before the advancing flames, encountered a big black snake so i atenfc oi getting away from the fast following destruction that when she trod on it it took no notice of her. The bodies of many snakes have been found in the track of the fire.

Canada's great need is fmarriageable women. There is many a lone bachelor in the Far West—unmarried because he has no one to marry. Almost any woman that emigrates can, says the Daily Mail, safely count on wedded bliss. And yet" relatively few go, probably because of the cost and risk of emigration. To bring the parties together, a matrimonial bureau will' probably, says the Ottawa correspondent of The Times-, be established by the Salvation Army in Canada. "Commissioner Coombes, who lias just returned from a trip through the North west and British Columbia, is impressed with the need of some trustworthy agency of this kind. Many applications have been received, he says, from honest hardworking men asking for the assistance of the Army in securing goo'l wives. These men will not trust ordinary matrimonial agencies, but would have in the Army, and the Commissioner ia convinced that exceedingly useful work could be done by helping western bachelors to meet women of such characters as the Army would recommend." Meantime, the male population of the Extreme West is increasing in altogether disproportionate ratio to the female. The gold rush to the Klondyke, the opening up of so much of the North - west to agriculture, the development of' trades within the towns—all form pioneer work in which the wife or the fiancee Is not materially wanted.

The Sydney Morning Herald, of •January 30th, says:—lt is a remarkable circumstance that although the bubonio plague, so far ad it affects rats, is brought absolutely within the control of the metropolitan health authorities, yet, after lying dormant for months at a time, it suddenly springs into activity agaiu. This recrudescence is not the result of relaxed efforts on the part of the health authorities. On the oontrary, their crusade, against xaU and mice is vigorously maintained throughout the year. Week in and week out, the captured rats number about 600, but a constaut bacteriological examination failed to trace any signs of the disease. Suddenly it has re appeared. The greater portion of last year passed with only an odd infected rat being discovered. Yesterday one was caught amongst the wharves in Darling Harbour, above Fyrmont Bridge. The previous infected rat was found in the same locality on December sth last. Dr. Ashburton Thompson, President of the Buard of Health, hoped that plague-infeoted rodents had disappeared altogether from the city, but their reappearance clearly indicates that bacteriolo gists have much to learn regarding bubonio plague.