GENERAL NEWS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume xxv, Issue 10713, 29 August 1913, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS.

,»h Our woman-wordd Lave all experienced vicissitudes of fortune (says the Chronicle). "Female," like the rest has had its day. Chaucer introduced it under the guise oi "femelle," andi Shakespeare used it a few times instead of "woman." But it-waß the early novelists who clothed it with' respectability by making all their women "females." So exceedingly respectable had it become in the time Of Dr Johnson that Fanny Burney called the Princess Royal "the second female in the kingdom." • .Even eo late as the publication of Tennyson's "Princess," Mrs Browning was able to "write with-perfect propriety that the poem dealt with "a university attended by females." , Then decadence set in, till now no, shred of respectability is left to it; "Female," OhW good enough to connote a Priii- ; ce&s militant Suffragist. v- A JOURE FOR LAZY BOYS.

-Dr Marcel Natier, at a repent meeting of the Paris 'Medical Society gave a lecture in which he stated that he had found) a cure for lazy boys. He means schoolboys, of course, who, when play is more alluring, have an incorrigible aversion to study. He says that when a boy is an inveterate idler and a dunce, declared so by. his masters, he ought to be subjected to a thorough medical examination. The doctor ought to find a physical'cause for the mental lethargy. This consists in an insufficient respiration or breathing, a pathological disorder to which the doctor should attend, also an incomplete decirculation of the Blood:, a 'general anaemic condition, sluggishness in expelling used-up cerebral matter;: And gradual intoxication and exhaustion of the grey matter of the brain. Dr Natier has found these symptoms presented in 'boys, of nine who had not yet, learned their alphabet. The boys were generally declared lazy,"but,what they wanted was not the rod, but medical treatment. In such cases he prescribed a momentary suspension of study or attendance at school and a course of gmynastic exercises in- the open air. All the symptoms of the sluggish or lazy boy soon disappeared, aad during the subsequent five or six years many of them got to the head of .their classes and took' first prizes. The transformation was marvellous.

THE ARMY MOUSTACHE. Although of late certain army officers have been seen with the upper, lip 'apparently clean-shaven it is not to be supposed that the king's fegulation insisting -on moustache® has bean abolished (says a London journal.; It isr laid down in Section XII, Paragraph", 1696; of the King's Regulations -for the. Army that :~The hair, .of the head wiU be kept short. The chin arid - imcfceir lip will be'shaved, but not th§ upper lip. Whiskers, if. worn, will be of moderate length. The officers who have been- seen without moustaches have proved to the satisfaction of their commanding officers that no hair has made its appearance On the upper lip. Technically, if an officer cannot cultivate a moustache he is breaking the King'.s Regulations. It is-the duty of the commanding officer to go into , the matter at once. He must satisfy himself that the officer has not secretly shaved himself. Having proved conclusively, that a moustache is an impossibility, there is nothing to be done except to hope for the best. It would be unfair to court-martial a man because nature has behaved shabbily.

. THE GRUESOME SALE. < "The gruesome sale" is the term which has been used to describe the extraordinary auction held last June at the Hotel Rroupt, when the petrified body: of a, . Patagonian, the; mummied ah Indian, and two volumes bound in human skin, were offered to the public. The Patagonian fetched £320, and after resting in peace on a shelf for many yefifs~is to return to America and start once again a career.as an attraction at exhibitions. The head of the Indian has become the property of the comedienne, Mile. Barlay, of the Vaudeville, and brought in £s3*. The books bound in human skin fetched a little under £2O, and werejiear at that, apart from their gruesome interest, for they were n6t objects of beauty.

WOMEN POLICE. . The New York City Civil Service Commission will «oon hold examinations for ten policewomen to guard' girls' bathing beaches and playgrounds (says'a cable message to tiie 'Au straliari newspapers^: The ~ commission* has decided that unmarried women of generous proportions are the most desirable. Physical examinations of candidates will be carried out by a woman'trainer from the Uni vereity'of Chicago. Widows are not debarred from competing, but they must be young and vigorous.