POOR MAN

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 927, 15 February 1872, Page 3

POOR MAN

The Chief Justice of New South Wal«i, Sir Alfred Stephen, now aged seventy years, has asked to bo allowed to resign on his full salary—£26oo a year. The retiring pension allowed by law is £I4OO a year; but upon this Sir Alfred states he cannot five, and unless he is allowed his full salary he will hold the office as long as ho lives. He has threatened never to repeat his application, and the Government have refused to accede to his request. The people of Sydney are now interesting themselves with the question—how long will Sir Alfred choose to remain in his office ? Should he live to be 100 years of age, is he to be permitted to occupy the Bench merely because he cannot compress his private expenses within the limits of his pension ? Exceptiug in a few extraordinary cases the intellectual faculties of men begin to decline at Sir Alfred's age, and it is not reasonable to suppose that he will form an exception to the rule. But whether or not, there he is, and there he says he will remain until he gets his £2600 a year as retiring allowance. He has deliberately matched himself against time, and somewhere about the beginning of the next century the contest will begin to be a very interesting one, not only for Australia but for thts world at large.

DIFFICULTIES OF LIFE. _ The " Philadelphia Medical Times" gives the following, as interesting to many readers :—Half of all who live die before 17. Only one person in 10,000 lives to be 100 years old, and but one in 100 reaches 60. The married live longer than the single; and out of every 1000 born only 95 weddings take place. Of 1000 persons who have reached 70, there are of clergymen, orators, and public speakers, 43 ; farmers, 40 ; workmen, 33 ; soldiers, 32 ; lawyers, 29 ; professors, 27 ; doctors, 21. " Farmers and workmen do not arrive at good age as often as clergymen and others who perform no manual labours ; but this is owing to the neglect of the laws of health, inattention to proper habits of life in eating, drinking, sleeping, dress, and the proper care of themselves after the work of the day is done. These farmers or workmen eat a heavy supper on a summer's day and sit around the doors in their shirt-sleeves, and in their tired condition and weakened circulation, are easily chilled, laying the foundation for diarrhea, bilious colic,'pneumonia or consumption.

MARRIAGE ADVERTISMENTS. Mr Grant, in his " History of Newspapers," tells a very good story of the origin of the custom of charging for the insertion of marriage announcements. At first those were published freely, as they still are by many provincial papers. But in the early days of the London "Times" it was the custom in announcing a marriage to state the amount of the bride's dowry —£20,000 or £30,000, whatever it might happen to be, and in looking through the ladies' columns one morning at breakfast, Mr Walter threw out the suggestion that if a man married all that money be might certainly pay a trifiing percentage upon it to the printer for acquainting the world with the fact. " These marriage fees would form a nice little pocket mouey for me, my dear," added Mrs Walter, and ae a joke her husband agreed to try the experiment. The charge at first waa but a trifle, and the annual amount probably not much ; but Mrs Walter, at her death, passed this prescriptive right of hers to her dasghter, and when a few years ago the right was repurchased by the present proprietor, is was assessed at £4OOO or £SOOO a year.

THE GOOD OF MANKIND. In a liberal-minded and eloquent address, delivered at the opening cf tbe new session of the Midland Institute at Birmingham, Professor Huxley, after -adverting to some of the prominent educational and social topics of tbe day, said: —" Assuming that the object of government was the good of mankind, what was the good of mankind ? He took it that it was the attainment by every man of all the happiness he could enjoy without diminishing the happiness of his fellow man. For example, ho could conceive the existence of an ecclesiastical establishment which should be a blessing to tbe community-—a church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions of theology, but to setting before men's minds the ideal of just, pure, and true living—a place in which those weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment's peace in the contemplation of that higher life which was possible for all, but which so few attained—a place in which men of strife and business should have time to think how small, after all, were the rewards they coveted compared with peace and charity. If such a church existed, no one would seek to disestablish it. Professor Huxley concluded by insisting on the necessity of Government assisting the diffusion of education, because it promoted morality and refinement by teaching men to discipline themselves and leading them to see that the highest position is to be attained, not by grovelling in the Tank arvi steaming valleys of sense, but by continually striving toward those high peaks where, resting in eterral calm, they might see the un* defiled and bright ideal of the highest gi .cm—a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.