Miscellaneous.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1556, 24 June 1882, Page 2 (Supplement)

Miscellaneous.

Attention is just nowpjj&ihg v srominently directed to the employme'njb of women as clerks in public arid private 'offices ; arid" very; favorable accounts are of tH'eni, whereever the experiment has been' tried. Although the postal authorities were by no means the first" to employ females, they have developed the movement in the most encouraging way, and nearly 1,200 women are now engaged in the post and telegraph offices of the metropolis. The Controller of the Returned Letter office states that there the females have completely surpassed his expectation. "They are," he adds, " very accurate, and do a fair quantity of Avork ; more so, in fact, than many of the males who have been employed on the same duty." Nearly the whole of the work connected with the industrial branch of the Prudential Life Assurance Society is conducted by female clerks, and after many years' experience the managers express their entire satisfaction with that department. A Solicitor announces his intention of trying the experiment of engaging two young women as writers, and openings for female labor are being found in various other directions. How much these are needed may bo inferred from the single fact that for 40 offices in the London Post-office there were recently 920 applicants. — Exchange. Eecent poisoning cases have awakened terrible suspicion, which finds fullest expression in the following letter : — A few days ago, being in conversation with an eminent London physician, and with an eminent provincial physician, I chanced to relate an attempt at domestic poisoning which had come under my notice in the course of my practice. The provincial physician related a similar one: the London physician another. He then added, " Here are we three, each with such a case, and probably with more than one in our own experience. Assuming that there are 18,000 medical practitioners in Great Britain, I believe from my intercourse with them that 12,000 could teil tales of the same kind. How many instances are there winch escape detection?" The moral of the doctor's argument is that the sale of poisons should be more strictly regulated, and the causes of death more carefully inquired into than is the case at present. Coroners' inquests are certainly often hurried through in a manner that allows no opportunity of unravelling the facts of mysterious deaths. — Lloyd 1 * Weekly. Gas Treatment of Whooping Cough. — In the treatment of whooping cough in gas works, as lately resorted to, especially in London, the purifying chamber consists of a large room with doors and windows freely open, and each contains twenty -four vessels, holding five cubic meters of depurating substance — lime and sulphate of iron mixed with sawdust — through which the gas has to pass. When the workmen are emptying and refilling thesp vessels, the children with whboping cough are placed around it, and inhale the vapors whioh escape ; they are in an atmosphere containing ammonium sulphide, carbolic acid, and tarry products. As to the efficiency of this treatment, one physician reports that of 120 cases persevered with, in twenty there was entire failure, forty-eight showed improvement, and the rest were cures ; it is thought, however, that it acts only upon one element of the malady, viz., catarrh. Force op Habit. — It was a quaint and singularly wise remark by a modern essayist that no one's example is as dangerous to us as our own ; for when we have done a certain thing once it is so much easier to do it again. It is the first step which counts in evil as well as in good. The tendency of human nature to form habits, to run in grooves, is one of its most marked characteristics. Fortunately for us it has its good side as well as its bad side. If we can only too easily form a habit of petulance, of ill-temper, we can also, by trying, form a habit of self-control, and each fresh viciory over ourselves is easier than the first. A habit of application is, it would be safe to say, of as much importance to any great man as is his genius. Not that any amount of application can make a dull man brilliant; but that without application a brilliant man might almost as well be dull, as far as anything he is likely to accomplish is concerned . ' ' Perseverance is genius, ' ' several great men have said, in slightly varying phrase ; but this is not true. Perseverance is only the right hand of gonius. Something is breathed into a man at his birth — a divine fire, a gift of the gods — which makes great things possible to him, while to his brother in the next cradle they would be impossible for ever. But having received this divine fire he must give it fuel. It is the sign that he must work more, not less, than his fellows ; and so thei'e is no one thing so remarkable in the history of almost all our great men as their habits of prodigious application.