Miscellaneous.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1565, 15 July 1882, Page 6

Miscellaneous.

The Laugh op Woman.— A woman has no natural gift more bewitching than a sweet laugh, It i 3 like the sound of flutes on the water. It leaps from her in a clear, sparkling rill, and the heart that hears it feels as if bathed in the cool, exhilarating spring. Hare you ever pursued a fugitive through trees, led on by a fairy laugh-now there, now lost now found ? We have: and we are pursuing that wandering voice to this day. Sometimes it comes to us in the midst of care or sorrow or irksome business, and then we turn away the evil spirit of mind. How much we owe to that sweet laugh ! It turns prose to poetry ; it brings sunshine to flowers, over the darkness of the wood in which we are travelling; it touches with the light even our sleep, which is ho more than the image of death, but is consumed with dreams there are the shadows of immortality.

JOSH BILLINfIS. The famed writer of # the Yankee proverbs is now about GO in years, and shows it. His hair, which is as long and unkempt as ever, is iron gray, and his stiff, drooping mustache is fast changing to the color of old age. As he grows older, he seems to become more and more supremely regardless of persons surroundings or opinions. As he greets one with a machine-like "How do you do," or an inanimate "Good day," the impression is conveyed that he has arrived at the state of life and prosperity where he deems fate powerless to work any alteration for the worse. Billings is essentially a man to himself, taciturn and unobstrusive everywhere. His royalty from the circulation of his "Proverbs, his almanacs and other works swell his yearly income to about $5,000. He is now a willing, but not an attractive lecturer ; his services in that field are small and wanting demand. From the proceeds of his labor he has amassed a fortune of over $50,000. All this money apparently affords himself and wife but meager and inelegant comfort. They pass a quiet, relegated, but doubtless contented life, in an unpretentiors Sixtythird street dwellinghouse, the garret of which is made to answer the combined purpose of literary sanctum and storehouse . —Exi h «nge.

STORIES OF A CAT AND A HEN r . Mrs A. W. Brooks, of East Eliot, in the State of Maine, has a cat 13 years old, for which she has been vainly offered §50. This learned pussy will stand up at the word of command, bow slowly or quickly as directed, walk around the room on her hind legs only, dance, turn somersaults, go through the motions of holding a jewsharp in her mouth with one paw and playing on it with the other, mew when ordered to speak, kiss her paw to visitors, hold a saucer of milk, on her forelegs, and lap the milk, and stand on her hind feet, and with the forepaws catch bits of bread or meat thrown to her, like a base-ball player. Her kitten, a year old, will turn somersaults. The same lady has a hen which always wipes her feet on the mat on entering the house, and if asked, " How do you get your living, biddy ?" will scratch on the floor, look to see if she has scratched out anything, and then looked at the questioner to see if the answer is correct. This hen despises the wooden, chalk, and porcelain cheats which some people palm off on hens for nest eggs, tumbling them out of her nest as often as they arc put in.— American Tupcr.

MOTH-SOXG " What dost thou here, Thou dusky courtier, Within the pinky palace of the rose. Here is no bed tor thee, No honeyed spicery, — But for the golden bee, And the gay wind, and me Its sweetness grows. Rover, thou dost forget ; Seek thou the passion-flower Bloom of one twilight hour. Haste, thou art late ! Its hidden savors wait. For thee is spread Its soft, purple coverlet ; Moth, art thou sped ? — Dim as a ghost he flies Through the night mysteries." —Miss Hutchi>sox.

+ FKICES IN OLD TIMES. Tub North Pennsylvania Railroad will cairy passengers now from Philadelphia to Bethlehem in two hours, and comfortably ; but that seems a small atonement for the audacity of having pulled down the old Crown Inn to make room for their fine union depot. This old inn was the first which the Moravians built. It was sepemted by the Lehigh River from their settlement —it being their invariable custom to build inns at a distance from their towns, "to keep their peopie free from contact with the world, and to avoid as much as possible the prying curiosity of travellers." On a panel of its double-door was painted the crown of one of those good friends of America, the royal English Georges, aud in the bar-room hung the inn's license, granted in 1740—" in the thirty-third year of the reign of the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, Ireland," etc. Living was cheap at the inn : " Breakfast with tea or coffee, 4d.; dinner, Gd., and with, a pint of beer, Sd. ; supper, 4(1., or if hot, 9d.j lodging, 2cl. ; a night's hay and oats. Is." — Lippbicot? a Magazine.

MORVHOMAXIA, "Wiiex physicians discovered that pain could be suttmed by inserting under the skin a small pointed instrument provided with a tube containing morphia, they little thought that they were paving the way for a new vice. Yet so it was. There are in our merry England, beings who are as wholly under the domination of morphia as ever Chinese were under that opium. Women, have yielded by degrees to its fatal fascination, until at last they^ prick the skin a dozen times a day with the tiny syringe that hassuch terrible results. The opei-ation is almost painless, the immediate effects pleasant. A delicious languor supervenes. Happy thoughts and bright imaginations fill the mind. Some see "beautiful visions, others feel only a pervading sensation of comfort and well-being. On a few the effect of morphia is to excite to some intellectual effort, if effort that can be called which is pure delight, a glorious feeling of untrammelled power;,, or, uncrippled exercise of .the. highest-- faculties.' It is 'as tho'agh the mind had suddenly developed r wings. But at,the very height, of "the eii'chant'merit "the influeiice df.morphia • sivbsideV;The l *glory^fa<les. >Thewin'gs4railj, J a|d the%£eVZo.p£&TsJheiv

fog. Can it be ■wondered at that the dose is renewed, that the poison is absorbed again and again, that the intervals become shorter and shorter between the reign of the potent drag ? And the end ? The punishment is terrible indeed. By degrees the mind becomes darkened. Hideous hallucinations seize upon it. Self-control is lost.. Imbecility overtakes the weak. Madness threatens the strong. These are the personal consequences. There are others to be bequeathed to sons and daughters and later generations. These can be guessed at. The new vice lias not reigned sufficiently long for the world to have seen them exemplified, but a dark array of possibilities suggests itself only too readily. The heritage of insanity, of inebriety, of imbecility, with its future to be traced back to those tiny tubes which hold only a drop or two, and to which men once looked as the blessed means of relieviling pain, forgetting that blessings and curses go hand in hand in a crooked world. Dipsomania lias now a powerful rival, speedier in its results than its own revolting process, and eventually as degrading. The name of fie latter born sister fiend is Morphomania. — London Truth.

CHINESE TKMPLKS. We went first to Honam, the largest temple in Canton. Having lived three years in Japan we naturally compared the Buddhist temples here with those in Japan. In Japan, when one enters a temple, Buddhist or Shintoo, he first removes his boots, and then goes in stocking-feet over lacquered walks and floors polished like mirrors, so clean that a cambric handkerchief could not be soiled if used as a duster upon them. Here we entered with muddy boots, for it was raining at the time, into filthy courts and temples, where we had to drive out of our way chickens, dogs, and eveu hogs. In this temple are left twelve sacred hogs, which looked like any other hogs, except that they were older and fatter. The gods at the gates and the gilt images of Buddha were very much larger than those of Japan ; the principal other difference was the stench and the filth. — Detroit Free Press.

HOW CHEAPLY ONE CAN LIVK. Bread, after all, is the cheapest diet oue can live on, and also 'the best. A story is told that shows just how cheap a man can live, when he gets "down to mush," figuratively and literally speaking. Colonial Fitzgibbon was, many years ago, Colonial Agent at London for the Canadian Government, and was wholly dependent upon remittances from Canada for his support. On one occasion these remittances failed to arrive, and as there was no cable in those days, he was compelled to write to his Canadian friends to know the reason of the delay. Meanwhile he had just one sovereign to live upon. He found that he could live upon sixpence per day, or about 12i cents of American money — four pennyworths of bread, one pennyworth of milk, and one pennyworth of sugar. He made pudding of some of the bread and sugar, which served for breakfast, dinner and supper, the milk being reserved for the last meal. When his remittances arrived about a month afterward, he had five shillings remaining of his sovereign, and lie liked his frugal diet so well that he kept it up for over two years, possibly longer. Sixpence a day is ceitainly a small amount to expend for food : but a man -in Minnesota, about three years ago worried through a whole year on £2. He lived on "Johnny cake." We know of a theological student in an Ohio college who, sustained by grace, rice and corn-bread, lived thirteen weeks on 30s; but there were several good apple orchards near the college, and the farmers kept no dogs, It is not the necessities of lite that cost much, but the luxuries; and it is with the major part of mankind as it was with the Frenchman, who said that if he had the luxuries of life, he could dispense with the necessities. Mere living is cheap, but as the hynologist says, " It is not all of life to live." — The American Milter.

DETKSTA BLK QUALITIES OV THK CIGARETTE. I ran across a cigarette factory the other day. Whew ! I would'nt writ? — or, rather, you would'nt dare print what I saw. Dirty butts of cigars fresh from the filth of tho muddy streets are the cleanest and nicest of the material used in compiling these precious roads to ruin. I came down town on a Madison avenue car this evening, and on the tail ond there were three little chaps the eldest about 14. Each smoked a cigarette and spat hia little life away. I ventured to ask if they enjoyed the odor. They said they did. And the taste ? Certainly. On inquiring I found they had a wellknown brand of cigarette, noted for its <l opium soak" and its terrible smell when burning. Poor little devils. They can't last long. They were pale and Mckly puny and offensive. What kind of men will they make ? Men ? They're men already in their own eyes. They and a majority of our little lads are full of the clang of the day, up in all the catches and abundantly able to hold up their end of a conversation. I subsequently saw these three boys in Niblo's Garden. It would have done you good to hear them talk. A blind man might reasonably think he was listening to three old men. Nothing was new. They had seen it all before, and better done at that. Down went the curtain, out went the boys, but, before they felt the flrst breath of the fresh air from the .street, each puny hand held a cigarette to the vile- smelling month, and puff ! puff ! they sickened everybody in their viciuity. This is an old grievance of mine, and I don't care to bore you with it, but I feel it keenly. Day by day th« vice prows stronger. There was a time when cigarette smoking was confined almost entirely to Cubans, who knew what good tobacco was and made their own cigarettes. Graduallly the habit spread. Dealers followed f-uit. Makers become unscrupulous. Little dirty boys were sent oui to pick up cigar stumps. Other, equally disgusting material was also utilized. Opium wa3 made to do duty; Cheap paper took the place of rice-paper. I wish these boys could see the stuff their paper is made from. Wouldn't it turn their little stomachs ? I trow, I trow. The cheap paper, the old stumps, the opium and chemicals used to make them "strong," deserve to be shown up. The parents have no influence with their sous. Why not ? Because they smoke cigars or pipes themselves. The boys charge all the good advice they got to their fathers' desire to keep them down. There is but one way to deal with our boys. Ra«i with them through their eyes. If every nicotined stomach were made public, if every time a fellow died of too much cigarette, the fact -were made known, if the proud boys could be shown a rag factory and a .stump grindery, it seems to me the cigarette business would be wound up very soon.— Philadelphia Tfam. ' -V -■- <