Miscellaneous. " Try" And " Cant."

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1920, 25 October 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Miscellaneous. " Try" And " Cant."

BY LILLIE E. BABB. The fox said " Try, " and he got away Prom dogs, that had chased him all the day. The Bees said " Try," through the summer hours, And so to honey was turned the flowers. The Squirrel said " Try," and quiok and free, He went to the top of the highest tree. The new-fledged Lark said only " Try," And singing he flew to the far blue sky. "Try" ploughed the field and reaped the wheat, 11 Try " run the race : " Try " won the seat. ii rp r y » gained the port 'gainst wind and tide, « T r y » gathered the gold and won the bride " Try " filled the hole, and mended the rent, ii Try " won and conquered wherever he went. But " I-can't-do-it," since he was born, Has never won anything else but scorn. — Neio York Ledger

" Lord Lytton and Lord Beaconsfield," says ' a writer in London Society, " have carefully developed tlie culinary element in their writings. Perhaps the novel-reader has observed the strong gastronornical element that is to be found in Lord Beaconsfield's stories. How he apostrophises soup, fish, and game : ' The warm and sunny flavor of brown soup, the mild and moonlight deliciousness of white. Ye soups, o'er whose creation I have watched like mothers o'er their sleeping child.' The whiting is • the chicken of the ocean.' So of the ortolan : • Sweet bird, all paradise opens 1 Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music' ' Sherry has a pedigree as long as an Arab's ; a bouquet like the breath of woman. A lobster has all the arts of a coquette.' So far my Lord Beaconsfield in the days of Lady Blessington, and when he might meet Louis Napoleon at petite soupers. He laid down that immortal principle which Mr. Bright quoted in the House of Commons — that the great secret of good dinners is to have hot plates. Disraeli had some curious remarks on the dinners of celebrated people : c A dinner of wits is proverbially a palace of silence ; and the envy and hatred which all literary men really feel for each other, especially when they are exohfihging dedications of mutual affection, always insure in -'such assemblies the agreeable presence of a "general feeling of painful constraint." If Vgtfod thing occurs to a guest he will Mt express it, lest,

his neighbor, who is publishing a novel in numbers, shall appropriate it next month, or ha himself, who has the same responsibility of production, bo deprived of its legitimate appearance.' The personal interest of this passage is that it is somewhat descriptive of Djsraeli himself. For the most part he was a very quiet and observant diner-out, who, as a rule, talked very little, but when he did, t-'Vrt a great deal. Sydney Smith always . <- a point of making a good meal before he brought out any of his good sayings. One of those who used to meet Diaraeh Bays ' that hia mouth was alive with a kind of working and impatient neivousnes?,' and then he would burst forth into a ' perfectly successful cataract of expression with a curl of triumphant scorn worthy of Mephistopheles.' In his liper days the great earl eliminated the Mephistophelea expression, which would scarcely conduce to sociability, and was known as the most delightful of diners-out. It is curious that, so far from complaining of silenco, Sir Archibald Alison, in his 'Autobiography,' complains of the strain caused by the incessant conflict of the wits, and their efforts to cut one another out."

C. W. Hkaton, an English chemist, has analyzed a sample of water from the.famous Ilagar's well, at Mccca — to which thousands of Mohammedan pilgrims resort annually — and reports that the water is a most dangerous compound, containing an extraordinarily largo proportion of filth. The total amount of solid matter found ".in a gallon of it was more than twenty-nvs times as great as that found in a like quantity o£ the water horn the Thames river.

Faces ami Hands. Lvdies are said to be working their way into the watch business, because they produce handsomer faces and more delicate hands than men.

The first translation of any part of the Holy Scriptures into English that wa3 committed to the press was the New Testament, translated from the Greek by William Tyndale, with the assistance of John Foyo and William Roye, and printed first in 1526, in octavo. Tyndale published afterwards, in 1530, a translation of tho Five Books of Moses, and of Jonah, in 1531, in octavo. An English translation of the Psalter, done from the Latin of Martin Bucer, was also published at Strasburgh in 1530, by Francis Foye, in octavo. And the same book, together with Jeremiah and the Song of Moses, were likewise published in 1534, in duodecimo, by George Foye, some time Fellow of PeterHouse, in Cambridge. The fir3b time the whole Bible appeared in English was in the year 1530, in folio. The translator and publisher was Miles Goverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, who revised Tyndale's version, compared it with the original, and supplied what bad been left untranslated by Tyndale. It was printed afc Zurich, and dedicated to King Henry the Eighth. This waa the Bible, which by Cromwell's injunction of September, 1530, was ordered to ba laid in churches.

Strange Altitudes in !>catli, Puof. C. E. Bhown-Sjuquakd writes that at the battle of Willmmsburg a United States Zouave was shot directly through the foehead, as he was climbing over a low fence, and his body was found in the last attitude in life — one leg half over the fenc9, the body crouohing backwards. One hand, partially clenched and laised to the level of the forehead, presented the palm forward a* if to waid off an approaching evil. A brakernan of a freight car on the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad was instantaneously killed by a shot between the eyes, fired by a guerilla. The murdered man was screwing down the brakes at the moment of the shot. After death the body remained fixed, the arms rigidly extended on the wheel of the brake. The pips which he had been smoking lemained still clasped between his teeth. The conservation of the last attitude can take place in other circumstances than sudden death from wounds to the brain, the heart or the lungs, although an injury to a vital organ is the mo&t frequent cau&e of that phenomenon. A detail of United States soldiers, foraging near Goldsboro N. 0., came suddenly upon a party of Southern cavalry dismounted. The latter immediately sprang to their saddles and, after a volley had been fired at them, they all but one rode away. That one waa left standing with one foot in the stirrup ; one hand, the left, grasping the bridle reiu and mane of hia horse, the right hand clinching the barrel of his caibine near the muzzle, tha butt of the oarbine resting on the ground. The man's head was turned over his right shoulder apparently watching the approach of the attacking party. He was called upon to surrender, without response and upon a near approach and examination he was found rigid in death, in the singular attitude above described. Great difficulty was experienced in forcing the mane of the horse from his left hand and the carbine from his right. On the battle-field of Beaumont, near Sedan, in 1870, the dead body of a soldier was found half Bitting, half lying on the ground, delicately holding a tin goblet between his thumb and fore-finger and directing it towards an absent mouth. While in that position the poor man had been killed by a cannon ball, which had carried away the whole of his head and face except the lower jaw. The body and arms had been suddenly seized at the time of death by a stiffness* which produced the persistence of the state in which they were when the head was cut off. Twenty-four hours had elapsed since the battle. — St. Louis Globe.

A Very Diminutive Baby. Near the little village called Enon, ten miles southeast of Fort Worth, lives Mr. P. J. Manning, whose wife gave birth to twins about two weeks ago. Dr. Chambers says that the eldest, when born, weighed about one and a quarter pounde, and the other about five and a half pounds, a plump child. The smaller of the two could have been placed in a glass iumbler with ease. Its legs are not as large as a man's index finger, and its length would not exceed that of the entire hand. The doctor reports the little fellow thriving.— --Fort Worth (Texas) Gagette.

A. Rulibit With a Pair of Snowshoes. James Millers sons captured a curious rabbit in Pine Valley, Union County, the other day. The rabbit is pure white, and its toes are not only very long, but they are connected by webs, like a duck's feet. Such a thing was never seen before. — Poi Hand Oregonian,

Expulsion of Rats. A'wbiteb in Chamber's Journal relates his experience in ridding his house of rats. He first tried the well known remedy of pouring tar into the entrance of their holes and also of placing broken glass by their holes, but neither remedy did he find effective. But bound to get rid of the rat nuisance, if such a thing waß possible, he tried another well known remedy, which proved more satisfactory. He caught a couple of large rats in a trap alive, and then besmeared them all over, except their heads, with tar, and let them loose in their favorite run. But he says ; I could not follow these two besmeared rats into their numerous runs to see what would happen ; but it is reasonable to assume that they either summoned together all the members of their community, and by their crest fallen appearance gave their comrades silent indications of the misfortunes which had so suddenly befallen them, or that they frightened their brethren away, for they one and all forsook the place and fled. The experiment was eminently sucessf ul. From that day, in 1875, till now 1883, my house, ancient though it is, haa been entirely free from rats, and I believe that there is no remedy equal to this one .

Lokd Tennyson does not at all appreciate his aaw honors, and ids replies to many of the congratulations which have been addressed to him have been exceedingly testy. He did not himself desire to accept a peerage, but ultimately yielded to the earnest and repeated solicitations of his wife and sons.