MISCELLANEOUS. The Electric Light.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2027, 4 July 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS. The Electric Light.

At the recent exhibition at PJnlad "'phia, attention vrafi directed in a rr»t ; i<?r cotiical but effective m inner to tVj Elwon c'otiic; lat:p. A pjwerfu' ljunp of tins debCfijj'.ion \^s fastened to fie fcuv.d of n. b'mek mm, c jt'czikd wif"! boing caTwd do^n hid bad/ froui if., and oonnrct'd with cip?-v discs ou cha hoe 1 ? of his boot*. Taifi color- '1 g(»r. r inii*i— ,ie term " darkio" ia boroobviou:!" 1 in vdtnis^d.ble —could become luminous at will by simply placing his heels upon ceitain c^p^r conflluators laid along the floor, which were in cirouit with the general system for lighting tho building. A still more startling novelty in electric illumination waa organised in Now York a few week 3 ago, an illustration of which ia given in the Scientific American, published in that city. Tnis consisted of an electric torchlight procession, which traversed several of the streets ; and its object was, we presume, to advertise the Edison system of electrio illumination. The procession may be best described as a hollow square formed by about three hundred men, each wearing a helmet, surmounted by a powerful electrio lamp, and each holding the protected rope which carried the current from one to the other. In the oentre of the square travelled a steamengine and dynamo-machine —on trucks drawu by horses — followed by coal and water carts to supply the engine with its necessary food. Both horses and trucks were decorated with lamps, and the leader of the brilliant throng carried a stag tipped with radiance of two hundred candle-power.

Thorns. j BT SPSiN CoOLIDGE. Roses have thorns ; and love is thorny, too ; And tint is love's sharp thorn which guards its flower, That our beloved have the cruel po^vor To hurt us deeper than all others do. The heart attuned to our heart like a charm, Beat answering beat, as echo answers song, If the throat falter, or the pulse beat wrong, How shall it fa.il to grieve us or ts harm ' Tho taunt which, uttered by a stranger's lip-s. Scarce heard, scarce minded, passed us like the wind, Breathed by a dear voice, which has grown unkind, Turns sweet to bitter, sunshine to eclipse. The instinct of a change we cannot prove, The pitiful tenderness, the sad too-much, The sad too-little, shown in look or touch — ■ All these are wounding thorns of thorny love. Ah ! sweetest rose which earthly gardons bear, Fought for, desired, life's guerdon and life't end, I Although your thorns may slay and wound and rend, Still men must snatch you ; for you arc so fair. — A writer in the Pittsburg Dispatch, noting the fact that a large proportion of the good newspaper reporters of the day are from country towns, says : " One thing that is in faror of the country boy ia that thingg in the city are strange to him, and attract his attention, whereas one used to them every day would not notice them at all. City boys are apt to want to write editorials at the start. If they can't do that they study law or medicine, or play pool."

The Deadly Weed. For years Professor Huxley, like Charles Lamb, toiled after tobacco " aa some men after virtue." At a certain debate on smoking he told the story of his early sk ugges in a, way which utterly put the anti-tobacconists to confusion : " For forty yeara of my life, he Raid, tobacco had been a deadly poison to me. (Loud oheers from the anti tobacconists.) In my youth, as a medical student, I tried to smoke. In vain ! At every fresh attempt my insidious foe stretched me prostrate on the floor. (Repeated cheers.) I entered ttie navy. Again I tried to smoke, and again met with a defeat. I hated tobacco. I could almost have lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobaooo smokers to death. (Vociferous cheering.) A few years ago I was in Brittany with some friends. We went to an inu. They began to smoke. They looked very happy, and outside it was very wet and dismal. I thought I would try a cigar. (Murmurs.) I did so. (Great expectations. I smoked that cigar — it was delicious. (Groans ) From that moment I wag a changed man, and I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable praotice,and is productive of good. (Dismay and confusion of the anti-tobacconists. Boars of laughter from the smokers.) There is no more harm in a pipe than there is in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too muoh green tea and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my own part I oonsider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper." Total rout of the antitobacconists and complete triumph of the smokers.

I always told you that not having enough sunshine was what ailed the world. Make the people happy and thera will not be half the quarreling or a tenth part of the wickedness there is. — Lyndia Maria Child.

0 you who linger in the night of toil And lone; for day, Take heart : the grandest hero is the man Oi whom the world shall say, That from the roadside of defeat he plucked The flower suocess, Bravely and with a modesty sublime, Not with blind eagerness. —IF. T. Talbot.

A New Idea in Astronomy. A lady sends us the following : " A beautiful thought crnne from my little boy of 8 years this evening. We were watching our lovely sunset, and afterward the stars made their appearance, one by one, until there was a myriad of bright, twinkling orbs. He said: "Mamma, don't you suppose that God has bored lots of holes in the sky so that we can just see how beautiful Heaven is on the other side, and don't you gues3 that it is the angels floating by them that makes them look as though they were winking ? ' "

Bobert Toombs, of Georgia, whose chief ambition at one time was to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument, was known as the " unlucky fisherman." When he was a boy he was quite ungainly in appearance, and his companions used to say that he was so ugly that he scared the fiah away. All through hia career he never had any luck in angling. He would sit for hour 3 en the banks of a stream impatiently awaiting a bite and cursing his luok, while others around him were landing fish by the dozen. After fishing all day long in a stream he drew up a huge mud-turtle. He cqfc his name in full on the hard shell and threw the turtlo baok into the wa,ter. Two years afterwards he was fishing at the same spot and again drew out a turtle. It waa the very same turtle on whioh he had inscribed his name ; but he was astonished to find below his name the words : " Too ugly to catch fiah." A waggish friend had oaught the denizen of the mud and cut the line below. The story went that Toombs caught this identical turtle no less than five times, and tha last time, in a fit of rage, cut its head off. — The Argonaut.

Eveiiybody knows the history of the fighting Quakera during the Bevolufcianary War. Many of the staid sons of staid sires of the same faith slipped out of meeting during the last war to shoulder a musket. One venerable old Friend in Germantown, Pa., found that three of hia sons had pone to this conlliot against whioh hia creed arrayed him, The youngest felt that he, too, miwt go, but fearing to tell his family, he took hia gun one day and began to dean it, placing himself in his father's way. The old gentleman saw him, and paoad slowly up and down, but said nothing. Presently he approached the young man. "Charles," he said, delibp-ately, "if the devil has made thee feel that thee needs one of these worldly instruments, spare not thy money, but $efc the boat,— Exchange^ \