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Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2522, 8 September 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

The fact that Thomas A. Edison, the inventor, is for the first time a father may have important results so far as the public is concerned. Mr Edison now has a personal motive for adapting electricity to the needs of the nursery, An electrical device which will enable every baby to do its own walking at night and rooking by day may yet be perfected. A repobt from China conveys the information that until recently the present Emperor had eight nurses, twenty-five farmers, twenty-five palanquin-bearers, ten umbrellaholders, thirty physicians and surgeons, seven directors, twenty-seven inferior cooks, fifty waiters and fifty dressers, and other attendant* to the number of fourhundred. Seventy-five astrologers, sixteen tutors and sixty priests cared for his spiritual and mental welfare.

A London paper states that a gentleman travelling in South Africa recently paid a visit to the new Delago Bay railway, and made a trip in a special train as far as the terminus at the Portuguese frontier. This terminus was unlike any other with which he is acquainted in the old world or now. It was surrounded by alligators, and when his train arrived he found that the stationmaster, the porter, and the telegraphist were all upon the roof of the station—not from fear of the alligators, who were always with them, but in order to avoid the attentions of a linn who had been pacing the platform during the forenoon. Under these adverse conditions it is not surprising to learn that freighters do not avail themselves of the advantages offered by the company. A formidable antagonist to telegraph construction in Mexico is found in the monkey tribe which inhabits the jungles and chaparral of Tabasco. Literally "the wuods are full of them." Their favorite diversion, when not in quest of food, is to betake themselves to telegraph lines for gymnastic exercises, and lineman assert that often a hundred able-bodied monkeys have been seen swinging on the wire, festooned, monkey fashion, by looping tneir taila. The continuous vibrations of these forest gymnasts start the iron nails used on cross-arms, und these often come down, bringing tho wires with them. And it, is not a safe matte to undertake to disperse these robust monkeys, who play, the diokens with telegraph lines in fch«-sparsely inhabited State of Tabasco. Lineman have found that on shooting a monkey swiuging on the wire, they have been pursued by a whole regiment of monkeys,