GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 122, 27 August 1875, Page 16

GENERAL NEWS.

Justiano Roxas, the Californian centenarian, died at Santa Cruz in that State recently at the age of one hundred and twentytwo years. In his latter days he became almost hideous to look tipon, being very like a living skeleton. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and his hands had shrivelled and shrunken away till they resembled the claws of a hawk. For many months previous to his death the old man slept upon a hearth, keeping himself warm by a wood fire, which was never allowed to go out. A special feature of his case was that his age was well authenticated, as eighty-six years ago he was baptised in Mission Church at Santa Cruz, and the record shows him to have been thirty-six years of age at that time. Four hundred thousand pounds for a head of hair is a startler. Our readers do not believe it ? Well, then, they must have a suspicion of the correctness of what appeal's in the newspapers. If we are to believe a paragraph which has gone the rounds of the press, Madame Nilsson possesses a head of hair which she might readily turn into ,£400,000. According to a medical journal (says the Universe) there are from 160,000 to 200,000 hairs in a lady's head. Madame Nilsson possesses a splendid head of hair, and probably has the full complement of individual hairs. We are informed by the same journal that the gifted Nilsson sold a haii' from her head for £2, and that "in a few moments the Swedish songstress was surrounded by admirers anxious to biiy a hair at the same rate." The sale took place at a fancy fair in New York, and, we are glad to find, in the cause of charity. Just imagine the number of charitable institutions that might be established if the 200,000 hairs were sold at tha same rate ? A valuable natural head-dress, truly. A recent letter in the ' G-crmania ' gives the following account of the process of " conversion" to the Russian schism, which is still in full operation in Podlachia. " A band of Cossacks rides * from a ' converted' village to an unconverted one, where it puts in practice the scourging system until the peasants seem to perceive that the Orthodox Chtiroh must bo the true one, and declare their willingness to subscribe a statement that they are members of it. ' Now, Karl, you are at last Orthodox, says the Converter, but see that you do not forgot that you have willingly subscribed the declaration,- for otherwise it would bo necessary for you to feel the knout again/ Conversions of this kind took place on the sth and 6th of May in the village of Rudnia, near Biala. The Cossacks beat the poor peasants so unmercifully without convincing them that a fine young man was three times beaten to the, earth, so that at last he expired under the blows. The name of this victim is Josaphat Spus. Those who doubt the story of this and similar ' conversions ' may refer to one of the Consuls at WarsaAv, who are in a position to verify them." According to the Russis<n theory, all this resistance is caxised by a simple attempt to restore the liturgical purity of the Sclavonic rite. The Rutlicnians of Podlachia nrust indeed be a strange people. They let themselves be knouted and shot rather than allow their liturgy to be assimilated to the Russian, and yet they declare themselves " willing to be converted" to the Eussian Faith. The Brussels correspondent of the 'Ball Mall Gazette' writes : « A marvellous exhibition is taking place at present at the Cercle Artisticjiio Litteraire at Brussels. Some months ago, Frederick van de Hcrlchave, the son of a corn merchant of Bruges, died at the age of ten and a-half years. He had always been sickly, and, therefore, was not sent to school, but allowed him to roam about. His chief amusement was to paint with such rough painting materials as he could procure. The paintings left by him, of which about a hundred are now exhibited at the Cercle, were discovered since death to be productions which the best landscape painter of the age wonll not disown. In Brussels good judges of art are astonished that an untutored child should have equalled and oven surpassed some of the most celebrated masters. In all those of the pictures where there is a river, a little boy is represented angling representing, of course, the deceased. Large sums have been offered for the collection, but refused.