All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 8 November 1906, Page 38

All Sorts

Fully one-third of the land in. Great Britain is owned^by members of the House of Lords. 'Is 'this a fast . train ? ' asked a passenger, who was tired of looking at a station at which the train was not, ..supposed to stop.. ' r . 'Or course it is,' was the guard's reply. , , I .thought so. • Would you mind my getting . out to ■ see what it's fasir to ? ' • - .- Soon after Singleton's "first baby was born Mrs. Singleton . went upstairs one evening and found her husband standing by the. side of the crib and gazing earnestly at the child. "' As she stood 2 " still for a moment, touched by the sight,. she thought: • Oh, how dearly Charlie loves that- boy ! » Her arms stole Softly around his neck and she rubbed her cheek caressingly against his shoulder. Singleton started slightly •at the touch. Darling,' he murmured dreamily, 'it is incomprehensible to me how they can get up-such- a crib as that "for ss.' z Pew .people who have not travelled about the Russian^ Empire can imagine how-boundless is its 'wealth in "timber -Wooden Russia:' is the "name -applied-, to the vast forest areas of Russia " in Europe; " which cover nearly 5,000,000 acres, or- 36 per cent: c-Y the 'entire area of • the ' country. In Russia houses built of any other material than wood are almost 'unknown outside the cities, and. wood constitutes the principal fuel. The forest belt called the. ' Taiga,' in 'Siberia, .stretches m a direct, line from the Urals to the Pacific for. 4000- miles, and is ia many parts 500 miles .broad. All this is the property of the Czar. - The biggest and most mysterious building job on record may be said to have been the construction of the , Great Wall of China, planned by the Emperor Chin Ize Wang, ai4 B.C, The length of the wall was 1250 '•-?*/«. up hlll and down dale > with a width and height or fifteen and twenty feet respectively. H O w the Wall was built of brick and granite in -a region entirely destitute of clay to .make the fprmer^and bare of the latter is a problem which has never been solved Fifu thousand men were employed in its construction, and so well did they do their work that, although in ' many places the Wall has fallen, into decay, there are still considerable portions of it intact. The Lord Mayor of London has the right of access to- the King whenever he, chooses, the coveted entree at Levees and Drawing Rooms, and the privilege of driving direct into the Ambassadors' Court at St James' He has the badges of RoyaUy—the sceptre, 'the swords of just-ice and merc 7, and the mace— attached to bis office-is a Privy Councillor of the King, receives the lower password signed by the Sovereign, is custodian of the city .gates (a very honorary office in these days) and has the uncontrolled conservancy of the Thames from Rochester to Oxford. He controls the city purse has many valuable appointments in his ' gift, and is, of course, chief magistrate of the city. These are but a few of the Lord' Mayor's dignities and' privileges, ,but. they will give some idea of his importance. It is more than half a century since a member of the British Parliament enjoyed the privilege of - sending his own and his friends'' letters free through the post by the simple process of writing .his name on the envelope or wrapper. Of course, in the days when the postage on a letter from London to your native c-W was a -shilling, this was a valuable .privilege • but it was shockingly abused. It is said .that members thought nothing of sending . packages .weighing a hundredweight or more by post'; " while they were pestered to death, by their constituents) for -franks for their correspondence. To such an extent did the abuse grow that at one time seven and a half million letters . went" free through the post in a year— an average of over a thousand a month for each M.P. . There "is not much originality 'about the names of many., places, in England. For "instance there are no fewer than eighty-seven Newtons (to say nothing of Newtowns) , seventy-two. - Suttons, sixty-three Stokes;- fiftytwo Westons, forty-seven Thorps^ and forty-^one Burtons,, to, mention only the most flagrant- cases. Thus there i are actually 362 places in England which muster half-a-dozen names among- them. .■ Of course, -in some . cases , these names are used in conjunction with others as^ Newton r le-Willows, „ .Sutton Coldfield, . Stoke Canon '• ' -and so- on ; but most of .them are -known by the six: I names; mentioned, and the resultant confusion is dreadful. In many cases we find a large number of villages , etc., bearing the same, name in the same county; nofc^ [ ably in Yorkshire, where the Burtons .and Thorntons [ number at least, twenty t