All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 22, 4 June 1908, Page 38

All Sorts

The hardest known is said to be cocus wood. It turns - the edge of any axe, however well • tempered, so it is claimed". They art of printing, according to Dv Halde," was practised in China nearly fifty years before the "Chris- ' tian era. • - ■ . Spelling reformers will perhaps think that an -English boatman has gone a little too far. He has bought a motor launch, which he calls ' Expediency,' and spells the name XPDNC. White frost -is the ordinary frozen dew or hoar frost. Black frost occurs when the cold is so intense as to freeze vegetation and cause at to turn black with- • -out the formation of hoar frost. Fireflies are sold nightly by pedlars in the crowded * quarters of Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The insects sell for three rin apiece, a rin being equal in value to the twentieth' part of a halfpenny. The , Arabic used in the Koran differs as much from the Arabic used in ordinary conversation and intercourse in the East as the Latin differs from the Italian. The Koran is that ,of the literary classes ; the colloquial Arabic that, of the common people. The word nickname is 'supposed by some to have . been ekename, or additional name. Others connect it with the German name for- wood imp, a nic'ken or necken, a tease name, these supernatural things being the Pucks of German mythology. v Dorothy was at the seaside with her mother, and in the house where they were staying was a telephone. One . day she heard her father talking from the city, and she was so terrified that she burst into tears. ' Oh, ■< mother, mother ! ' she sobbed. ' How ever " shall we get father out of that little hole ? ' Mother—' Johnny, I see .your little brother has the smaller apple. Did you give him his choice, as I suggested ? ' Johnny—' Yes, Ma. I told him he could have his choice, the little one or none, and he took the little one.' Hatred of music has been a characteristic of some persons of genius, especially in literature, philosophy, and history — e.g., Johnson, Victor Hugo, Catherine 11., Zola, Napoleon, Fontanelle, and Gautier. On the other hand, among ardent lovers of music have stood Aristotle, Daudet, Dickens, Goethe, Carlyle, Moore, and Ruskin. ' Doctor,' said he, ' I'm a victim of insomnia. I can't sleep if there's the least noise, such as a cat on the back fence, for instance.' ' This powder will be effective,' replied the, physician, after compounding a prescription. » ' When do I take it, doctor ? ? • You don't talre it. You give It to the cat in a - little milk.' j . _ " ~. " Many stories are told of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the orator and dramatist, who was perhaps the greatest wit of his time. He was greatly annoyed by a member of the House of Commons during one of his speeches, who ' kept crying, ' Hear ! Hear ! ' Sheridan, while scoring an opponent, said' with' great 'Where shall we find a more foolish knave or a- more knavish- fool than he ! ' ' Hear ! Hear ! ' shouted the -member' as usual. Sheridan turned round, and, thanking the honorable ■ gentleman for the prompt . ' information, sat down amid a roar of laughter. Mustard is the most ancient of condiments. The " Egyptians regarded it as an aid to digestion. The Asians ate it freely. It was sold by pedlars in Solomon's ~time. The Normans and Anglp-Saxons' In the earliest times never went to war without an ample supply of prepared mustard. It was their food and .medicine. The plant seemed to thrive in all parts-, of the world,- and is eaten in every civilised- nation, and many heathen tribes, either is^ a spring , salad (the young ' leaves are 1 most delicious) or a seasoning prepared from the ground seed. , ."" - It is—not generally known that- Daniel O'ConnelFs piano is still in excellent preservation, and is actually in daily, use for teaching and practising in. the Presentation Convent, Cahirciyeen. The instrument is a fine ' Broadwood square, and was purchased by the Liberator in 1830. O'Connell as * a boy played more than pass- . ably on tn"e~"violin, and he had an, intense love for music, especially for the Irish Bagpipes— in fact, he kept ~a domestic piper in the -Derrynane 'household, the ' famous Paddy Joshure O'Sullivan, -highly praised . by Lady Chatterton in '1338. • - ,

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