All Sorts

New Zealand Tablet, 23 July 1908, Page 38

All Sorts

Every house must be decked with flowers on New Year's Day in Japan. 'You make an awful noise with that cornet.' 'Well, I am sorry to hear it.' 'So's everybody else.' In Buenos Ayres the police alone have the right of whistling on the streets.. Any other person whistling is at once arrested. • _ < In Ashanti many families are forbidden the use of certain meats. In like manner others are forbidden to wear clothes of a certain color. 'All in- favor of the motion will please wink,' said the astute chairman. And then he added at once : 'The eyes have it.' The best men have no price; they can be bought neither with the hope of reward nor fear of punishment; purchased neither with money nor place, nor with pleasure. If a carriage upsets or injures another carriage in the streets of St. Petersburg, or if a person is knocked down, the horses of the offending' vehicle are seized and confiscated to the use of the fire brigade. It is the practice of the Ashantees and Fantees to bury one-third of the property -of a dead- man, converted- into gold dust, under his headj and rifling the grave of an enemy is considered the proper action for a warrior. Clapping' the hands in various ways is considered the polite method of Central ■ Africa of saying 'Allow me,' 'I beg pardon,' 'Permit me to pass,' and 'Thanks.' It is resorted to in respectful introduction and_ leave-taking. ' Madame, your husband does not seem to have any^organic trouble,' said the physician. 'Oh, no,' exclaimedP-Mrs. Pneuritch, ' not in this neighborhood. But the folks " that live next door to us have a gramophone that • worries him nearly to death. ' The conversation turned on the effect produced on the emotions by pictorial art, when one gentleman remarked : ' I remember one picture that brought tears to my eyes. 1 ' A pathetic subject, I presume?' 'No, sir; it was a fruit painting. 1 was sitting close under it when it dropped on my head. ' Over three doors of the Cathedral of Milan, Italy are three inscriptions. The first, amid a wreath of sculptured roses, reads : 'AH which pleases us is but for a moment.' Over another door, around a sculptured cross, we read : ' All that which troubles us is but for a moment.' On the central door we read: 'That only is important which is eternal.' It is a waste of time to be busying yourself with what you conceive to be the faults of other , people. Be assured that others see quite as many and as reprehensible faults in you. . .. A good many people, whoy-think- themselves -.refarrif#rs especially chosen to point out and reprove the sins of others^ are merely insufferable nuisances. At an exhibition of curiosities . a skull was exhibited which professed to be Oliver Cromwell's. A gentleman present jc.bV served that it could not be Cromwell's, as he had a very large head, and this was a small' skull. ' Ohj I know all about that,' said the exhibitor, undisturbed, ' but_ you see this t was his skull when he was a boy.' - There- is no doubt about it (says the ' Sydney Mail '), the ostrich .is_ profitable. Wherever the bstricK is * introduced s a'hd bred and .worked as a systematic branch of production, it is held in such' value thajt it is practically impossible to purchase birds for export. Prices for this v ~b'ird at various agesi are : Six -months ! old'ebhicks, one -year old birds, £30; two year old birds, £40] and at four years, "when they pair, : £i6o is. wanted for a pair.- • In- th€" United States- of America 1 trlere are" 2206 ostriches; the" progeny of a pair brought from California in 1888. An acre of lucerne in Queensland suffices for the maintenance, of fouF birds, and, the yield of feathers is about ijlb per bird; £$ per lb of feathers is the market, pirce, and each hen may beexpected to lay from 36 to 90 eggs a year. Ostriches are very -long-lived (some say they live a century), and their diet is simple. — maize, wheat, barley, oats, and- lucerne, though" ~ with, gjenty* of green food grain is not required, except at breeding tinjeV