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41. A peep into the statistics of luxury yields some curious results. Take a few prominent items from the tax returns for the last year. The tax upon cards and dice produced £13,637; it has been rather a declining tax for the last two years. The tax upon armorial bearings brought in £57,010; ten years ago it produced £70,000. The tax upon hair-powder is constantly falling off; it is now down to £1,116, and we may soon find that all is lost. Racehorses are improving, and produced £6,957 last year. Game certificates and licenses produced £140,984, being some thousands more than ten years ago. Patent medicines, which ten years ago contributed only £37,233 to the revenue, supplied £46,237 last year. Dogs, if they may here be added, were taxed £196,616 last year. The dogs of Ireland enjoy an exemption from taxation, but not for their own merit, for a recent return showed that large numbers of sheep are worried and killed by them.

42. A very simple and ingenious letter-box, which defies the art of the most expert thief to abstract the letters therefrom, has just been made public. The invention consists of the ordinary letter-box, the flap of which, on being pressed for the purpose of putting in the letter, causes two guards to rise and receive it. The instant the flap is allowed to spring back to its original position, the guards fall, and the letters drop to a lower chamber, thereby securing the contents of the box from the introduction of any instrument to abstract the letters, &c. In consequence of the many successful attempts to obtain letters from boxes by means of instruments, this invention is well-timed.

43. The death of Duc Pasquier, which occurred at Paris in 1862, was an irretrievable loss to the lovers of good dinners. He was remarkable for his hospitality, and was particularly fond of having at his table three times in each week members of the Académie Française, and was known as "la fourchette d'or." His dinners were remarkable for their taste. He was fond of good living, and attributed his long life to his alimentation. He looked upon the digestion as the centre of all the affections, feelings, and ideas. He presided over the organisation of the kitchen himself, leaving the manipulation to a female. His excellent dinners were said to have had much influence during his ministry.

44. In a Paris letter in the Gironde we read:-"The Japanese ambassadors, it is said, met with a disappointment at London. Most of the European governments have kept them at the expense of the Treasury, and they imagined that it would be the same in Great Britain. They, however, moderated their expenses, and their bill only amounted to the modest sum of 100,000f. They sent the document to Earl Russell, who replied to them, 'I cannot pay it.

The English constitution does not authorise me, and I should require a bill of indemnity from Parliament.' They then paid the money like persons who know how to expend when necessary."

45. One of the most disastrous railway accidents that have ever occurred in Scotland, took place on the 13th of October, 1862, near Winchburgh, on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway. The accident was caused by a collision between the passenger train leaving Edinburgh for the north at six o'clock in the evening, and the ordinary passenger train which left Glasgow at five o'clock. It appears that for some time previously, repairs had been making on a portion of the line between Winchburgh and Linlithgow, and during the repairs, the trains had been running there on a single line for a short distance. The Edinburgh train, not having stopped at Winchburgh, was running at a fair, but not unusual, rate of speed due west; the Glasgow train, having to stop at Winchburgh, and being a parliamentary train, was running probably at a less speed, but due east. They were on the same line of rails, and the shock of the collision may be conceived. The engines dashed into each other with the force of a thunder-clap; then reared on end, and stood fixed, with their forewheels elevated, funnel to funnel. The shock and the stoppage drove the carriages into the air, and they bounded like living things, one on the top of the other, till the pile, as spectators tell us, was as high as a three-story house. All this was in the first gloom of night, and in a deep and dark cutting, with sharp rocks on each side. Presently the furnaces of the engines set fire to the carriages, and thick clouds of smoke rolled over the mass of ruin. The lamps had been extinguished, and, except for the flakes of flame from the burning heaps, nothing could be distinctly discerned. In the long history of railway accidents, there is no scene more terrible than this. Its single relieving feature is to be found in the proximity of a city, from which assistance of every kind, and medical aid especially, could be quickly obtained. The telegraph brought a strong staff of surgeons to the spot, the smoking ruins were excavated for the dead and dying, and while the killed were despatched to Edinburgh, the wounded were treated on the spot, as on a battle-field. The total loss could not at first be computed. Eleven dead bodies were dug out at once, and seven were afterwards added to the score. As even the lighter of the two trains had two third-class carriages full of passengers, it may be conceived how many lives were put in peril, and how fearful was the scope for havoc. In all, between a hundred and a hundred and fifty were injured. One gentleman had a compound fracture of the left leg, and a lady a compound fracture of the right leg. A traveller from Glasgow was severely burned, with his wife, and another from Aberdeen was so scalded that his outer skin came off from head to foot. A whole crowd had injuries about the head. The excitement caused in Edinburgh and Glasgow, when the news of the accident spread through the cities, was very great. At Edinburgh, to which the chief portion of the dead and wounded were brought

dense crowds surrounded the station, and the scene shortly before midnight was most striking. As the several special trains arrived from the scene of the disaster an appalling index of its extent was given. The dead bodies were taken to the police-office, and the more severely injured were conveyed away through the crowd upon stretchers. Those whose bruises were less serious, were eagerly surrounded and pressed with questions by many who had friends or relations among the sufferers; and several were to be seen limping away, with cut faces and blood-soiled garments, each the centre of an anxious and inquisitive crowd.

46. An ingenious invention for increasing the wearing capabilities of umbrellas was lately made known. The silk of an umbrella, as everyone knows, wears into slits at the folds, long before the rest of the fabric betrays symptoms of unsoundness. To obviate this premature decay, the inventor gets silk expressly woven for his purpose, with stripes of an inch wide and of a double thickness. These stripes being arranged on the frame so as to run in the lines of the folds enables the silk to sustain double the wear at those places. The stripes are of the same color as the rest of the silk, and are invisible except on close examination. But we suspect they must be apparent when the umbrella is held up to the light. Nevertheless they may possibly be rendered ornamental.

47. "I was lately travelling," writes a correspondent of the Durham Advertiser, "by a railway on the English side of the borders of South Wales, when we happened to pass a field strewn with a most luxuriant growth of mushrooms. I had hardly remarked the circumstance to my companion, when we felt the train suddenly stop, and looking out to the front we saw, to our astonishment, the driver jump off the engine, vault the fence, and proceed to fill his hat with the treasure. In a moment the guard was over the fence following his example, which, as may be supposed, was infectious, for in less than half a minute every door was thrown open, and the field covered with the passengers, every one of whom brought back a pretty good hatful. Not till this desirable result was attained did we proceed on our journey, some of us wondering whether we had been dreaming, and whether, instead of the Welsh borderland, we were not travelling by some newly-constructed forest line in the far west of America. We begged the guard, who did not seem quite comfortable about the joke, to have the place entered for the future in his line of route as The Mushroom station.'"

48. We take the following extract from a letter about Garibaldi, written in 1859, by an Englishman who had just paid him a visit :"Garibaldi is generally simple and mild in his manners, but when the hour for severity comes--when he appears among his men with the brim of his cap pulled down over his stern brows-there is no

officer or soldier who would not rather face the greatest danger than hear the sound of his angry voice. His manners are of such a plain and simple character, that when he is seen among his officers, nobody would believe that he is one of the greatest men of our times. He was at dinner when I went to see him about two o'clock. Having sent my name and errand to him, I was admitted into his dining-room without difficulty. He was sitting at the table surrounded by six officers of the staff, and was partaking of a modest dinner, which was served by a common soldier, who wore the uniform of his former legion. After the meal was over, I had a long talk with one of those officers, who told me that the great leader never drinks wine, and never eats more than two sorts of meat at his dinner. At eight o'clock in the evening he goes to bed, and regularly gets up at two o'clock in the morning. He then reads for two hours some military book, and at four o'clock he despatches his private correspondence. At eight o'clock he has his breakfast, after which he goes into his office to transact military business. Garibaldi is never seen in public, except on duty. Even when he wants to get the fresh air of the sea, he rides out of the town, taking the shortest and quickest way which leads to the marina. Loaded with stars and medals by more than one monarch, he never wears any decoration or distinction whatever; and when he is obliged to wear his uniform, he does it with such nonchalance* that you would scarcely believe that he is the hero of so many exploits of almost fabulous daring."

49. A gentleman is mentioned by Dr. Beattie, who, after a blow on the head, lost his knowledge of Greek, but did not appear to have lost anything else. A frequent modification consists in putting one name for another, but always using the words in the same sense; thus a gentleman affected in this manner, when he wanted coals put on the fire, always called for paper, and when he wanted paper, called for coals; and these words he always used in the same manner. Dr. Gregory used, in his lectures, to mention the case of a clergyman, who, while laboring under an affection of the brain, spoke nothing but Hebrew-the last language he had acquired. Dr. Prichard mentions an English lady, who, in recovering from an apoplectic attack, always spoke to her attendants in French, as she had absolutely lost the knowledge of the English language. This continued about a month. The celebrated Dr. Broussonet lost, after a slight apoplectic attack, the power of pronouncing substantive nouns, whether in French or Latin. Thus, when he wished to pronounce "apple," he described it by its qualities. When the noun was shown to him, written or printed, he immediately recognised it, but he had no power to designate it spontaneously. Cuvier, in his lectures, relates a similar case of a person who had only lost the memory of substantive nouns, but could pronounce all adjectives.

* Nonchalance, indifference.

50. The recently introduced smokeless grate is a useful improvement. The coals are placed on an iron tray, fixed to the front of the stove, at the bottom of the fire, so as to burn the whole of the gases given off. Along the tray, by the action of a right and left handed Archimedean screw, joined together about the middle of the grate, the coals are carried under the lighted fuel, which is thus lifted or stirred by the rotation of the screw as it deposits fresh coals. No smoke is given off; the combustion of the coals is quicker and more entire, and the amount of heat is greater. The apparatus may be fixed to any grate at a cost of £1 at most. Furnaces could be fitted with it. If the screw were moved by a lathe band from steam machinery, it would deliver coals into the fire with undeviating regularity, and no need would exist for slacking the draught by opening the furnace door.

51. One hears," says Punch, "of little Toussoun Pacha, heirapparent to the Viceroy of Egypt, visiting Paris and London with his suite, and chatting fluently in French and English, all at the precocious* age of seven. Let us hope the young Egyptian may not turn out too fast, as well as Tou-ssoun."

52. Originals are getting rare in our all-levelling days of rail and steam; but there are a few yet left, one of whom died a few days ago at Paris. His real name was Lutterbach, or rather Dr. Lutterbach, for he held a medical diploma † from one of the German universities; but either because this name was too difficult for pronunciation to Parisians, or from some other cause not known, the learned gentleman generally passed under the cognoment of Fourage, and under this appellation was extensively known throughout the French metropolis. His great purpose during life, on which he spent all his fortune, his time, and his patience, was to drill mankind, and, in the first instance, the French portion of it; for, according to him, all the evils under which poor human beings suffer was chiefly owing to their not walking upright. To remedy this, he not only lectured and wrote numerous books and pamphlets, but likewise invented a great number of mechanical contrivances.

53. A poor widow, named Sarah Dyer, was charged with stealing ribbon and silk braid, before the assistant-judge, at the Middlesex Sessions. She had been in prison three weeks, and was now on her trial as a shoplifter. She pleaded guilty. The respectable firm who prosecuted her had known her as a customer for years, and had no doubt that she was really a hardworking woman, who had struggled hard for a living. In her defence it appeared that she was a widow, who for many years had been stitching, morning, noon, and night, to

* Precocious, advanced, mature. + Diploma, certificate, degree. + Cognomen, surname.

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