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TOWN TALK. j

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TOWN TALK. j BY OUB BPBtOIAL ceRBBSFONDENT. I 01W rtaders wiO.iwiStf'SfffinS that tee do not hold owrselvts wjyssv I wfe&jfor ow iflWs Correspondent's opinions, j SomL has suggested that the pecsple of London rld rest sometimes. Drinking foun- | tains have hs d a run—though many of them do not I run at all, the water being suffered to dry up, or í the supply being neglected. They have had a I useful day of popularity, and have added adorn- u ments to many streets and open spaces. It must be confessed, however, that the English are not a water-drinking people—the climate no more de- veloping thirst than it favours out-door life. Only in the summer days do drinking fountains prove an attraction and real service to the pedestrian. At length, however, some one has "bethought him- self that, though people are thirsty only three months in the year, the public in the streets are tired all the year rouiad, and that the inven- tion of pubIie seats would really be a service day and night; in London, especially, they would be a mercy. A million persons a year or more come up to London to see it, and look about it, and they walk weary miles on unaccustomed flag- stones, which create aching feet. Not visitors alone, but metropolitans walk about—mothers and children, eight-seeing, or visiting parks or spec- tacles; but nowhere in all London, except in the parks, is there a seat to sit down 'upon. Those who are tired must bear weariness, or enter a coffee-house, or refreshment-room, to obtain a seat. Public seats would be a great convenience— they have always been a necessity—more than ever a necessity, when more people are abroad than ever, owing to the activity of railways. In- deed, in every populous town wayside seats are needed. They are more easily supplied than fountains; they cost less-they can be be placed where a fountain could not go, and are capable of being made tolerable objects, if not pretty or elega.nt. When foreigners come to England they are struck by the bustle and business of the people. Everybody rushes about as though. he was under arrest and escaping a police-officer. To find an Englishman sitting down in the public streets would be a new fact in the history of the race. It is just possible this will come to pass. VALUABLE information is communicated to the public on the interesting but important subject of "scurvy," which marine readers maybe glad to hear of. The prevalence of scurvy in the merchant service has caused the Government to order the doctors to report upon it, and the obser- vationsof the said doctors have just been printed by order of her Majesty. As often as one hears-and that is, alas too frequently—of vessels arriving in port from distant stations, with the crew in the last stage of life from the ravages of scurvy, it is mere humanity to support every endeavour to arrest this frightful Rinderpest of the Sea. It is a fact that the English navy has more of it among its men than any navy in the world; and the reason is that the vessels of all other countries carry a greater variety of food on board than our vessels do. Variety of food is one source of pre- vention. Continuity of salt meat is a well-known cause of scurvy., but it is proved that men fed on fresh meat, if the fresh meat is unvaried, acquire scurvy. The medical remedy is lime juice, which ought to be given daily as an article of diet, and "Jack" ought to be made to drink it; but he won't unless looked after. To, keep the juice good, a certain amount of spirit should be added to it, and the juice requires to be kept in bottles of not more than a gallon size; kept in casks, where the air can get to it, it soon corrupts. Dishonest chemists sell bad juice to ignerant captains, or dishonest captains buy a cheaper and unwhole- some article of bad chemists, and thus murder the poor, scurvy-stricken tars, who, in their extremity, have to depend upon it for their lives. It is pro- posed that the Government shall appoint certifi- cated sellers of lime juice, and compel the use of proper bottles to store it in. But I pause-this is useful information, and useful knowledge is very tiresome, and perhaps the less said about it the I better. IT is a curious fact, and not useful knowledge, and therefore I will mentioa it, that the Rassians have better notions of how to test chain cables and anchors than we have. Our Board of Trade provide machines for testing the strength of iron cables and anchors, and ingenious manufacturers use iron that will just bear the test which is gradually applied, and then let the article take its chance in use, and wrecks otten occur through the cables giving way I under the sudden strains of rough weather. Anchors are submitted to a gradual pressure, but if ia use they receive a sudden shock they break. Sometimes an aachor falls upon a rock, when it snaps, and the sbip is probably lost. In Russia anchor testers let the anchors fall from a height upon a hard bed, as a test of the quality of the iron. This is a practical idea, which does credit to the astuteness of the Russians, and is far beyond our English Board of Trade, with all our national renown as iron-workers. AT the late Royal Academy dinner, the Earl of Derby took notice of the number of excellent paintings sent in by women, which, he pleasantly said, would be, he supposed, quoted as an argu- ment in favour of the feminine franchise. The names of women painters would make a good show if put altogether; but it happens that the female artists do not like their names or their pictures put together and treated separately. They prefer to have their works mixed up with and judged by the same canons of criticism as their mala com- peers of the pencil. I WOMEN, however, do not make chains as well as they make pictures. Women are employed in making chain in Staffordshire, and they make it i badly. It is too heavy work for women. The welding is where they fail, and the result is tragical at times at sea, or in mines, or at wharves, where the weld gives way. Mr. Cowen, M P. for Newcastle, has given notice of a motion in Parliament for suppressing the labour of women altogether in chain-making. I HAVE seen no notice of the great hail storm in Bucks, which came in with the great change of weather. The stones eo astonished and astounded the good folks of Buckingham that they really thought the Fenians were firuig on them, for ï whose arrival the Duke of Buckingham was known I .vr, to have made mysterious preparations at StoJre. f A very few hail-stones—six or seven—asteally i weighed a pound. Nearly every house in the market-place of Buckingham had windows broken, and in the chief houses nearly all the windows were smashed. The tewn appeared as though it had been subjected to a siege. The residents hardly knew their own houses again when they rose next morning. A STATEMENT lately appeared in one of the leading provincial newspapers—the Newcastle Chronicle, if I remember rightly-to- the effect that when a certain eminent exile (M, Louis Blanc) first fled to this cc-untry his small fortune is the French funds was confiscated, and it was made a matter of reproach that the Imperial I Government still retained the money. This is I not true, and M. Louis Blanc, with an honourable sentiment of fairness, wishes it known that the Imperial Government repaid to him the 4600 standing in his name in the French funds, and which was indeed scandalously confiscated by the authorities at the time. THE press has just got through an eruption of hydrophobian letters. It was impossible to allude to the subject while the eruption was out—it was too irritable a matter. Everyyearat certain seasons these letters break out as badly as if the press had been bitten. It is again stated that Sir Benjamin Brodie and Mr. Youatt both find nitrate of silver applied to the bite-wound at once an effectual preventative; that Mr. Youatt was" seven or eight times bitten by mad dogs, and did not care for it so long as he had this remedy at hand-a more agreeable remedy than the common plan of cutting and cauterising the wound. The new feature of late has been the appearance of the Yicar of Birling trying to raise .£500 to purchase a recipe known in his parish as. the "Birling cure," in the possession of a person who demands that sum for it. There must be a good business done in hydrophobia at Birling to make the recipe worth this sum in the market. Rabid dogs must be very active thereabouts, and a I fair sum paid for the mixture, as .£500 may be held to represent an annuity of 125 a year. A recipe cannot be worth more commercially than its sale produced. That there is virus in bites of dogs in some cases there is no doubt, since animals who have small imagination are affected by bites; but in the case of human beings imagination has a good deal to do with the result, The late Mr. Weekes, the eminent chemist, over- came an attack of hydrophobia by pure strength of will. In genuine cases the quality of the virus depends upon the state of the dog's health and chemical condition, and when transferred or trans- fused into the human subject, it must be affected by like conditions, and it in very unlikely that there is any universal cure for it any more than for any other malady. IT is not a matter of political opinion, but a public historical fact, of which mere will be said in future than we can imagine at present, while the fact is occurring—that the whole policy and principles of the Conservative party in England have undergone a transmutation, or a develop- ment," as modern casuists would term it. There seems no doabt that a Reform Bill is about to be passed exceeding the dreams of any party in the country a few months ago. Z.

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