The Carmarthen Journal and South Wales Weekly Advertiser

MISCELLANEOUS. A COINCIDENCE. It is a significant coincidence that the move- ment to tax bachelors in Wyoming was followed by the announcement that the unmarried women of Massachusetts have 29,000,000 dollars laid up in savings banks. LITTLE WILLY. Is that the papa swan, or the mimma swan?' Father-" Which do you mean?" "Why, the poor thing that's had the feathers pecked off the top of its head, and that isn't allowed to have none of the biscuit, nor nothing." (Sadly)— 41 That's the papa awan, Willy." LIVING WITH A KNIFE BLADE IN HIS BRAIN. Last week Mr Wynne Baxter, coroner for East London, held an inquiry at the London Hospital, respecting the death of William Benjamin Rowland, aged 38, a carman, late in the employ of Messrs Macnamara, and lately residing at 69, Brady-street, Whitechapel. On the 20th July last, deceased was driving a pair- horse van when one horse shied and deceased was pitched off his "dickey" on to his head. Deceased did not have a knife in his hand. He was admitted last Sunday week to the London Hospital as a case of kidney disease, and was afterwards found to be suffering from phthisis. The post-mortem examination showed that the condition of the brain was normal. On opening the head there was found part of the blade of a knife protruding through the left side of the temporal bone about an inch. The brain was uninjured, the blade having passed between the convolutions of the brain. It must have been there some considerable time, as the bone had healed on the surface, and there were no marks on the skull. The coroner said that it was a most remarkable case, and was very similar to one which came to his notice about two years ago, when he held an inquest on a young man who had lived for years with a steel penholder firmly embedded in his brain. A verdict in accordance with the medical evidence was returned. TORN TO PIECES AND DEVOURED BY SHARKS. Mail advices from Aden dated the 17th ult., which reached Queenstown last week, contain an account of a terrible scene at sea witnessed from the deck of the Peninsular and Oriental Com- pany's ship Victoria whilst homeward bound from Australia. When the steamship Victoria Was midway between Colombo and Aden a male passenger, whilst labouring under a fit of temporary insanity, leaped overboard into the sea. The engines of the steamer were instantly stopped and reversed, and as soon as possible a boat was ordered to be manned and lowered. While the boat was being lowered the forward tackle, through some unknown cause, slipped, and the crew, numbering thirteen, fell into the sea. There was then painful excitement on board, particularly among the passengers, as it was generally known there were numerous sharks in the water. A second boat was quickly lowered successfully with a crew of eleven hands, and their ditticult task of rescuing their drowning shipmates was watched by those on board the Victoria, who were horrified by seeing their un- fortunate fellow passenger who had jumped overboard, and two of the seamen, who were struggling in the water, torn to pieces and devoured by several sharks before they could be rescued. The second boat fortunately succeeded in saving the eleven other sailors. The water for a considerable distance around was reddened by the blood of the three unfortunate men who were devoured. THE WELSH SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. St. David's Eve at St. Paul's Cathedral wit- nessed a new departure. Thousands of Welsh- men, and a fair sprinkling of Englishmen, joined in a choral service of great beauty, reflecting great credit on the Rev K. Roberts, Welsh curate of All Saints', Margaret-street, who intoned the service, and has performed the no mean feat of educating the English choristers of that church to sing Welsh. The greater part of the choir, however, was composed of Welsh- men, who, with some twenty Welsh Clergy, entered the cathedral in procession, singing a hymn which was a kind of paraphrase of The Church's One Foundation." The first lesson was read by Sir John Puleston, M.P., and the second by the Dean of St. Asaph, who, with the Arch- deacon of St Asaph, were the Bishop's chaplains. Mr David J. Thomas, organist and choirmaster of Hanover Church, Regent-street, and honorary organist at the Welsh services at All Saints, played on the organ the March of the Men of Harlech," much gratifying the Welshmen while all musical folk were delighted with the Offer- toire in C (Batiste) and the Slow March in F (Edmund Rogers). The Psalms were sung to Gregorian tones; the Magnificat and Nitiic Dimittis to Bennett in F. The anthem (which was conducted by Mr Dyved Lewis) was an old Welsh one, "Sing unto the Lord" (Ambrose Lloyd). The solo singers were Mrs Lloyd, Madame Annie Wflliams, and Mr Sackville Evans. The hymns were sung to popular Welsh tunes. The Bishop of St. Asaph gave an excellent sermon on unity. Its tone was sympathetic and charitable the manner was good, and the lan- guage quite poetical. The part which seemed to excite the utmost interest among the members of Parliament present and the Nonconformists was that in which he pleaded eloquently for the better housing of the Welsh poor, and for the Church interesting herself in the social life and amusements of the people. The Bishop of St. Asaph is known and beloved in Wales, not only for his distinguished brother's sake (the late Dean of Bangor), but for his own. He is at present little known in England but few who heard that night's sermon can doubt that he will make his mark as a Church leader in the Principality. The sight, as seen from the St. Paul's pulpit, was one which might well move a less emotional man than the Bishop, and he evidently felt the unique character of the occasion. A sea of Welsh faces, stretching far beyond the dome, was turned on t. the youthful prelate, and drank in eagerly words in their well-loved native language which spoke to them of the many interests in which they had taken so lively a concern in their youth, before they became almost overwhelmed in the whirl and bustle of London life. The man who was not moved at such a scene can hardly be human," was the observation of an old Welsh lady in a characteristic Welsh bonnet. HARDLY EARNED. The arrangements for Mr Stanley's lecturing tour are on a lavish and colossal scale. The sums to be paid to the explorer are great beyond all precedent, and it is said that Mr Stanley will net between E30,000 and R40,000 from the United Kingdom alone. If, as is probable, Mr Stanley visits America and Australia, the profits will be enormous, and lie will close his lecturing tour a very wealthy man. A FRIEND IN NEED. PITTS BURG is a very Sabbatarian town, You are supposed neither to drink nor smoke that day, but smart people manage to do both. Mr Wilson Barret had a funny experience on his first Sunday in Pittsburg. He and some members of the company left the hotel in search of cigarettes. They visited one cigar store after the other, and glared savagely at the drawn blinds. Weary with searching, they chanced to fall in with a young doctor whom the manager knew. I'll fix you," the medico said, and he led them to a well-known drug store. There all begging by the theatrical gentleman was vain, but the doctor drew out his prescription book. He wrote upon it a lot of Latin, which, being trans- lated by the drug-clerk, thus resulted 32u grains of leaf tobacco in loz. packages. Take three times daily, as directed." The cigarettes were handed out amid mutual smiles. A LUCKY SIXPENCE. A story has been told to the effect that Sir Henry Parkes, the New South Wales Premier, is the happy professor of a lucky sixpence which money he earned after he stepped ashore in Sydney half a century ago as a friendless and penniless immigrant. According to this story the sixpence was the future "Colonial Grand Old Man's" reward for holding a horse outside a public-house whilst the rider was inside indulging in a refresher. The true legend of the now historic sixpence, as told by Sir Henry Parkes himself, in a speech in Sydney a few years since, was that he was walking along the circular quay in a desperately hard-up condition one day, when he found six.penco on the roadway. Picking it up hurriedly, he rushed off to a public-honse himself, and had as much liquid and solid refreshment as could be had in these days for a modest sixpence, and the same day, refreshed and vigorous, he succeeded in gettmg a joo as a wnart-lumber. bir Henry Parkes has no superstitious ideas about luck, but he—probably rightly—attributes the turn in his fortunes to the circular quay sixpence. It was the stepping-stone by which he succeeded in getting into work and thus starting on the career which has proved—politically, at all events-so successful. BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. If you want to know how stage beauties keep themselves handsome, there are very few words to the process. They understand the art of being good to themselves. In the first place, they are very clean—that is, the pretty ones are. You won't see a really charming woman in any class who isn't given to personal cares more than the rest. WHY ACTRESSES ARE BEAUTIFUL. How do the sirens of the stage attain their peculiar meltmg plumpness ? You will see them in the restaurants after the play, supping quite demurely, or meet them full face in the street, where their complexion show charmingly, as young society buds do not always. The linen women at an hotel, who used to be on the stage, took up the parable as follows "Stage beauties as a rule have a peculiar training. Few of them have enough to eat when they are children, and they have to work hard till they gain success, and then work hard to keep it. A girl who has never known what it was to have too much to eat, and who has run errands for actresses or sewing silk and buttons for a dressmaker till she is in her teens, gets a thin skin which don't show blemishes easily; and when she has a little easier life and takes to the study and fixes up a little, it seems like paradise to her, comparingly. When the girls begin to try to flesh up a little, most of them take to bread and milk, with a little of the least as ever is' in it, and they are always taking physic if any- thing is the matter, they are so afraid of being laid aside." DEVICES FOR THE CO-IIPLEXIO-N. For complexions, every one of them has some device or other private of her own. One takes the skin off of suet and binds it on her face, another wears surgeons' plaster to soften it, but to my notion thers's nothing like bread and milk poultice used regular. More stage beauties owe their complexion to this than you will ever get 'em to own. Take the crumb of baker's bread and steep it in milk. and warm it just as you put it on, with linen cloth over, and you've no idea how fair it leaves the face. It seems to plump the face, take out the lines, and whiten it just as you whiten a chicken by boiling it in milk and water. Sulphur and milk or molasses clears the face beautiful, and keeps the flesh down too." POWDERING AND PAINTING THE FACE. It's nonsense about the paint and powder worn three or four hours on the stage spoiling the face if it is cared for other ways. If you go to bed and sleep with it on, of course it don't do any good, but actresses as a rule know how to take care of themselves better than they used to, better than any other class of women really. They wash the face and neck well in hot water before making up, and while the skin is warm rub it with cocoa butter or the grease sold for the purpose, which is almost the same and powder over that, paint and add the lines with a whole palette of crayons that come for th* purpose, with a big book of plates for making up the face in character. Then before you leave the theatre this is all washed off, the face well veiled-you'll see the stage ladies very particular about their veils—and before they go to bed the face ought to get another wash in hot water. That leaves it fair enough, and the stage paint don't Amount to more than the cold cream ladies sleep in overnight." A WINE BATH. Young ladies studying for the stage are devoted students of the arts of beauty, for talent is not always accompanied by attraction. After exercise comes the bath, which improves in luxury and efficacy year by year. A few favoured American beauties know the tonic effect of wine baths, which are administered with some economy by taking a warm water bath first, and, when the pores are open, entering a wooden tub containing a cask of red wine, which does duty over and over again. Or, bath towels are soaked in wine and laid on the person after a warm dip, and certainly the wine bath is very refreshing and refining to the skin. Fifteen minutes is the proper time for the application any way. It also whitens and softens the hands to soak them in a basin of red wine. Where a sedative bath is desired, violet baths are delightful. 11 BEAUTIFYING EFFECTS OF THE HOT BATH. People ought to be a great deal more fastidious about baths and conveniences for washing than they are. A woman of spurious refinement will make a furious fuss if some dirty water happens to fall into her bath-tub, while she contentedly permits her family and guests to bathe after catarrhal subjects and those afflicted with inflammations internal and external in a dark roughened zinc tub which never shows whether it is clean or not, and which can hardly be cleaned thoroughly, as particles of mucous secretions and minute particles of ulcerations are held by the roughness of the metal. Only a brightly polished tin tub or a porcelain one can ever be said to be clean. The acme of bathing is a porcelain-tiled room with white ware enamel tub, where the aroma of violet essence floats on the vapour of a warm bath. Every sense yields to the subtle relaxation, the sweat flows softly, the very hair takes a silkier and more pliant texture, the delicate perfume soothes the nerves and steals into the brain like an opiate. Beds of flowers are not to be compared with it, and if one can step from the drying sheet to a warm, airy chamber, and lie down in warm linen and light blankets for an hour, she has had a rest which goes far to the creating of beauty. The skin has lost its upper layer of dust and waste particles, softened by steam and washed away by the soapy bath the blood flows through every delicate branch, despositing new elastic tissue the skin gloIVs transparent, pearly with the vapour it has absorbed. The eye is dark and liquid with the blood fed to the optic nerve; the muscles, warmed and nourished, are supple the stomach at rest, its frequent inflammation allayed for the time. A rest and some light food should follow, when, if ever, a woman will be at her best mentally and physically. She should step on the stage, social or professional, fresh, brilliant, and seductive, her brain full of device and spirit, her body lithe, swaying, bending itself to a thousand graceful suggestions and expressions, of which the ordinary woman knows no more than she does of the lost arts. THE GIANT SHRINKING. Chang, the once famous giant, is in poor health, and has been staying for several weeks at Ryde, Isle of Wight. He says that of late years, owing to his frequent stoopings, his height has deteriorated some four or five inches. He stands only about seven and a half feet now. He is rarely seen in the day time, owing to the curiosity he excites, but in the evening may frequently be seen taking his walks abroad. His residence is at Bournemouth. j LADY STANLEY AND THE INDIAN'S CHILD. Lady Stanley has met with an adventure in Canada of which she sends home (says the London correspondent of the Licerpool Post) an interesting account. She accompanied the Governor General of Canada in his tour westward. They visited the Indian reservation of the Blackfoots. There Lady Stanley observed a little white child, some five or six years of age playing about with the Indian children. The child could not speak a word of English, and seemed quite at home with her Indian sisters. On inquiry, Lady Stanley found that the girl had been captured when a baby, during an Indian raid on the United States. Lady Stanley endeavoured to induce the Indians to part with their prize, but they had grown to love the little thing, and no money would buy her. On return- ing to Ottawa communications were opened with the Government at Washington, and an American 11 agent was despatched to the spot. From his inquiries it seemed probable that the child was the daughter of a United States officer killed in Indian foray, but of her identity there was no trace. The President has given instructions that the child is to be rescued at any cost, and a United States officer has sent to the reservation with these instructions. From what Lady Stanley learned of the views of the Indians, it seems doubtful whether anything but main force will induce them to give up the child. WOMEN AS COMPOSITORS. Setting type is a pleasant occupation, a little monotonous to be sure, and a trifle unhealthy, but not more so than a good many other callings. Yet the secretary of the Women's Printing So- ciety, Miss Weede, said that it was very hard indeed to get sufficient women compositors. The Women's Printing Society is in Great College-street. It is a limited company, and all the work is done by women. Thirteen of them are employed in the composing room. They are all young. Not one is over thirty. Miss Weede, who is herself the daughter of a printer, said, "I could find work for three or four more women now if they were forthcoming. I was promised the services of one girl, but she sends me a note to say that her wages ai her present place are to be nearly doubled What do you pay your hands ? — Well, two of the best hands get 23s. a week regularly. Four or five are paid by piece, and they make about the same money. The rest are apprentices." As the trade union wages of a London compositor are 36s. a week, it is not sur- prising to hear that the masters who employ male labour, and the men themselves, do not look with a favourable eye upon the Women's Printing Society. Miss Weede complained to me that only the other day she sent to several printing offices p I to ask them to print a large poster for her, but they all refused. "Any one of them could have done it," she said. But as for customers, I think the men are kinder than the women. Women want to cut down prices too much and when the work is done they don't pay so promptly. We do two weekly papers and two or three month- lies, and of course any job printing that we may get men attend to the machines." Your girls look very healthy ? — Yes, I think they are too. Only two have left to get married. Several have been here since the society started. I suppose the lack of women composittrs is owing to the want of facilities for apprentices, and the fact that they are a sort of Ishmaelite in the printing trade. Of course they can only work in certain offices, and in very few provincial towns. So the supply doesn't keep pace with the demand. We are just beginning to turn the corner now, but our business suffers through hav- ing to turn away work." It seems a pity that more women do not go in for being printers-or rather compositors, for it is in the setting of small type like that used for novels and newspapers that their deft fingers are most useful. The occupation requires just enough mental exertion to raise a woman from an unthink- ing to a thinking animal. Her wages are not remarkably heavy, it is true but there is no reason why an enterprising woman who wants to go into business should not enter commercial life as a printer. It is a trade that is always expand- ing. THE WRONG BOY. A village schoolboy was told by the parson that he intended to bring a friend next morning to hear the boys put through their paces in religious teaching. They had not received much instruction of that kind but it was necessary to do something. Accordingly he called his little grey-smocked" first class" before him, arranged the members in a certain order, grafted into each blossoming yokel the particular question he intended to put to him in the morning, and like- wise added the correct answer. After priming the young hopefuls over and over again with their respective answers, he ventured to dismiss them. Next morning while the visitors were being awaited, boy No. 2 was told to carry out two stone ink-bottles into the back porch, and ordered to clean off the great streaks of ink and patches of matted dust. Shortly afterwards the two visitors walked in The master, quite for- getting that one of his first class boys was absent in the back yard, commenced to put his questions to the class in the particular order which he had arranged and promised. Pointing to one boy he asked, "What is that part of you, my lad, which can never die?" "My soul, sir," smartly replied the rustic, with an air of confidence and decision which was really quite admirable and surprising in one so young. The visitors nodded their approval, and the dominie continued his interrogations. Now you, my boy," he said, pointing to the third boy in the back row, tell us who made you." Now the lad thus addressed occupied the very position which had been vacated by the industrious pupil out in the porch. Accordingly, this was Dot his proper question and, remembering the master's positive instructions that he was only to give a certain answer to a certain question, he bravely remained dumb and quiescent. Will you be quick and tell me, sir ? the master cried out angrily, never dreaming of course, that any hitch had occurred. No the lad never opened his lips or twitched a muscle. Possibly he thought the master was "trying it on with him. "Come, my dear child," the visitor ventured to interject, seeing the painful chagrin of the dominie, "you should try to give your master some sort of answer. Surely, you know my lad, that it was God who made you ? "No, sir, it wanna me the lad at last burst forth. I'm sure it wanna, sir The boy as God made is outside washin't inkpots A NEW INDUSTRY. A cargo of villas has recently been dispatched from Gothenburg, in Sweden, to Buenos Ayres. 0 z;1 They filled fifty railway waggons. The building of portable houses is, indeed, becoming quite an important industry, both in Sweden and Norway. REMARKABLE JUGGLING IN INDIA. There would appear (says the Times of India) to be a fine field of unworked romance in thc annals of Indian jugglery. One Siddeshur Mitter, writing to a Calcutta paper, gives a thrilling account of a conjurer's feat which he witnessed recently in one of the villages in the Hooghly district. He saw the whole thing him- self, he tells us, so there need be no question about the facts :-The man missing from the box. On the particular afternoon when he visited the village the place was occupied by a company of male and female jugglers, armed with bags and boxes and musical instruments, and all the mysterious paraphernalia of the peripatetic Jadatjar. While Siddeshur was looking on, and in the broad clear light of the afternoon, a man was shut up in a box, which was then carefully nailed up and bound with cords. Weird spells and incantations of the style we are all familiar with were followed by the breaking open of the box, which, to the unqualified amazement of everybody, was found to be perfectly empty." All this is much in the usual style but what followed was so much superior to the ordinary run of modern Indian jugglery that we must give [ it in the simple Siddeshur's own words. The fall of the dismembered body. When every one was satisfied that the man had really dissappeared the principal performer, who did not seem to be at all astonished, told his audience that the vanished man had gone up to the heavens to figbt Indra. "In a few moments." says Siddeshur, he expressed anxiety at the man's continued absence in the aerial regions, and said that he would go to see what was the matter. A boy was called, who held upright a long bamboo, up which the man climbed to the top, whereupon we suddenly lost sight of him, and the boy laid the bamboo on the ground. Then there fell on the ground before us the different members of a human body, all bloody-first one hand, then another, a foot, and so on until complete. The boy then elevated the bamboo, and the principal performer, appearing on the top as suddenly as he disappeared, came down, and seeming quite discon- solate, said that Indra had killed his friend before he could get there to save him. He then placed the mangled remains in the same box, closed it, and tied it as before. Our wonder and astonish- ment reached their climax when, a few minutes later, on the box being again opened, the inin jumped out perfectly hearty and unhurt." Is not this rather steep, so to speak, even for an Indian jugglery story ? A GREEN INTERVIEWER Dr Norman Kerr has been interviewed by a correspondent of Woman upon the increasing use of narcotics by women. Alcohol, he says, is the most frequently used narcotic. "But I could give you a formidable list of narcotics which women in all ranks of society are daily using—chloral, chlorodyne, ether, chloroform (less used by women here than in America), sal volatile, eau-de-Cologne, and so on. I have known ladies addicted to atcohol drink three bottles of brandy a day. A bottle a day is by no means an uncommon quantity. I li-ive had patients who had habituated themselves to two ounces (960 grains) of chloral as their daily allowance. Twenty grains of chloral, I may say, is a full medicinal dose. I have treated patients who have been in the habit of swallowing eight ounces of chlorodyne a day and I have known ladies who could take a pint of chlorodyne in the twenty-four hours. Both tea and coffee are used in excess. I found a patient insensible in her room one day who had drunk nothing but tea. But she had consumed a pound of tea in the day. Tobacco, in the form of cigars as well as of cigarettes, is constantly resorted to by women. Thirty cigarettes a day has been the allowance of some of my patients." A society of disappointed lovers has been formed in an American town. A dozen well-known young men, including a lawyer, several politicians and a merchant, met in a hotel, where the nature of the organisation was explained. It is designed as a mutual consolation society, and any man to be eligible to membership must have been engaged, and the engagement must have been broken by the fair one. The constitution requires every man to shun female society at all times, and a violation of the rules is punished by expulsion.