The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-10-01 00:00:00

Our yonbon Comspoubnit.

_ !V!, deem it right to state that we do not at all times
artitify ourselve with our Correspondent's opinions.

The British tourist, year by year, takes a wider
sweep as the sphere of his energies, and recent events
in Russia have attracted many an autumnal wanderer
to that country. Travellers amid its snows have told
us of the delight with which its people listen to the
description of these lands favoured with bright sunlit
skies and long summer days. In St. Petersburg, the
picturesque capital of that vast empire, the winter
begins in October, and ends in May. On the first
appearance of frost every man puts on his furs, and
does not think of laying them aside until the cold
weather is quite gone. It was a curious place to
build a capital, right in the very heart of the frigid
zone; but there it is, and the best must be made of it.
No sooner has October set in than the stoves are
lighted in every house, and when the temperature is
twelve or fourteen degrees below zero, the thermometer
is carefully watched. When it has gone down to
twenty degrees the police are on the alert, and
go round night and day to see that the sentinels keep
awake ; for sleep at such a time is certain death.
Public amusements are given up because coachmen and
servants iwaiting in the streets are liable to be frozen
stiff and stark. It is not until the beginning of April
that the inhabitants of St. Petersburg look forward
to the time the Neva shall burst its bonds, and no
sooner does the vast mass of ice begin to move than
the glad tidings are announced by the artillery of the
citadel, a fortress, situated immediately opposite the
Emperor's palace. The governor presents to the Czar
a goblet filled with crystal water from the emanci-
pated river, which the sovereign drinks to the health
and prosperity of his metropolis.

The latest application of the Co-operative system is
the plan of marking time in large cities, which has
adopted in Vienna and Paris with considerable success.
The system is that of measuring time by means of
pneumatic clocks, which are worked from a central
spot. Two Austrian engineers, MM. Popp and Resch,
..,;44,
heard of in 1864. Thirteen years later however, it was
successfully worked out in Vienna with a service of
public pneumatic clocks. From that time forward
the system made steady progress, and last year
it was extended to Paris, six miles of pipes being
laid down. Since that time a further development
of the plan has been made, and at present there are
in that city sixteen miles of main pipes supplying
some five hundred houses, in which are over 2,000
clocks. These are worked from a central establish-
ment, where air is compressed by means of
steam engines, and stored in reservoirs under a
heavy pressure, from which, as may be required,
It passes into distributing receivers, whence it is
led to an index clock, by which the whole system is
controlled. IN eedless, to say, this clock is regulated
with the nicest precision, and is fitted with valves which,
at every swing of the pendulum, open and shut, thus
distributing the motive power to the whole of the
clocks by a series of jerks, the action in fact re-
sembli n the pulsation in the human frame caused by
the working of the valves of the heart. The clocks
are said to be absolutely without fault, and the
advantages of such a precise piece of mechanism are
too obvious to need description.
Some deeply interesting statistics respecting the
progress of America, based on the Census returns of
the past eight decades, have just been given. The
Census recently taken shows that the ronlA
tates is nearly 4 per cent, in excess of
the female, that one out of every six persons is an
immigrant, and that the coloured population stands in
a similar ratio. The total population was ascertained to
be slightly over 50,000,000, of whom in round numbers

26,000,000 were males and 24,000,000 were females.
The native-born inhabitants numbered 43,000,000,
and the foreign born 6,000,000. The Chinese num-
bered only 105,000, more than one-half of which were
located in California. In 1790 the population of the
United States was 3,000,000 —less than that of London
to-day, so that in 90 years it has increased eleven
fold. The western States now contain 19,000,000,
whereas in 1790 not a single citizen was to be found
in their entire area. The Southern States then num-
bered one million inhabitants, now they reckon
fifteen millions. In the Middle States the population

was then one million ; now they are eleven millions.
In the New England States the population has ako
increased to a remarkable extent. At the same rate
of increase which has been shown during the past,
the number of fifty millions of people now in the
American Union will have doubled in 20 years, so
that early in the twentieth century the population will
have reached 100,000,000.
In one of the most frequented thoroughfares in
London there is a building which seems to carry 115
far back into the chronicles of past ages, and before the
dawn of unregenerate days. This is the Herald's
College, in Queen Victoria-street, a direct line from
the Mansion House to Lhe Thames Embankment.
Approached by a recess, a little way from the pave-
ment, it seems even now to tell a tale of removal
from the prosaic occupations of the busy life
of to-day, when less than our fathers we
hear of tabards and pursurvants, trumpeters and
heralds. Yet we have still with ns, as important
officers of State, Garter King-at-Arms for England,
Lyon King-at-Arms for Scotland, and Ulster King.at-
Arms for Ireland. These dignified functionaries take
under their especial charge the records of the Arms of
Peers; and as each kingdom has even to this day a
separate peerage, the respective offices are still main-
tained. It is true that the peerages of Ireland and Scot-
land are slowly becoming merged in that of the
United Kingdom, but until that process is complete
each country will have its own king-at-arms, to remind
us of the long past days of heraldry, before the
knights had become dust, their swords had turned to
rust, and when the honest burghers of the towns
assembled at the market crosses at noon not so much
for business as quietly to discuss sac and home
affairs.

The favourite wedding present made by the Queen
is a Cashmere shawl. Part of the tribute annually
paid by the Maharajah of Cashmere to her Majesty
as Empress of India consists of these beautiful
fabrics made from the long, fine, and silky hair of
the Cashmere goat. The finest goat hair is imported
from Thibet into Cashmere, and is there dyed and

woven with the greatest care and skill. The fleeces
of ten goats are necessary for the manufacture of a
shawl a yard and a half square. It might naturally be
expected that those who manufacture articles re-
quiring such exquisite skill and taste would be
physically and intellectually a superior race ; but
from the accounts given by those who have re-
cently visited the country, it appears that the
weavers are an ill-fed, miserable set of people, with a
wretched physique and steeped in poverty. A real
Cashmere shawl of the finest quality will bring in
London from .Qloo to £4OO, a price which apparently
ought to allow a fair remuneration to the weaver.
' But, as a pair of shawls often occupy three or four
men a whole year in weaving, the earnings of the
shawl-worker, as may readily be imagined, are not
very great.
When the holiday season approaches a close to the
Londoner more especially is presented the contrast
between now and then—the present time and fifty
years ago. Then people in the metropolis were very
much in the condition of John Gilpin and his wife.
If by remote accident they desired a holiday in the
country, the stage coach and the post chaise were their
only means of conveyance. The railways have since
worked a very marvellous chance. A day at Brighton
or at Margate even in the full tide of work now
occurs to many as a matter of course ; while for the
annual holiday there are Scarborough, Tenby, East-
bourne, Bournemouth, Freshwater, Hastings, and a
host' of other places familiar enough to anyone
who glances at the pictorial advertisements at
the railway stations. A journey from London
to Land's End is now a matter of a few hours.
As a consequence of the facilities which are offered to
travellers, our most pleasant English watering-places
are over, rowded. It is a recognised fact that Brighton
has long been practically a London suburb; but these
can be no doubt that many of the most accessible
places of resort have shared the same fate in the
holiday season. There is now here an escape from the
great exodus from London. The life of the capital
and its ways are taken to the sea-side. At holiday, as
well as in work the influence of the wide-spreading
metropolis may truly enough be said to know no
rest.

L.
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