Morning journal and courier., 1885-05-11

having an entertainment at his house in Grosvenor square, had spread mating across the sidewalk for the benefit of his guests. The plaintiff while passing by tripped in the mating and fell down. He alleged injuries, sued for damages and ob-
 tained verdict for three hundred dollars Lord Coleridge said that pedestrian is not bound to look for mats on the pavement, and that his not looking for them is no evi- dence of negligence. He may look at the
 stars if he pleasas.
 In no other city in the world does the prac-
 tice of giving customers something ''to boot'
 obtain to the extent that it does in Berlin. This tax on merchants has grown heavier and heavier under the strife of competition until now it is said to be almost cheaper to buy than to go without. Confection houses give Chinese shawls, hats and sachels; grocers
 bribe cooks with gifts of soap; butchers give
 extra slices of ham, and dry goods dealers give dress patterns, valuable according the value ot the purchase is much or little.
 The practice is most general among booksell- ers, who give toys, dolls. games, pencils and the like, and recently in one of the Berlin schools the police had actually to be called in, the pupils having got into a violent quar- rel over some irecrackers obtained by one of them as s'boot' in bookstore purchase. The proposed railroad from London to Bombay will, it is estimated, extend over distance of nearly seven thousand miles, and this distance, it is calculated, can be trav- ersed in nine days, or an average of thirty five miles an hour. The route contemplated is through Paris, Madrid, Gibraltar, Tan giers, Tunis, Tripoli, Cairo, Bassorah, Kelat, to Kurrachee and Bombay. Use will be
 made of the existing railroads in France and Spain, and steam transit will be established
 from the Bay of Gibraltar to Ceuta, in Nor
 occo, from which latter point will begin the international railroad, the works Of
 which will have to be constructed 1n Moroc
 co. This line will then form junction with the system of railroads under the administra- tion of the French railroad company in Al geria and Tunista. Thence the route will
 continue through Tripoi and form juno tion with the Egyptian railroad system.
 From Egypt, the route to India would be
 continued to the Euphrates, and then along I
 thence to Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. An extraordinary blunder has been made
 in recent anti-iquor legislation in Oregon.
 The last legislature enacted what is known as the Ready liquor law. By some hocus pc GUS that part of the bill dealing with penal ties failed to provide penalty for selling liquor without license in unincorporated towns. Furthermore, no penalty was pro- vided for such a selling in incorporated towns where there is no local regulation of sales. That is to say, there is penalty for breaking the license law, but selling without license comes off scot free. As the Orego- nian puts it: s'The saloon keeper who pays the $500 fee required by the new law is liable to certain penalties which do not ap- ply to the seller without license" If this interpretation is correct, Oregon will practic- ally have lost for two years the income from license fees, as the saloon keepers through out the interior have no idea of rene wing ! their licenses when they expire. It is now urged that the governor ought to call an ex- ! tra session of the legislature to remedy the | defect, since the cost of the session would \ be much less than the amount involved in | the loss of license fees.