The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-04-14
ITEMS OF INTEREST.


/ Joseph Jefferson VIII deliver lee
I ture 20 the Harvard Union some time this
I spring.
in the 'Kueng Fang Pu." a Chinese
/ work on natural history. under An
I cient History of Tea" an absurd story
I is related Of the discovery OF the tree
In the reign OF Yuen Ty, in the dy-
nasty Of Tsin ca d. 2lO an Old woman
was accustomed TO proceed every morn
ing al daybreak 70 the market place.
earning cup OF tea on the palm of her
hand: me people bought Il eagerly and
set from the break Of day 10 the close
OF evening the cup was never exhausted.
Inc money she received she distributed
/ 10 the orphans and the needy beggars
/ frequenttng the highways The people
seized her and confined her in prison.
Al night she few through the prison
windows with her little vase in her hand,
1t IS curious what a penchant Dickens
had for certain melOdramatic situations.
which seemed 10 his fancy so telling thar
he repeated and reproduced them many
times over, says the Gentleman's Maya
zine. He had a lively dramatic turn,
and l have always thought would have
nad extraordinary success as a dramatist.
1 once asked him why he had not taken
up this line seriously, and 1 think ne
made the eXcuse-it was long ago. many
! years before his death-that he had no
time. taste or patience. The real reason,
no doubt, was that ne could not work with
out expanding, and could not carve heads
upon cherry stone A literary friend,
VINO mas his Boz at his finger ends has
with great acuteness pointed out to me
that Nicholas Nickleby was a genuine
"Adelphi walking gentleman" his man
! ner, heroic bursts, protection of his sis
( ter, boarding Of Ralph, etc. were all
I elements in the Adelphi nlelodrama
Ralph was a regular stage villain. That
] MS WORKS are all dramatic and conceived
/ IN the true spirit of the stage is plain
! from the vast list of adaptations Each
story has been adapted again, and will
| Dear the process admirably. One method
/ OF winding up his plot, to which ne was
I eSceedlhgiy partial, was the unmasking
/ OF the villain owing to the betrayal of
/ some confederate. The parties are gener-
l ally brought together in a. room by the
! more NlrtuOuS mem bers; the confederate
l then energies from his concealment and
/ tells a long story of villainy. This de
4 movement is seen first in "Oliver Twist ."
/ where Monks makes his revelation. In
/ Nlckieby Ralph is confronted with 'the
/ man snaWley' and Squeers. In The Old
! curiosity shop Quilp is similarly ex-
! posed. In "Barnaby Rudge" Haredale
/ forces his hereditary enemy to make rev
! Citations. In "ChuzZlewlt' Jonas Is con-
1 fronted with another betrayer. In Cop
! periield'' Uriah Heap is denounced and
/ exposed by Mr. Mcawber In BLEAK
/ Rouse Lady Deadlock is similarly track
/ ed In nearly all the cases the guilty per-
son goes off and commits suicide.
There are various important affairs
/ under control of the moon. according to
/ general superstitiOus consent, saws the
/ Pittsburg Dispatch. Woe to those who
| fail to turn their smallest silver coin
when they first behold the new moon If
| is out it won't be her fault. The first
| new moon after New Years day is in
! vested with a peculiar power. They be-
! neVe this, and wish to ascertain a certain
/ point so out and stand against a sttle
| or gate at midnight, and, looking fixedly
at IL, say or chant:
| IAN hail to thee, moon, all hail to theei
/ l puthee, kind moon, reveal to me
Him COR herr who is my life partner TO
This is an infallible method some will
I tell you, OF procuring an interview with
the person IN request In Bede's Eccles-
| iastical Annals he is represented as being
| greatly disguised with an abbess. be-
cause the poor old lady caused her sick
| niece to be bled from the arm in the de-
| crease OF the moon. How" he says,
| can cure her after such imprudence -
| Yet to the greater renown of miracles,
MS blessing got the upper hand of the
moon, and the young lady recovered. In
! Leice5tershire, and probably elsewhere,
| no one VIII not, certainly many will not
on any account kill a pig in the decrease
OF the moon. They will assure you that
| TO do so is to waste the bacon, which will
! not stand boiling, but will Sink away
| Everybody is acquainted with the vari-
Gus ways of wooing the moons good
| graces, such as peeping at her through a
silk handkerchief, etc. The times for
\ shipping the hair, and cutting the nails
are still, with some, under the regulation
of the moon. The moon is also a fruitful
market for fortune tellers; they general
Y assume +b me name OF, Of gyPsies; but in
tramps. Sir Roger de Coverly saws in the
Spectator, after having inveighed against
the gypsies, II have an honest dairVmaid
who crosses her hands with a piece of
silver every summer and never fails be-
ing promised the best husband in the par
ish for her pains The butler, though he
is sure to lose q knife or spoon every
time his fortune is told him. generally
shuts himself up in the pantry with an old
gypsy for about half an hour, once a
| tWelVemonth."
The dread micro5e has been eniovine
a decided reign of terror, says the Phil
adelphia Record. Nevertheless a Penn
sylvania physician seems determined Ia
increase human inquietude and invest the
Ubiquitous disease germs with more fell
character than ever DR.. Thomas s. Blair
of Harrisburg advances in the Medical
News the sensational theory that our
sudden and destructive epidemics are
CHASTITY visitors from other worlds In
other words, he contends that the thou
sands of tons of meteoric matter and cos
mic dust which are annually precipitated
upon the earth infict upon this planet a
most OF life germs of non-terreStrial orr
gin. Recent Investigations have proved
colored SHOWS to be filled with organisms -
states DR.. Blair. 'and the Polar SHOWS
are said to have yielded more than three
hundred different life forms. These or
ganisms can hardly be produced in our
atmosphere, millions of hundredweghts
Of them, according to Dana, having fallen
since the days of Homer, who first de-
scribed them in the Iliad' " Dr. Blair
feels sure that not only the mysterious
Black Plague" of the fourteenth CEN
fury and the old type of spotted fever
arose from non-mundane source; but
he assigns to these unearthly microbes
the blame for the peculiar epidemic called
cerebro-spinal meningitis which prevailed
between the years 1866 and 1867, and goes
so far as to assert that his theory throws
light on other local epidemics such as
those of typhoid diphtheria and ia
grippe" Without DEPRESSING to analyze DR..
Blair's truly original interpretations of
the Homeric mythology to apply to mod
ern medicine, it must be confessed that
the origin of the microscopic organisms
in these strange showers cited is GER
tainly still open to conjecture Darwin
described a shower of strange organisms
which covered an area of over a million
square miles; and Ehrenberg estimated
that in a cosmic shower in France i'm
1876 there fell forty-five tons of organic
germs. Sensational as it strikes one at
first, DR.. Blair's theory receives a certain
FEASIBILITY from such phenomena as these
which suggest by their extent the prob
ability Of an origin beyond the limits of
our atmosphere. If this view should be
accepted the dying out of plaques would
then be described in the words of the
doctor, Ito, the earth swinging out of
range of the cOsmic dust carrying the
germs which, not finding DrODer environ