The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-08-29
ABOUT PEOPLE AND THINGS.

1t cost $4,000 to entertain for seven weeks
the eleven colonial premiers who attended
the Queens jubilee.
The King of Greece, when conversing
with his family, uses the English language
He seldom speaks French or Greek.
Lady Aberdeen, wife of the governor gen.
eral of Canada, is one of the few women in
the world upon whom the degree of doctor
of laws has been conferred.
Christine Nilsson, now the Countess
Miranda, can still sing. though she has not
PATHS fondness for the stage. She has
just been paying a visit to Sweden and
sung once for the students of a university
town.
It is aid that the plan to provide for the
pension of poor widows in England is to
be taken up by the Queen as soon as she
for every widow from seventy-fve years
of age and upward who is in need
Prince Macmillan of SaXony, who two
years ago became Catholic priest and
took charge of a parish in London, is about
to go to Eichstatt to pass the examination
for the degree of doctor of divinity At the
Saxon court it is asserted that he wishes to
enter the Capuchin order.
The most curiously decorated graves in
the world, perhaps, are the negro graves in
Zululand. Some.of these mounds are gar
nished with the bottles of medicines used
by the departed in their final illness, and
the duration of the malady is easily
guessed by the number of bottles.
Two hundred years ago on Aug Peter
the Great became a shipbuilder's appren-
tice at Saardam, a little village a few
miles from Amsterdam 1t is trim and
picturesque. In narrow lane by the water
side is the hut in which the Car lived the
life of a workman. Nicholas II recently in
closed 1t in a new building of brick and
stone in the Byzantine style.
Viennas gigantic wheel has been erected
by British workmen in charge of a London
engineer at a cost of $500 900. 1t is more
elegantly fitted up than the Ferris wheel
and contains thirty compartments, with
room for GOO passengers who are carried to
a height of $40 feet, giving bird s-eye view
of Vienna and stretches of the Danube
The wheel is driven by electric motor
with a smooth and agreeable motion.
Acting upon the idea that mice are very
sensitive to music a Belgian manufacturer
has substituted a musical mousetrap for
the common trap. Instead of batting the
apparatus with a bit of cheese or lard the
inventor has hidden in a double bottom a
small music box, which plays automatical-
ly various popular airs of the country. The
mice he insists, are drawn irresistibly to-
ward the music box. and in order to hear
better they step into the trap and lind
themselves prisoners.
The author of Bismarck Table Talk"
says that some one was speaking to Bis
marck one day about his unusual attain
ments as a linguist. Tue prince. who is
specially proud of his knowledge Of the
Russian language spoke of the great diff
culties of mastering that tongue. You
must have great talent in that direction"
said his interlocutor. Well" answered
the prince, Il had unusual advantages
when l was learning the language at St
Petersburg. l lodged in the house with a
Russian and bear
Henry O. Tanner, the negro artist, one
of whose paintings has been purchased by
the French government for the Luxem-