The Savannah morning news., 1902-05-03
ITEMS OF INTEREST.

most dangerous of peaceful occupa-
| tions is the seemingly innocuous one
| of attendant of joiner's planning ma
| chine. At hearing in a prosecution
| under the factory act at Halifax re-
recently, factory inspector told the
court that when he took office he made
| 1t point to try to discover an at
| tendant of such a machine who had
| all his fingers. 1t was five years before
he came across such a man. All the
| attendants of joiners' planning ma
| chimes whom he had seen in the mean
time had one or more fingers missing,
which they had lost in the performance
of their work. And chat notwithstand-
ing the fact that the men engaged in
such work are aware of the danger
and are careful.
In an interview at Rochester. N. Y.
tn eother day. Lord Kelvin said: II re-
gard Niagara Falls as the greatest
-@roblem in America for scientists to
-<elve. The time is coming when coal
and oil will be too scarce and too ex-
pensive to be used for the manufac-
ture of power. There is at Niagara
Falls an inexhaustible supply of power
that, in fifty or a hundred years, is
bound to be utilized to its fullest ex-
tent. l predict the time will come
when the water will no longer flow
the same water will find its way down
the river through countless turbines,
spreading light and power for the use
OF millions of people in all sections of
the country. This world must depend
on its water for power in the future
The supply of coal will soon become so
exhausted that it cannot be profitably
used for manufac turing purposes.
America has millions upon millions of
hnrGa in l.
rivers that are utterly neglected. This
power is bound to be developed in the
near future. The start that has been
made at Niagara Falls is only the be-
ginning of the new era in the manu-
facture and transmission of power"
The farthing newspaper is at length
an accomplished fact, says the West
minister Gazette. One has been started
in Vienna, and the first number was
issued last Thursday. 1t is called Die
Neue Zeitung, and is about two-thirds
the size of an English half-penny pa
per. There are eight pages, three of
which are devoted to advertisements
and five to news. The newcomer is
not a party organ, and will be gen.
orally progressive in tendency. The
proprietor intends to give in tabulated
form all the news printed by other
journals, together with articles and
generally interesting matter. There
will be a morning edition and an even
ing edition, the latter published at
noon The fact that paper manufac-
turers hold a large interest in the
property solves the most difficult part
of the problem of making a faFthing
journal pay, for the cost of paper is, of
course one of the most important con-
siderations. The proprietor, who was
formerly the owner of a leading daily
in Budapest, says that he requires a
circulation of $4,000 daily to cover the
bare cost of publication. This is an
enormous circulation in Vienna, where
the most popular paper at present does
not exceed $4,000 per day, and where
there are several dailies with circu-
lation of less than 10000.
WORD blindness" is a new dis
ease which seems to be a mental fail
ing corresponding to the physical one
of color blindness, says an exchange.
1t is the inability to recognize a writ
ten or printed word, and usually af-
| flicts people after they have received
some severe shock or have recovered
from some dangerous illness. DR.. James
Hinshelwood of Glasgow has recently
| called attention to word blindness
and gives the London Lancet several
| instances which have come under his
| OlSeTNdUOIl, ne most Striking IN
| stance was that of well-educated
man of 80 who had just recovered from
a stroke of paralysis. The man had
| the greatest difficulty in recognizing a
printed word in English, and with
| manuscript had still more difficulty.
| AS he knew Greek, Latin and French,
the doctor gave to him a Greek book,
| and to his surprise found the man
| could read 1t with little difficulty. He
then tried him in Latin, and found he
was less able to recognize Latin words
| than he had been the Greek. But he
could read it much better than he
| could English. Then a French book
was given to the patient. and he was
told to read. In French he had con-
| siderable difficulty in recognizing the
words. Later an English book was
handed to him and he could not read
a word of it, and also was unable to
express his ideas in English.
The Times of India tells the fol-
lowing story to show the character of
the Arabs of Yemen. among whom
there have been some disturbances
| lately. A man of the Zaraniks, who
has several times cut the new tele-
graph lines, and who was punished
more than once, was caught on one
occasion by an Arab Sheikh in charge
of the lines. Tie Sheikh intended to
send him to Needy for Imprisonment,
but the wife of the accused came in
and stood as guarantee for his fu-
ture good behavior. The Sheikh ac-
cepted the bail and released him, but
shortly afterward ne again resorted to
his old practice of cutting the wires,
and bolted away to another village, at
a distance of one days march, where
he has another wife. The Sheikh then
sent for his first wife. who stood Sc
curity for him and told her he would
disgrace her among the Arabs if she
failed to bring in her husband The
woman asked the Sheikh not to
spread the black sheet" "a custom of
the country when anyone commits a
breach of trusD till the following day
She started that night, taking a
sharp dagger concealed under her
clothes. to the village where her hus-
band was staying. She found him
asleep in his abode and stabbed him,
cut his throat and carried his head
back to her home. The next morning
she went to the Sheikh and presented
the head of her husband, saying:
Here is your criminal and am
freed from the bail. Please do not af-
fix the black sheet"
Few men at the age of sixty-two
would care to emulate the feat of Mr.
John Alcock in walking backward from
Macclestield to Buxton-a distance of
twelve miles-under three and a quar-
ter hours, says the New York Post But
the feat, remarkable as it is, does not
approach that of Old Macleod, a Chel-
It