The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-10-15
Will You Tell Me?
ladies Home Journal.)


shoe formed the sym boil of a transfer
ence of property. There are Scriptural
| illusions to such practice; and in
Anglo-S Saxon England the brides faith
er gave the bridegroom her shoe, the
latter touching his brides head with
| it in token of his ownership Thus
the custom, though gradually chang
ing its significance, has descended to
our times
HE GAVE AWAY HIS OWN BIRTH
DAY.
Is it true that Robert Louis Steven
son gave away his birthday to a small
girl who was born on a twenty-ninth
Of February? VAILIMA
You are doubtless thinking of the
time that Stevenson made over his
birthday to the young daughter of the
American Land Commissioner in Sa-
moa in the following terms:
Il, Robert Louis Stevenson a British
subject, being in sound mind, and pretty
we'll, thank you. in body:
I'm consideration that Miss Annie
H. Ide. was born, out of all
reason, upon Christmas Day, and is
therefore out of all justice denied the
consolation and profit of proper birth
day;
and considering that I, the said
Robert Louis Stevenson, have attained
an age when o, we never mention It.
and that I have now no futher use
for a birthday of any descriptions:
&c" Have transferred, and do
hereby transfer, to the said Annie H
Ide, all and whole my rights and priv
ileges, in the thirteenth day of No
vember, formerly my birthday. now,
hereby and henceforth the birthday of
the said Annie H. Ide, to have, hold
exercise and enjoy the same in the
customary manner, by the sporting of
fine raiment, eating of rich meats. and
receipt of gifts, compliments and copies
of verse, according to the manner of
our ancestors
A GRAVEYARD IN MID-OCEAN.
1 have heard often of the ''Sargasso
Sea" as a mysterious place. Will you
tell me about it. BELVILLE.
But little is known of the Sargasso
Sea except it's outer boundaries. 1t lies.
a lake within a sea, in the triangle
formed by the Equatorial current flow
ing toward Brazil from Africa, the
Gulf Stream which as the northern arm |
of that current sweeps north and east |
across the Atlantic, and that branch |
of the Gulf Stream which flows from |
north of Ireland down past the west |
coast of Europe. These great ocean |
create in the middle Atlantic |
a dead, quiet spot about as large as |
Europe, into which is sucked all the |
refuse of the ocean, just as when you |
stir a basinful of water and corks rap |
idly the corks gather in the center and |
stay there. This kind of process has |
been going on for centuries in the Sar- |
gasso Sea, throwing into it quantities |
of seaweed, wreckage and all horts of |
trash, which stays there in a thick |
impenetrab1e mass through which no |
ship could pass-and in which any ship |
would surely perish. It has never been |
pierced, this sea, and indeed is most |
warily avoided by all ocean-going YES
sells.
A MILLIoN-PoUND NOTE? YES;
FOUR.
Having read a story about the mil |
lion-p pound banknote by Mark Twain, |
I am curious to know whether there |
ever really was such note.
CONNECTICUT.
Tt is said that the Bank of England |
issued four such notes. One went to !
George ", and is now in the Windsor |
Castle Library; one belongs to the |
Rothschild family; Samuel Rogers, the |
banker-poet, possessed a third, while |
the fourth still remains at the Bank of |
England.