Entries Tagged 'People' ↓

When winter’s snows promise to make hazards too hazardous for indulgence in golf playing, the old and interesting game of billiards will amuse the house-bound. Now the occasional woman has played billiards, for many years, and played it well; but it was not until Lord Dunraven’s pretty daughter, Lady Aileen Wyndham-Quin, came over this year, to see her father race his handsome yacht, that billiards came suddenly into great social favor. Lady Aileen, it appears, used her cue not only with uncommon facility, but proved how exceedingly graceful a slender woman can appear when in evening dress she pockets her balls or smashes her opponent’s most careful combinations. The English girl’s exhibitions of prowess not only set her feminine friends in America seriously thinking, but valorously practicing on the baize-covered tables, until the majority of even callow debutants know something more than how to prettily chalk their cues. After many of the smartest autumn dinners the women quickly wandered down, from coffee, small talk, and satin-hung drawing-room, to the big leather-upholstered basement billiard-room, where the men found them, pink of cheek and bright of eye, over a game of sufficient strength to command even masculine respect and a desire to engage therein.–Demorest Magazine.

Left His Astral Body to be Kicked by the Cashier

The shabbily dressed man arose from a table containing numerous empty dishes, and with a toothpick projecting from a corner of his mouth, walked over to the cashier near the door, and remarked:

“Say, mister, do you believe in psychology?”

“To some extent, yes,” replied he, curiously. “Why?”

“An’ astral bodies?”

“Yes.”

“I was told so on the outside. Now, my bill is one-forty, ain’t it? The question arises who is to foot the bill? With no chink, I can’t. But I’ll make a proposition. I’ll open the door in this way, move out in this way–”

“Come back here, you beat.”

“Not much. My astral self is just inside the door. Administer to it a dozen or so good, sound kicks, and fire it out into the middle of next month. I won’t care. S’long.”–Ex.

We have been quite oppressed by men who would cut off the floating tresses of young girls; we also have suffered from a maniac who could not resist squirting ink on the gowns of the passing women, and last year a man with a sharp pair of scissors used to slash pieces out of anyone’s coat or skirt that came within his radius. This last person was sent to a madhouse, whence he ought ought not have been released; but, being pronounced cured, he was launched upon an unsuspecting community again and profited by his liberty to use his scissors once more. He accosted a lad in a deserted street, asked him to write down an address, and profited by his occupation to neatly slice off the lobes of both the poor boy’s ears, and then ran away. This interesting lunatic, whose name is Maire, will now go into permanent confinement; but the youth’s ears are permanently disfigured, to his great anguish of mind.

News comes from Texcapa, Mexico, a small town inhabited by Indians and Mastisos (half-breeds), that ten persons were burned there as heretics by order of the the auxiliary town judge. The judge claims he was acting according to the will of God, manifested to him in an extraordinary vision, accompanied by certain indications of divine wrath against heretics and people leading immoral lives. The whole population of Texcapa seems gone mad. All believe the judge was commissioned by the Almighty and the saints to destroy evil-doers. They point to the pile of bones on which they profess to see miraculously traced outline forms of the saints who, on advising the judge to burn the heretics left their images. Twenty-one arrests have been made.

In certain parts of Holland when a young man thinks he loves a girl he asks her for a match to light his cigar at the door of the beloved one’s home. This is done to let the parents know that something is intended, and if the visit is repeated and the same thing occurs no doubt is left in the minds of the girl’s parents, and they immediately proceed to investigate the young man’s character and antecedents. When he calls a third time they are prepared to give him an answer. If his suit is looked upon favorably he is given a match. If refused, he produces his own match, lights his cigar and walks away. If a favorable answer is given he steps forward and joins hands with the girl. While the engagement is by no means a settled fact even at this important stage, it is stated as a truth that if, on the occasion of the young man’s third visit, his inamorata offers him a second cigar and he smokes it in the house the engagement is never canceled.

The management of the Grand Opera House announces the engagement for three nights only. Nov. 11, 12 and 13, of Santanelle, the master of hypnotism, and the most talked about man of the day. His long successful series of entertainments in Detroit, covering 28 performances, caused the liveliest commotion rmoung men of learning, the newpapers particularly, and medical profession generally. Santanelli’s endorsement signed by 75 of 26 medical students from the Detroit College of Medicine and the Michigan College, pronounce him a man of honesty of purpose and thoroughness in all his claims. He is a mystifier of the deepest skill; many physicians and scientific men and women attend his interesting exhibitions, soley for what they may be able to gain in the study of hypnotism.

Information: In Turkestan, on the right bank of the Amou Diara, in a chain of rocky hills, near the Bokharan town of Karaki, are a number of large caves which, upon examination, were found to lead to an underground city, built apparently long before the Christian era. According to effigies, inscriptions and designs upon the gold and sliver money unearthed from among the ruins, the existence of the town dates back to some two centuries before the birth of Christ.

The underground Bokharan city is about two versts long and is composed of an enormous labyrinth of corridors, streets and squares, surrounded by houses and other buildings two or three stories high. The edifices contain all kinds of domestic utensils, pots, urns, vases and so forth. In some of the streets falls of earth and rock have obstructed the passages, but generally the visitor can walk about freely without lowering his head. The high degree of civilization attained by the inhabitants of the city is shown by the fact that they built in several stories, by the symmetry of the streets and square, and by the beauty of the clay and metal utensils and of the ornaments and coins.

The Jews of eastern Palestine and Asia Minor have a queer tradition which has survived from ancient times and tells of a remote period in their history when every fully developed Israelite was equipped with three perfect eyes. The two main optics, according to this curious old-time legend, were situated in the front part of the head, just as Jewish and other eyes are to-day, but the third–the one that made the early patriarch a monstrosity–was located in the back of the head, just above the nape of the neck in the edge of the hair. This wonderful third eye was not “evoluted” out of existence, as useless organs generally are (according to the ideas of the progressive scientists), but was closed by the divine injunction on the day when Moses was given the tables of stone on Sinai. You remember that God’s command on the day that the tables were renewed was to the effect that no should be seen in the vicinity of the holy mount. (See Exodus xxxiv., 3).

The believers in the three-eye tradition says that Moses supplemented God’s command by ordering the faithful who were encamped in the valley to turn their heads from the mountain. This they did, but took good care to uncover the eye that was situated in the back of their head. Moses, noticing this show of duplicity on the part of his followers, asked God to close the third or rear eye, and since that day the Israelites, in common with the remainder of humanity, have been forced to depend on two eyes only.