VARIETIES.
Hints for Travellers.
Take one-fourth more money than your estimated expenses, and have a good supply of small change.
Acquaint yourself with the geography of the route and region of travel.
Arrange, if possible, to have but a single article of luggage to look after.
Dress substantially. Better be too hot for two or three hours at noon than be cold for the remainder of the twenty-four.
Arrange, under all circumstances, to be at the place of starting fifteen or twenty minutes before the time, thus allowing for unavoidable or unanticipated detention by the way.
Do not commence a day’s travel before breakfast, even if it has to be eaten at daybreak. Dinner or supper, or both, can be more healthily dispensed with than a good warm breakfast.
A sandwich eaten leisurely in the carriage is better than a whole dinner bolted at a railway station.
Take with you a month’s supply of patience, and always think thirteen times before you reply once to any supposed rudeness, insult, or inattention.
Do not suppose yourself specially and designedly neglected if waiters at hotels do not bring what you call for in double-quick time. Nothing so distinctly marks the well-bred as waiting on such occasions.
Comply cheerfully and gracefully with the customs of the conveyances in which you travel, and of the places where you stop.
Respect yourself by exhibiting the manners of a lady, if you wish to be treated as such, and then you will receive the respect of others.
Travel is a great leveller; take the position which others assign you from your conduct rather than your pretensions.
Good Reasons for Learning Singing.
The following eight reasons why everyone should learn to sing are given by Byrd in his “Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs,” etc., published in 1588:—
1. It is a knowledge easily taught and quickly learned, where there is a good master and an apt scholar.
2. The exercise of singing is delightful to nature, and good to preserve the health of man.
3. It doth strengthen all parts of the breast, and doth open the pipes.
4. It is a singularly good remedy for a stuttering and stammering in the speech.
5. It is the best means to procure a perfect pronunciation and to make a good orator.
6. It is the only way to know where nature has bestowed a good voice ... and in many that excellent gift is lost because they want art to express nature.
7. There is not any music of instruments whatsoever comparable to that which is made of the voices of men, where the voices are good, and the same well sorted and ordered.
8. The better the voice is, the meeter it is to honour and serve God therewith; and the voice of man is chiefly to be employed to that end.
“Since singing is so good a thing,I wish all men would learn to sing.”
“Since singing is so good a thing,I wish all men would learn to sing.”
“Since singing is so good a thing,I wish all men would learn to sing.”
“Since singing is so good a thing,
I wish all men would learn to sing.”
An Antipathy to Cats.—People who have a strong antipathy to cats detect their presence by the odour, in circumstances which would be thought impossible. A lady in my study, one day, suddenly remarked, “There is a cat in the room.” On my assuring her there was none, she replied, “Then there is one in the passage.” I went out, to satisfy her. There was no cat in the passage, but on the first landing, looking through the railings, there, sure enough, was the cat.—G. H. Lewes.