COVERING A YAWNING MOUTH.
A well-bred man puts his hand over his mouth when he yawns, but not one well-bred man in ten thousand knows why. The reason is this:
Four or five hundred years ago there was a superstition common in Europe that the devil was always lying in wait to enter a man’s body and take possession of him.
Satan generally went in by the mouth, but when he had waited a reasonable time and the man did not open his mouth, the devil made him yawn, and when his mouth was open, jumped down his throat.
So many cases of this kind occurred that the people learned to make the sign of the cross over their mouths whenever they yawned, in order to scare away the devil.
The peasantry in Italy and Spain still adhere to this method, but most other people have dispensed with the cross sign, and keep out the devil by simply placing the hand before the lips. It is a most remarkable survival of a practice after the significance has perished.
A YOUNG FINANCIER.
A certain man, in order to impress business methods on his son early in life, told the youngster that if he would see that the gas bill was paid before a certain day each quarter, he could have the discount for himself.
The boy took very kindly to the idea, and captured the discount every time the bill came in. To his father’s surprise, however, the gas bill began to increase at a remarkable rate. He found one night that his son was burning gas all over the top of the house from ten o’clock until six o’clock the next morning. The youngster had become a Napoleon of finance, and had discovered the fact that the bigger the bill the bigger the discount.
LAST WHITE RHINOCEROS.
A wonderous brute, which only within the present century emerged from the realm of myth into that of scientific knowledge, has within the present year passed into the realm of history. Reports from South Africa declare that the last white rhinoceros has been killed, and that its skeleton, hide, and horn are now being shipped to England to enrich the Natural History Museum. Thus the largest of modern quadrupeds, excepting the elephant, becomes extinct, along with the beautiful quagga, the dodo, the great auk, and other noteworthy members of the animal kingdom which have vanished from the world before the rapacity of man.
HOW A RUBBER FOREST LOOKS.
According to recent accounts of the reckless manner in which forests of rubber trees are destroyed, India rubber will soon be much more scarce and costly than it now is, and when that happens it is probable that some one will invent a substitute. At present, however, it is interesting to know what a recent traveler says of the India-rubber forests of Nicaragua:
“A forest of them may be detected without the eyes of an expert, for they are scarred and dying from the wounds of the machete, the big knife used by the natives. The ordinary specimen of Nicaragua is from fifty to one hundred feet high, and about two feet in diameter.
“The bark is white, and the leaves are oval, with a slight inclination downward. The cuts are made about two feet apart, and usually extend from the ground to the first branch, channels being scored in the sides to lead the juice into a bag. The average yield of a tree is from five to seven gallons of milky fluid.
“This is mixed with the juice of the ‘wisth,’ which hastens congelation. After this operation the crude rubber is baled up and shipped north, to be refined and further prepared for commerce. Another tree, very similar to the rubber, and often mistaken for it, is the cow tree. This yields a liquid very much like milk in taste and appearance.”