A droll incident occurred recently at Scotland Yard, London. Mr. Charles Gibbon, the novelist, has a friend there who is an inspector of the detective department, and to whom he is indebted for valuable instruction in the details of criminal procedure. In recognition of this service he forwarded to his friend a copy of the book just published entitled “A Hard Knot,” one of the principal characters in which is a detective. The parcel was done up in brown paper and delivered late in the evening by the Parcels Delivery Company, This was the information forwarded to Mr. Gibbon on the following day:
“Inspector —— was on duty here last night, and it is usual for the officer to turn in about 11.30 P.M. But having received the parcel, he informed me this morning that he was unable to sleep—wondering if it contained dynamite and every minute was to be his last. After turning over and over in bed, he at length got up and examined his bugbear carefully. Then, seeing your name on it, he felt satisfied, went to bed, and slept.”
Professor Blackie is not the only eccentric master the young men of Edinburgh University have had over them. Professor Christison—whose son became eminent in the Edinburgh Medical School—once having caught a student winking in his Latin class ordered him to stand up, and spoke as follows: “No smirking, no smiling, and above all, no tipping of the wink; for such things are hurtful to yourselves, baneful to the republic, and will bring down the gray hairs of your parents with sorrow to the grave. Hum! by the way, that’s a very pretty sentence; turn it into Latin, sir.”
The World of London has conspicuously suggested Mr. Lowell for the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature at Oxford.
A fine monument has been erected at Ormiston, East Lothian, to the memory of Dr. Robert Moffat, the famous missionary to Africa.
Some interesting autographs were recently sold at auction in London. The original autograph copy of Lord Byron’s “Fare thee well! and if forever,” fetched $85; the originals of Burns’s “Tam O’Shanter” and “Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots” together fetched $760; one of Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son, $15; thirteen letters of Dean Swift, from $38 to $85 each, and one of Charles Lamb, from Paris, $65.