Joy For The Men at Tea

1917

Some Good Samaritan Has Invented Oval Saucer That Safely Holds Cup and Dainties

Any man who knows that, sooner or later, he must go to another afternoon tea cannot but rejoice at the recent invention of an oval, platterlike saucer large enough to hold with ease a cup, a lettuce or other sandwich, and a dainty trifle of pastry. The thing was needed, the modesty of the anonymous inventor — evidently not Mr. Edison — reveals him one of the large body of occasional and unwilling tea-goers.

We, the reluctant and unwilling, are all strangely alike at these functions and we have all been embarrassed by the old-fashioned saucer. Circular in shape, and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow (which happens so often that we suspect conspiracy), the old-fashioned saucer affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with instant delight to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it. We mean a tail!

If afternoon teas had been started in the Oligocene epoch instead of the seventeenth century, we are convinced that evolution, far from discarding this useful appendage, would have perfected it. A little hand would have evolved at the end of it, such a little hand as might hold his saucer while a gentleman sips from his teacup. — Atlantic Magazine.

Drinking Cup Sediment Kills a Pig

1910

CHICAGO — Public drinking cups are dangerous. They are excellent mediums for transmitting the germs of disease. Especially is this true in public and parochial schools where a large number of children are compelled to use the same cups, according to the health bureau.

Statistics show about one person in sixty has tuberculosis, and among school children there always are those who have some of the communicable diseases in light form, and these undoubtedly are communicated by the use of the common cup.

So fully is this understood that several states have passed laws abolishing the public drinking cup, and compelling railroads and public carriers to supply individual ones. The plan also has been advocated in schools, but the better and safer plan is believed to be the installation of what are known as "bubbling" cups with the water flowing over the rims all the time.

A cup used in a high school for several months without having been washed was found to be lined inside with a thick brownish deposit. Under the microscope this deposit proved to be composed of particles of mud, thousands of bits of dead skin, and millions of bacteria. Some of this sediment was injected under the skin of a healthy guinea pig and forty hours later the pig died. An examination afterward showed that pneumonia germs had caused death. A second guinea pig was inoculated with some of the sediment from the same cup and developed tuberculosis. Careful inquiry showed that several pupils in this school from which the cup was taken were then suffering from consumption.

An agitation is urged asking the school board to install the "bubbling" cups in all schools.

Enoch Ardens in Russia

1906

Many Returning Soldiers Reported Dead Find Their Wives Remarried

St. Petersburg. — Among the Russian prisoners arriving from Japan there are many who have been reported dead by the general staff and whose relatives had been so informed. The unexpected reappearance of these men is causing all sorts of strange family complications, as many wives, under the impression that they were widows, have remarried.

In the province of Perm, where a returning soldier found his wife already the mother of a child by a new husband, he took the matter to the village priest for settlement. The first husband offered to acquiesce to the new conjugal arrangement if he received $25, but the second husband was unable to pay the money, and it was finally arranged that the wife should return to her first husband.

However, as the second marriage was considered legal, and as official documents were at hand to prove the apparent death of the living husband, it was decided that the child born While the first husband was away must legally be registered as belonging to the second husband, and that it must be cared for by him.


Luxury for Left-Handed

Right handed men are no longer the only ones who can, if they so desire, avail themselves of the convenience of a mustache cup. There are now made mustache cups for left handed men as well. These cups come in at least two sizes and in a variety of styles as to decorations. Not nearly so many left handed as right handed cups are called for, but the left handed man can now be supplied.