The Wife: A Journal of Home Comforts from London, Greater London, England • Page 8

of fresh meat will be obtainable in the form of seals and bears, if not of birds. If Dr. Nansen takes alcohol in any form will only be in the medicine cheit, or as fuel, and even on the subject of tobacco he has notions which may not be quite agreeable to his men. Everything, of course, will be subordinated to the maintenance of the members of the expedition in the greatest possible vigour and to the accomplishment of the great object in view. Arrangements will be made for utilising the engine for the production of the electric light; and in the winter, when the steamer will probably be laid up, the men themselves will take place of the engine.

A balloon will also be taken, and the gas required to work it will be taken in storage cylinders. Mr. Spurgeon died at the Hotel Beau Bivage, Mentone, on Sunday night. For many years Mr. Spurgeon's health was very bad, gout and rheumatism being his chief enemies.

He was first stricken by his fatal illness in the summer of last year, and for several weeks his condition was most critical. The greatest anxiety was manifested throughout the country as to Mr. Spurgeon's health. The Archbishop of Canterbury made personal enquiries, and the Queen and the Prince of Wales desired repeatedly to be informed of the progress of his illness. After a time Mr.

Spurgeon improved so much that it was possible to remove him to Mentone, and it was hoped that he was on the road to complete recovery. A serious relapse, however, set in some days ag The Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon was in his fifty-eighth year, having been horn at Kelvedon, in Essex, on June 15), 1884. He was the son of the Kov. John Spurgeon, who was formerly well-known as a preacher in a chapel in Upper Street, Islington.

Charles was early distinguished for his piety. An admiring biographer wrote in 1887 The pious precocity of the child soon attracted the attention of all around him. lie astonished the grave deacons and matrons who called on his grandfather on Sabbath evenings by the serious, intelligent questions he asked, and by the pertinent remarks he made." It is said on good authority," continues the biographer, that before he was sis years old he publicly reproved sinners in the street." A story, told by Mr. Spurgeon himself in a sermon preached in 1887 belongs to the same When I was a young child staying with my grandfather there came to preach in the village Knill, who had been a missionary at Sr. Petersburg and a mighty preacher of the Gospel.

Then, in the presence of them all, Mr. Knill took me on his knee and mil, 1 This child will one day preach the Gospel, and he will preach it to great multitudes. 1 am r-maded that he will preach it in the chapel of Rowland Hill, where (I think be said) I am now the He spoke very solemnly, and called upon all present to witness what he paid. Then he gave me Od. as a reward if I would learn the hymn, God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to 1 was made to promise that when I preached in Rowland Hill's Chapel that hymn il 11..

letter. Having I een at Colchester, he became at an early age usher in a school at Newmarket. He joined the Baptist Church at Cambridge which had been presided over by 11 Hall, and occasionally appeared in the pulpit. About this time lie became known as Toe Boy Preacher." When only seventeen years old he was invited to take a small Baptist chapel at Waterbeach, shire, lie accepted the invitation, and remained at Waterbeach two years, working with great diligence, and earning the good opinion of many. Called at the age of nineteen to the pastorate of the New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, Mr.

Spurgeon's preaching drew together such large congregations that the chapel had speedily to be enlarged, the worshippers meanwhile meeting in Exeter flail. At Exeter Hall Mr. Spurgeon became more than ever an object of attention and on returning to New Park reet Chapel, the enlarged building was found too small, and he had to engage the Surrey Music Hall. It was here that a panic occurred in 1850, through some one during the service calling out "Fire." As many as seven persons were crushed to death in the rush to get out of the building. Mr.

Spurgeon's followers having determined to 1 uild a suitable edifice for their services, the Metropolitan Tabernacle was erected at Newington Butts and opened in 18(51. Since that time Mr. Sp irgeon had continued his ministrations there, to the largest congregation ever seen, week after week an 1 year after year. The congregation generally numbered 0,000 persons, the number of communicants attending the Tabernacle being over In connection with the Tabernacle is a Pastors' College (founded in 1853) which has sent forth about a thousand preachers, and a very large number of colporteurs. There are also almshouses, schools, and the Stockwell Orphanage all of these institutions being the results of the untiring energy of Mr.

Spurgeon. In addition he carried on a society for mission work in North Africa. Mr. Spurgeon's jubilee was celebrated in 1884, a sum of being presented to him on that occasion. This money, together with some presented to him on the occasion of his silver wedding, was almost entirely distributed in charity, the greater portion being devoted to the endowment of the Tabernacle Almshouses.

Mr. Spurgeon's writings were very he had published a sermon weekly sinje 1855 Speeches at Home and Abroad," published in 1878, giving an admirable idea of the peculiar combination of humour and religious exaltation which made him a power in the land. Mr. Spurgeon was a staunch upholder of dogmatic theology; and in 1887, in consequence of the down grade attitude of Dr. Clifford and other prominent members of the Baptist Union, he withdrew from that body.

As recently as June last Mr. Spurgeon attached his signature to a confession of faith in which he avowed his belief in the verbal inspiration of Scripture and the doctrines of grace," including the hopeless perdition of all who reject the Saviour." Mr. Spurgeon was also an active politician, and in 1880 opposed Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals in some very trenchant letters. Sir Morel! Mackenzie died on Wednesday night at 10 o'clock, at his residence in Harley Street, of syncope following on influenza.

Ho was born at Leytonstone, Essex, in 18I -'7, and educated at the London Hospital Medical College, Paris, and Vienna. He founded the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat, Golden Square, 18(59 and in the same year obtained the Jacksouian Prize from the Royal College of Surgeons for his essay on Diseases of the Larynx." He was soon afterwards elected assistant-physician to the London Hospital, becoming in duo course full physician, and was appointed lecturer on diseases of the throat. He was a corresponding member of the Imperial Royal Society of Phys eians of Vienna, and of the Medical Society of Prague, and an Honorary Fellow of the American Laryngological Association, Sir Morell was the author of numerous publications on laryngological subjects, and in particular of a systematic treatise in two volumes on Diseases of the Throat, and Nose." He has also wiitten monographs on diphtheria and hay fever. Dr. Morell Mackenzie was in attendance on Frederick 111.

of Germany during his last illness, and was knighted in .1887. He published in 1888 The Fatal Illness of Frederick the Noble," which led to the severance of his connection with the College of Physicians at the close of that year. In 1885) he contributed to the Contemporary Review some essays entitled The Voice in Singing and Speaking." Mr. Nikola Tesla, the young but distinguished electrician from America, who is now in this country, lectured, by invitation, at trie Royal Institution on Wednesday night, before an extraordinary meeting of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Mr.

Tesla became known to fame in both hemispheres as the inventor of the first alternate- current electric is to say, a motor which' transforms currents, rapidly changing then- direction to and fro into mechanical power. In this apparatus the field magnets rotate, and, as there are neither brushes nor eommnlator, it requires very little attention. Mr. T'esla's remarkable experiments with alternate or see-saw currents of high that is to say "pressure high frequency, or, in other words, rapid changes of direction, are (The Times says) the most important advances which have been made in electrical science for a considerable time, and may be regarded as a new departure. While of a great theoretical interest, they also point to the possibility of a new mode of artificial illumination, which will bring us nearer to the ideal light of De Cyrano Bergerac, the French Lucian of the seventeenth century, who seems to have inspired our own Gulliver, and, perhaps, also The Coming Rice" of Bulwer a light resembling sunshine but without its heat.

The currents Mr. Tesla employs are derived from an alternating current dynamo of special device, carrying nearly 400 electro magnets, driven at some 2,000 revolutions per minute, and supplying an current alternating "20,000 times or more per second. When snch a current is passed through a bare wire it is seen to glow in the dark, and sheets of light are visible passing between two wires connected to tlie poles of the generator. From a metal point a i icM -d to one pole rises a bluish flame like that o. a or the Hare of gas jet burning at a high pressure; but there is no waste of i material, only the electric energy is consumed with the production of ozone.

Mr. Tesla connected a variety of vacuum tubes containing small discs of metal, and even nonconductors, such as aluminium, lime, or carbon to one pole of his generator and produced some very beautiful effects. In the midst of a luminous haze, due to the residual gas in the tube, the disc of solid matter became brightly incandescent and yielded a comparatively powerful light, which only requires to be intensified somewhat to be of practical use. The light became brighter when he brought his bare hand close to the bulb, ar- brighter still when he placed over the bulb an ordinary shade of metal. The most striking experiment shown, however, consisted in joining two sheets of tinfoil, one over the lecturer's head, the other on the table, to the poles of his generator.

The space between these two sheets immediately became electrified, and a long vacuum tube waved about in it, without attachment to any conductor whatever, glowed in the darkness like a Hammer sword. This experiment was intended to illustrate the possibility of rendering an entire room so electric, by plates in the ceiling or under the floor, that vacuum bulbs placed anywhere within it would yield a light. It is a remarkable fact that currents of these extremely high potentials appear to be absolutely without effect upon the human organism. Taking an iron bar in one hand and vacuum tube in the other the lecturer made his body a portion of the circuit by placing the point, of the bar upon a terminal, emitting sparks several inches long. The vacuum tube glowed brilliantly, while the lecturer remained wholly unaffected.

At the Birkbeck Institution on Wednesday evening Mr. Da Maurier, the popular artist, of Punch, delivered the lecture on social pictorial satire which he had been advertised to give at the London Institution a few weeks ago, but was then prevented from giving by illness. Mr. Du Maurier said he was introduced to John Leech by Charles Keene at a smoking concert in 1801. From that time he abandoned the profession of chemistry for which he had been destined, and gave himself up to art.

With all his admiration for 'ech, however, it was at Charles Keene's feet that he found himself seated. Leech was the most sympathetic and attractive personage, Mr. Du Maurier said, that he ever met. But no one would ever guess, from what Leech said or did, that he had made nation laugh for twenty-five years as it had never laughed before or since. The expression of his face was habitually sad, even when he smiled.

As to his power of commanding the affection of men, Thackeray and Millais had told him (Mr. Du Maurier) that they loved John Leech better iliim any man they had known. Mr. Du Maurier, in his sketch of Charles Keene, described him ay scorning frock coats, chimney-pot hats, and the prescribed attire of civilised society. He liked to light his own fire and cook his own chops thereon.

He smoked nothing but short black clay pipes. Mr. Du Maurier did not mention that Keene unearthed these pipes in his own garden at hey no Walk, where they had probably lain buried since the Stuart period. Keene loved music, but of all music he preferred the bagpipes, upon which instrument ho was a proficient performer. Last of all, Mr.

Du Maurier touched upon himself and the part that had been assigned to him with the pages of Punch. He did not shirk a reference to his own sufferings from a partial loss of sight) but explained how in drawing he is obliged to use darkened glasses with wire rims. He regretfully alluded to this fact as a sort of apologetic explanation that the domain of out-of-door sport was closed to him. To Miss Georgina Bowers and Mr. Corbould was handed over the duty of delineating hunting and riding men.

To himself was allotted the task of representing the little social and domestic dramas of the school-room, the dining- room, and the drawing-room. He had been directed not to be too wildly humorous, but to be the tenor or the tenorine of the stage, while Charles Keene had attended to the comic business. At the conclusion of the lecture some admirable reproductions of the best sketches of Leech, Keene, and Mr. Du Maurier were shown by the oxy-hydrogen light. In the Queen's Bench, on Monday, before iVlr.

Justice Denman and a special jury, the case of Nash v. AliKhan came on for hearing. The plaiii- tiff, Miss Florence Victoria Nash, an infant," suing by her next friend, claimed damages lor breach of promise of marriage against the defendant, a law student, son of an Indian prince. The defendant denied the promise and the breach. The plaintiff, in answer to Mr.

Winch, said she was seventeen years of age last March. She was introduced to defendant by a friend of his who was engaged to her sister..