M. Randal Roberts

“ Apparently with a view of putting an end to the fiction that women cannot shop as expeditiously as men, a well-known lady novelist undertook lately to drive through Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, stop at every milliner’s shop on the route, buy some small articles at each, and return to her house in Bayswater in the space of an hour and a half, the receipt for each article purchased to be produced, not necessarily for filing, but as a guarantee of good faith. ”

“ As a complete survey of the whole of the bottom of the ocean would be a work of at least a hundred years, it may safely be predicted that no reader of Cassell’s Magazine will be alive when submarine boats steered by the mechanism suggested by this ingenious Frenchman are recognised as practical implements of naval warfare.
Any powerful explosive is dear to the heart of the war crank. Occasionally he busies himself in trying to evolve some new explosive which shall be about a thousand times more powerful than any of the existing ones ”

“ Cue match, had a great fancy for similar experiments. It is on record that when he met a very inferior player he would abjure the cue altogether and play with his nose.
At first sight the bicycle does not appear to lend itself readily to any abnormal competition. Races, of course, between one-armed and one-legged cyclists are fairly common, but otherwise it is difficult to see how even the most inventive genius could evolve anything really startling in the way of a cycling contest. ”

“ However, theory and practice in the steering of torpedoes, as in other matters, do not always square. It is not east to describe on paper the true inwardness of this invention, but, put briefly, its distinctive feature is the transmitting of motor-power to a torpedo by means of X-rays. The course of an ordinary torpedo can, as everyone knows, be directed by telegraph wires from either the shore or a ship. But the Orling torpedo can be completely controlled without any material connection whatever between it and its controller. ”

“ As lawn tennis players are not nearly such a serious minded race as golfers, it is only to be expected that lawn tennis should suffer where even golf cannot escape. The writer remembers seeing some ten years ago a weird contest between a most distinguished Irish lawn tennis player and an opponent to whom under ordinary circumstances he could give enormous odds. ”

“ Scientists have the reputation of being the most mild-mannered of men, yet the amount of ingenuity that has been expended by scientific men of every nation under the sun in devising implements for dealing death wholesale in time of war is almost past belief. ”

“ T the beginning of last year an account was published in one of the sporting papers of a football match on bicycles which took place near Wolverhampton. The attempt to revolutionise our great winter game completely failed owing to its many inherent impossibilities, but it was interesting as showing a tendency of certain orders of mind. There has always been a large number of so-called sportsmen who are never content with recognised forms of sport. They are perpetually on the look-out for some bizarre contest. ”

“ This horrible invention, if it ever passes into the region of practical politics, might prove a popular weapon in the hand of Anarchists, but for the damning fact that its use involves the destruction of the man in charge of the balloon as well as his victims. ”

“ They cannot be fired with powder from an ordinary gun with any degree of safety, because the shock to the explosive is so violent that as a rule the dynamite goes off before it is clear of the gun, with disastrous results to everyone and everything surrounding it. ”

“ Passing a wheelwright’s shop one day, he noticed one of the workmen trundling a big wheel into the yard. The man was running at a good pace, and it immediately occurred to “Old Q” that here was an opportunity for, in the words of the modern penny weekly, an absolutely novel competition. After some conversation with the wheelwright he learned that a man could probably run faster with a wheel than without one, the wheel no doubt acting as a sort of pacemaker. Having obtained this valuable piece of information, the duke
LAWN TENNIS: MOUNTED v. ”

“ Certain politicians in this country are continually advocating public granaries for the storage of Wheat in case of our ports being blockaded. Doctor Cantle also urged the necessity for public storehouses, but these storehouses were not to contain wheat, but microbes. In time of war sundry air-tight vessels containing a carefully selected assortment of the most deadly microbes known to the faculty were to be conveyed in balloons to the neighbourhood of the enemy ”

“ To the mere male mind there does not appear anything particularly startling about such a feat, but as among the circle of the lady’s friends her performance was regarded as an epoch-making event, the writer considers it his duty to duly record it in an article dealing with extraordinary contests. ”

“ To the mere man in the street the feats which Axel Orling claims for his torpedoes savours strongly of legerdemain, but scientific men declare that the theory of the working of this novel machine is perfectly sound. ”

“ LOADED.
cock who was much too speedy for his sisters. No competition can continue to exist when victory is always a certainty for the same competitor, and thus it was Sir John Astley’s great chicken race came to an end. ”

“ Let us go out and kill something,” is defective in one important particular. It is not nearly comprehensive enough. The instinct of destruction is no more a peculiarly British characteristic than is the desire to eat and drink. ”