Curiosities

It is the custom in Jamaica to invite some great man to preside over wedding celebrations. The great man begins by telling a long story about a beautiful princess who refused all who sought her hand out of greed for her money; and the great man pauses between one sentence and the next, and during these pauses the guests present him with money. He ends the story when he has finished taking possession of whatever money the guests have with them... And at the end of the celebration he undertakes to present the money to the bride as a gift on the occasion of her wedding, whereupon she in turn offers him a glass of drink!

• The largest city in the British Empire is London, and after it comes Calcutta.

• Goethe, the great German poet, says that the woman who made of him a great man of far-flung fame was Charlotte Ive: she taught him what love is when she forsook him at the outset of his life, and preferred to him his friend Kestner, who always looked at life with a realistic eye stripped of imagination!

• Japanese guards forbid dogs to enter the island of Shiro, which foreigners have named the island of the safe cats.