secondly, what of those "long-lost arms"?
and how came they to be lost? The body of the Venus was formed of
two blocks, and the arms were afterward fastened upon the trunk. When
discovered, it was intact. M. Brest, the French consul, instantly
bought the Venus for five hundred dollars, while the Turkish
government on its part hurried off a small vessel to bring it away,
offering the owner of the farm fivefold the French price, or something
like two thousand five hundred dollars. A French _aviso_, sent by M.
de Riviere, the ambassador at Constantinople, arrived on the scene at
the very moment when the Turks had got possession of the statue, and
were embarking it on their vessel. A dispute arose at once, and in the
material as well as legal confusion the arms of the Venus, which had
been detached for safer transportation, were missed. The people of
the neighborhood got up a story that the arms were carried off by the
Turkish vessel out of chagrin and spite, but this seems to be mere
surmise where all else is clear.

* * * * *

The story of Demosthenes and the pebbles is familiar. Less familiar,
we venture to say, is the theory that declamation is sometimes the
cause of stammering; or, rather, that stuttering impels a man to
talkativeness, and the yielding to this tendency fixes the habit of
stammering and makes it worse. Hence it might plausibly be argued that
it is the rostrum, or the very emotion of speaking in public, which
makes some orators become stammerers. At all events, in Paris an
institution has been founded expressly to remedy stuttering; and M.
Chervin, its director, not long ago presented before a meeting of the
learned societies at the Sorbonne some interesting statistics on his
specialty. These statistics seem to show that stuttering is in direct
proportion with the habit of speaking, and that the more one speaks
the more one stutters. This is certainly an unexpected result of the
restoration of freedom of speech in France. M. Chervin mentions a
village of eighteen hundred souls where everybody, without exception,
undeniably stutters. What strange dialogues, says Jules Claretie (who
cites these points in _l'Independance Belge_), must take place there!
A very curious fact is, that stammering is less frequent in the north
of France than in the south. In the north-east it is least known, and
most in the south-east. For example, all things being equal, for six
stammerers in Par