Page 2 Advertisements Column 4

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 97, 8 May 1880, Page 2

The Education Question. —The Boston Sunday Herald thus forciby expresses thoj principle which ought to settle the scl 00l question for ever :—“ What the State needs is good citizens, and not good Congregationalists, Methodists, Catholics, Unitarians, Baptists, Presbyterians, Spiritualists, Jews, Mahoramedans. But there is one error which many worthy people fall into ; namely, that this is a Protestant Government. It is nothing of the S'irt. It is purely secular and one religion is as free as the other. In this respect, we would have the public schools like the Government. A Child’s Face Gnawed by a Rax. —A {singular accident happened to the child of a respectable resident in Grey street last week. The child was about two years of age, and had been punished before being put to bed. Shortly after it had been put to bed the mother heard it crying, but paid no attention, believing it to be the result of the slapping. It cried further on in the night, but the mother did not notice anything wrong till morning, when she saw that the child’s face had been bitten by a rat, also three of its fingers gnawed at, and the child is likely to lose one of them. The little child, it appears, had a piece of bread and butter in its hand when it was put to bed, and probably that attracted the rat. There have been several instances in Auckland of rats having thus bitten infants, and in one case in Hobson street, the chiid lost so much blood that its life was for some time despaired of, — Auckland Herald, %