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Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 61, 16 February 1877, Page 2

The Mutual Improvement Association met in the new school-room on Tuesday last, when Mr. Andrews read a paper on Disraeli and Gladstone, lavishing high praise on the former. An interesting discussion ensued, in which several members took part. The next subject will be a debate on " the Justifiableness of Rebellion." Mr. Hughes to take the positive side, and Mr. Nicholls the negative. This promises to be a lively meeting, and it is hoped all members will be present. Much inconvenience was caused owing to the Secretary's absence, he also having neglected to notify the same, or forward his books. It is hoped this will not happen again. At a meeting of the Springston School Committee, Mr. May was unanimously elected out of 14 candidates, to be master of the Government School. We beg to direct attention to Messrs. Bridge and Bushell'a sale of furniture and effects, advertised to be held at Mr. Jas. Bell's residence to-morrow. The launch " Pioneer " will leave Akaroa at 10 a.m., returning in the evening. At a meeting of the County Council yesterday, the debate on the adoption of the Act was resumed, and further adjourned till Thursday, the 22nd March. Owing to pressure of matter, we are compelled to hold over till our next issue an address of Mr. G. R. Joblin to the electors of the Borough of Akaroa. Mr. Newell Phillips, who had evidently been fraternising a little too long with his friends at the " Club," gave his entertainment (sic), intituled an " Evening at the Garrick Club," on Tuesday evening last. The state in which the lecturer presented himself was anything but complimentary to the audience, it being with the greetest difficulty that he maintained his equilibrium, and his efforts to pourtray the several characters he attempted to impersonate were ludicrous in the extreme. The major part of the audience retired in disgust, with elongated countenances. Our advice to Mr. Phillips is, that when he next attempts an Evening at the Garrick Club, to meet his audience with a clear intellect. Commodore Hoskins, .in a report to the Governor of Victoria, suggests for the defence of Port Phillip, a well devised system of torpedoes. Victoria is about to have a new turret-ship, to carry 25 guns, besides the Cerberus, and both are to be provided with the deadly Whitehead torpedo. The following characteristic anecdote of the late Mr. Ireland is told by vEgles : " I had an instance of Mr. Ireland's determination to win his cause anj-how, given me the other day. He had a bad case, and he knew it. Counsel on the other side (I believe Mr. J. D. Wood) was arguing a law point, and stated his recollection of a case on all fours with that now before his Honour, but he admitted he couldn't say where the case was reported, although he had been looking for it in the Supreme Court library. During- the argument Mr. Ireland looked from bench to bar with pleasant impassiveness. He won, of course, and then he let the cat out of the bag. No wonder you couldn't find that case. I was sitting on the book it is in. Dropped on it by chance this morning. Knew it would.settle me if you got hold of it. So I just kept it out of your way." The other side urged that this was not quite fair, but Mr. Ireland admitted that that view of the matter had never occurred to him." There is some talk of getting together an Australian team to send to England to try conclusions with English cricketers.

There has been a curious capture made of a man who has been running wild about the Teviot ranges in Otago for over twelve months, and lives chiefly, if not entirely on rabbits. When taken his only clothing consisted of two old gunny bags, and his beard and hair had grown to an immense length. It appears that he considers himself as the monarch of the universe. He lost like many others, large sums on the Thames diggings. The National Bank of New Zealand directors evidently intend carrying out the threat made at the last half-yearly meeting held in London, by the chairman, in which he referred to the heavy expenses incurred in opening new branches, and the determination of the Board of Directors to cut down expenses ot each office to £200 per year, and shut up some of their offices, as too many had been opened. In the flourishing and large district of Waikato the branch of the National Bank will be closed at the end of this month. A late private telegram from Dunedin in a contemporary states. —" You are under a wrong impression in supposing the Superintendent has given up possession. No apparent change has occurred, except that His Honour does not attend his office as before, but letters now -come to the Superintendent as formerly, which he sends to Wellington, and not to George M'Lean. You will also observe this particularly : he has not given up possession of anything : nor was he asked ; he holds the keys of his own offices, has the minute book and other documents of the Executive, and also the safe and its key, containing all the Crown grants and deeds of properties vested in the Superintendent, and which he will not give up without a struggle. If onions are sliced and kept in a sick room they will absorb all the atmospheric poison. They should be changed every hour. In the room of a small-pox patient they blister and decompose very rapidly, but will prevent the spread of the disease. Their application has also proved effectual in the case of snake bites. Two little children, aged respectively two and four years, reduced to skeletons for want of proper nourishment, were brought before Mr. Watt, at the Dunedin Police Court, on the 12th instant. A heartrending story was told by the stepmother, who said her husband was in the Hospital, and she only received 17s. a week, 7s. of which were absorbed in the payment of the rent of the tumbledown tenement she occupied, and the rest had to maintain herself and five children. The house was destitute of the barest comforts and furniture, the little ones at night having only an old coat or bit of torn blanket thrown over them, while none of them ever had a full meal. She was then compelled to apply to the police for assistance, and they were brought up under the Neglected and Criminal Children's Act. The Resident Magistrate held that the Act did not apply, as the children were not wandering, and so the poor little waifs were sent back to starve. The Hon. Mr. Fox has been lecturing on the American Centennial at Marton, and in the course of his lecture said—One of the simplest, yet at the same time most remarkable and attractive feature of the Exhibition, was what was termed the " Butter Head." It was nothing more than the representation, by a lady, of the human head in a butter mould. Yet this head was so exquisitely beautiful that it formed one of the chief attractions of the exhibition, and some half-dozen policemen had to be placed on duty because of the immense crowds which were continually congregated in the vicinity of the butter head. It was a difficulty at first to know how to keep the butter fresh, but the Yankees were equal to the emergency, and improvised something that kept the butter fresh for months. A correspondent of the Lake Wakatip Mail states that a strange circumstance took place at the Shotover Branches about a fortnight ago. It appeared to observers as if two large clouds were coming together—one from the east and the other from the west—until they came over the Right Hand Branch, where a man named Dwill has a payable claim. Just before the clouds met, there was a heavy hail shower, which left the ground covered six inches deep with hailstones as large as marbles; then followed a shock like an earthquake, and the rain came straight down like a waterspout tearing away the hill for a mile round, leaving the bed of the river filled up with rocks and earth 20ft high, and backing the water for half a mile so that the place could not be recognised by those who had seen it before.

A ludicrous incident is reported by the Bristol Post to have occurred during Mr. and Mrs. Bardmann's performance as " Hamlet" at the new Theatre Royal. An elderly gentleman who had taken a seat in the dress circle, remained a quiet spectator of the piece until the closing scene in Avhich Hamlet stabs Polonius. Seeing the sword of the prince plunged through the erras, and the hody of the aged courtier fall seemingly dead upon the stage, he jumped up in a state of evident trepidation and exclaiming, " It is most disgraceful that all these can sit quietly here and see an aged person deliberately murdered," rushed out of the circle. The box-keeper endeavoured to calm his fears, and to explain to him that it was all a dramatic illusion, but he refused to be convinced, and bounced out of the house. i

Chief-Justice Whiteside, of the Irish Court of Queen's Bench, died at Brighton on November 25th, aged 70. He had been ailing for some months past, but his death at the last was so sudden that it gave his friends and admirers a painful shock. It was caused by heart disease. The deceased was a native of the County ■ Wicklow, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He made a great reputation for himself at the Irish Bar, and was. engaged to defend O'Connell in 1843, and Smith O'Brien and his fellow-conspirators in 1848. In 1862 he still further increased his fame by his splendid speech on behalf of Theresa Longworth, in the celebrated Yelverton case. He held various political appointments under Conservative Governments until 1865, when he was appointed to the office he held at the time of his death. He was also author of three books on Italian, and two on Irish subjects His death is looked upon in Ireland as a national loss, and his funeral, which took place on December 2nd, was one of the largest ever witnessed in Dublin, being nearly two miles long. The carriages which followed the hearse numbered close upon 300, and their occupants included all the most influential men in Dublin, from the Lord Lieutenant downwards. The body was interred in Mount Jerome Cemetery The rabbit nuisance in Otago still maintains its serious proportions. The other day 16,000 skins were sent by waggon, from Galloway Station, Manuherikia. Thirty-seven bales of skins are now lying at Castle Rock Station, Southland, where over 130,000 rabbits have been killed during the past year. The following amusing advertisement has been posted over entrance to the South Melbourne Bathing Company's baths :— ! "£IOO Reward.—The above reward will be given to any man under 14 stone, who j will successfully drown himself in the presence of the South Melbourne Club. Hot blankets and other means of resuscitation will be supplied to competitors if necessary. Lately in England a jury was summoned to decide as to the cause of death of Augusta Williams, aged two months, who was suffocated by being overlain. For the convenience of Mr Corner Garten and to save the country expense, the mother was compelled to carry her dead baby in its coffin to the tavern where the Coroner's Court sat, a distance of half-a-mile, for the purpose of showing it to the jury, after which she had to carry her burden back again It is not generally known that a small quantity of scraped horse radish put into milk will keep it from turning sour. An exchange says :—Cheese-making at the Taicri, Otago, is being carried on so extensively as to drive the Canterbury produce out of the Dunedin market. The Hon. Win. Fox, the other day made the estounding statement that in England there were no less than 1,400 towns where there were no public-houses. The Taranaki Budget says :—Amongst the passengers outwards by the s.s. Wellington were a couple of natives, brother and sister, who entered themselves in the passenger list as Napoleon and the Princess Eugene Napoleon. Some little while ago two gentlemen advertised in the Waitangi Tribune for wives. In response to this the following advertisement appeared in the Tribune of the 24 ult. :—" Matrimonial.—lf the two gentlemen who advertised for partners for life feel capable of leaving their mammas, two ladies from the country will meet them in the Commercial Room of the Club Hotel this afternoon, at three o'clock.' We should imagine the two young gentlemen are likely to accept the invitation. The Picton hangman came over to Wellington in the Hinemoa on Thursday to escape the revilings of tha local populace. The arrival of the distinguished visitor had somehow or other leaked out, and as he passed along the wharf he was the observed of all observers. He was, however, little disconcerted, and made himself quite at home in a well-known public house. Afterwards it seems, this notability experienced several pricks of conscience and molzified his feelings in beer. He became restless, wandered to and fro and up and down, and finally was discovered in Cuba-street, helplessly drunk, between one and two o'clock this morning. In the lock-up he made no secret of the resclt of the meeting between himself and Woodgate and produced a bundle of notes which, he said, was the reward of his handicraft.—Argus, 27 January.

The New Plymouth Budget appeared for the last time 31st January. Mr. Kenworthy, the proprietor, in his farewell article comments on the depression which has been the cause of his suspending its publication, and says : —"The place is progressing crab-fashion; it is going backwards. Our advertising columns may be taken as an example of what is happening to this district. The proprietor, not being satisfied with a miserable existence, and to prevent serious money losses, has decided to clear out." He says : " The Budget started suddenly, it subsides similarly ;" and concludes with the remark, " the place is not sufficiently advanced to support a daily paper." Three columns of the paper are vacant except the words " Signs of the times," and at the foot of the last column' is the word " Finish," in words an inch deep.