ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 353, 5 December 1879, Page 3

ONE THING AND ANOTHER.

(Collated from our Exchanges.) The truth of the great poet's words that *" there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy," seems to be every day more fully illustratexL -Many here have read with bewildered zsurprise the account in Saturday's *■- issue of the seance with Professor Bald will at tlje.Great Northern Hotel, on Friday

last. A seance almost as bewildering to

the senses, tcok place here a few evenings _5 ago, when a party of four gentlemen, and " three ladies met, and amongst them a little child-about eight years old, a dawghter of a lady and gentleman present. For certain reasons I am'requested to withhold names, and the questions and replies given. A planchet was placed upon the table through •which a-pointed, pencil was stuck, the point of which just coming in contact with a sheet of.-paper placed-flat upon the table. One after .the other eaih .lady and gentleman in 'vihe room placed "their fingers.in the usual * ; ay upon the upper end of the pencil ; but no response was elicited to the- question given, till the child placed her fingers on the planchet ; when to the question asked, the planchet was seen to move along the suface of the paper, and the point of tbe pencil was distinctly heard writing, it stopped, ahd upon theplanchet being-lifted, a reply to the.questioh asked, was plainly written upon the paper. Several other questions were asked, and replied to in a manner completely bewildering the party who, like the gentlemen of Friday last, went in unbelievers and came away bewildered. I may mention that the little lady above referred'to, bad never attended a . seance previously, and it cannot be supgpsed for a moment, that a child of her tender age could have, .by any trickery, written the replies so direct to the questions asked. Whether those singular manifestations are produced by human agency, or, ate, as some assert, communications from the spirjt world, I leave for others more versed in thephenoniena than" myself -to. decide ; yet alLmustadmit that such things are " most passing strange."— Northern

juminary. A pretty bit of romance is said to hang ound a Japanese lady who is now an inlate.in the -Dover workhouse. She was licked up in Canterbury walking helppesly about bewildered, and unable to comiunicate >vith anybody, for she could not two or three words of English. She /as iconveyed to the workhouse there, ffiated with the utmost kindness, and subequently senf on to Dover, in the hope" hat some consul of her nationality would ake ;up her case. How it has been obained is not explained, but her story is strange one. She is said to belong to a igh Japanese family, a family of wealth nd prominent position. Her father, when c died, left all his wealth to the mother f,tbis young,lady and to the young lady erseif.. The mother soon after died, and ben a cruel cousin seized the young lady nd her wealth as well, shipping her off to Ingland. She was landed at Huli, then fjnveyeci to .London, where she was set drift, and thence she wandered as far as lanterbury.2 - : Tbe Japanese authorities avf been -consulted on.the matter, and it i t<s be hoped they will probe the business bottom, proving whether the story i fact or fiction. As' he stands, it seems cry dubious. " Administering lead through a tube " is •bat the papers call it in' Michigan when ne person shoots another. No matter how bad and destructive a oy may be, he never becomes So degraded r loses, his self-respect sufficiently to irow rnutl.cn-a'c-ircus poster.

' If, as is said, happiness consists in occupation of .the mind,' the average -editor (says an American exchange) fhould be moderately content. With two men sitting on his table read ing .exchanges while he is trying to write a leader, a book'agent whispering in his ear that he'll'never get such a change again because there- wasn't but one made, a boy or two hanging round' the outskirts with a base ball item con--coaled about thfii pcisons, a compositor waiting away for a translation of some awful chiorogrnphj*, a couple of patrons pressing him for. a seven-dollar puff for a dollar and a quarter advertisement, and a ferocious 1 poking individual .sitting j ust put-side-the'door'with a heavy weightcanei and a crumpled copy of the paper in his hand, waiting for a '.' chance, to seehim alone," the newspaperman may be said to be just in the suburbs of occupation and threatening to be quite busy in time.

It. takes, a great deal to squelch a news-, paper reporter,'but'the' way how has been found out in.-Wellington. Miss Fiddler is giving lessons in cookerj* therer. and the Post thus yarns.over the "intensity of the situation " in which the pencilists found themselves :--•' A table had been placed for the ' gentlemen of the Press ' in front of the platform; and in full range of "200' female eyes of every degree of penetration. It was too much. Fearless as the unhappy reporters usually are in the discharge of their functions, their well-known modesty in this instance. got the. better of their rigid attention to, duty, and they shrinkingly returned to tbe rear of the imposing array of female loyliness and ' took their notes in a furtive and fear-stricken manner, which ought to .have melted the heart of every female beholder." ■■■':-. : .:■ :'.■■ '■■■■' :*..i/. ."<■''

THE CELEBRATED AND FAST