ECHOES OF MELBOURNE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 512, 10 June 1881, Page 2

ECHOES OF MELBOURNE.

(From our Own Correspondent)

The Sunday train question nearly burst up the Ministry. Messrs Vale and Richardson, who belong to %he unco' quid—-the latter preaches In Parliament three days a week and the Methodist Chapel, Creswick, on Sundays—threatened to resign if the Commissioner of Hallways was allowed his own way, and so Mr" Berry had to sit on Mr Patterson. That gentleman does

not relish this treatment, and it is not unlikely he will secede. I understand that in our Exhibition Office in London there was an officer who was set down as " engineer to the catalogue," with a salary of £800 a year. Whit he has done except to " engineer" his salary no one knows. Of course he was a relative of the great George Collins Levey. We pay our census clerks 3s per 100 schedules. The average wages they make is £4 10s per week, or 500 schedules per day, but some do 1200, and earn £10 16s a week. They* have passed a Cuifew Bill in 'Frisco, which enables the police to clear the hoodlums out of the streets at m'ne o'clock. We have serious thoughts of passing a similar law here, so as to prevent our youth being contaminated by standing at street corners. The wags tell a couple of good stories about our Jews. They may merely be old stories adapted, but not having seen or hoard them before, I think I can give them. Two Jews entered a fashionable Collins street restaurant and indulged in a tremendous feed. The smiles into which their faces had relaxed after enjoying the good things of the world vanished when they had to pay 4s apiece for their entertainment. When they came out Moses said to Abraham, " Vat a shvindel, Habraham, to sharsh us four bob heach ; the Lord vill surely punish him." " The Lord has already punished him, Moshesh," replied Abraham, who did not look so lugubrious, " for I took away six of his best spoons mit me." A Jew made his appearance in a country town, and haunted the telegraph office, asking if there was a telegram for him. On the third day the postmaster handed him the desired document, and on receiving it the Jew gave three skips and cried out, " I am so glad ; now I know my shop is burned down." He wasn't so cheerful three months afterwards, whsn the insurance company sent him to gaol on the postmaster's testimony. 1

The Lamont will case is now in full swing, and the disclosures certainly show a strange state of society. According to ths rebutting affidavits of Mr M'George and Mrs Jackson, to whom Lamont left the bulk of his property, the career of the latter has been an extraordinary one. She came to these colonies in delicate health with a little money. When she spent this she was in Melbourne in a weak state of health. It was here that Mr James Smith, who was then crazed about reincarnation., saw her, and discovered she was possessed of special powers. He got a society together to support her, and called it the Magnetic Circle. Mrs Jackson at this stage married a commercial traveller named Jackson, but owing to her delicate health they never occupied the relation of husband and wile, and in about two years separated. Jackson, however, remains her steadfast friend, aud swears that dames Smith offered him a certain sum of money to " stand m " with the plaintiffs. After a while Mrs Jackson's admirers took a house for her in Flinders street, and allowed her 25s a week for her ministrations. According to herself she made no pretence to spiritualism, but there was in her some influence which she could not explain, and for which she could not account, which " drew out" those who were in her company, and made them better and happier. It was in Flinders street that M'George made her acquaintance. He was then an employe at the Observatory, and his kindness and attention restored her to a kind of health. At one time she was thought dead, so low was her vitality. Mr Lamont appeared upon the scene, and so impressed was he with Mrs Jackson and Mr M< George, that he came to live with them, and eventually he was so taken with the two that he got M* George to leave the Observatory, and settled an income on himself and Mrs Jackson, who has since passed as Mrs M'George. 'Tis a strange history. The music palaces of Collins street are a feature of Melbourne. In their saloons and in front you can every day see the leading lights of the musical and operatic world, Here the dilettanti lounge in the afternoon between three and four, the ladies vicing in dress with the proudest dames of the city. (