ECHOES OF MELBOURNE.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 522, 15 July 1881, Page 3

ECHOES OF MELBOURNE.

[from our own correspondent.]

The community has been greatly shocked over the boy-murder in Ballarat, the first Btartling juvenile crime Australia has had to record, and fully equal to soir.ij of those unnatural events we read in the American papers, but it is some little consolation to find that the Hall boys were not state scholars. The father was repeatedly fined for not sending his children to school, but persevered in his course, and this Is the result. The circumstances of the case are so extraordinary and unparalelled that I vt ill be excused for attempting to give a clear statement of it, carefully collated from the evidence ultimately given. Newtown, the scene of the tragedy, is a decayed mining village near Scan>dale. Here lived Hall, a miner, who had two sons, James, aged fifteen, and William, aged ten. There is also a little Chinese settlement, one of the leading men being Wing Hock, who some time ago adopted a half-caste Chinese boy, the offspring of a dead friend. The Hall boys were wild and irregular, never going to school and being the plague ot the neighborhood. The little half-caste on the contrary was very intelligent, and was educated sufficiently to be able to translate Chinese into English and vice versa, and was a general favorite. He sometimes went with the Hall boys to play, birdnesting, shooting, etc.. On the day of the murder ho accompanied Willie Hall into the bush to shoot birds. What took place there we gather from the murderer's confession. At first he said that he had accidentaly shot the half-caste, and that then his brother James had come up, and as Tommy would not stop crying he (James) cut his throat and threw him into the waterhole, but sul-se-qucntly he gave the apparently correct,

version, and cleared his brother. According to his last version, he had shot a magpie which was hopping along with Tommy trying to catch it, when ho fired again, and shot Tommy in the leg. Tommy began to cry and Willie Hall then went home and told his sister, who came down and bandaged the half-caste's leg. But murder was all this time in Willie Hall's mind, tor he took back with him a table knife After his sister Sarah went away lie cut Tommy's throat. His brother James hearing what had happened went to the place and helped Willie to throw the corpse into the creek —this was about half past five in the evening—ami Willie alleges it was fear of punishment, the coming darkness, and the wish to hide the deed that made him commit the murder. Both boys stated that James said when he arrived, " May God strike me dead if I ever said, touched, or did anything to Tommy," and the use of such awful language at so early an age shows what boys they were. James Hall was discharged and William Henry Hall duly committed for murder, and he will be tried at Geelong on the 25th July. Of course he will not be hanged, but I think his father should in his place.

The Pans salon, now an institution of the past, had a great power in the political world, and in America the fair lobbyists arc said to dominate Congress. The idea in Australia is that the ladies have little power in politics, but such is not always the case. In Victoria at least the ladies have materially influenced our history. It was the refusal of Lady M'Culloch to receive Mr Service at her house that led to a breach between her husband and Mr Service, and gave Mr Berry his opportunity, and the present Ministry would have been driven out of power long ago, but for a huff on the part of Mrs Francis, who has not at all been satisfied with the subordinate position assigned to her husband by the Opposition. It was a woman, his wife, who drove 0. E. Jones, one of our cleverest men, to crooked paths, and out of the colony, and it is through his illicit connection with a light lady that one of our ablest men has to keep in the background. There is no misfortune or mischief that a woman is not at the bottom of it—yet we always hug our misfortune or rather its cause.

A new feature of the political struggle in this, that it is specially directed at the Age. That paper has bossed politics to such an extent that several gentlemen have resolved to see if a blow cannot be dealt at its tyranny, as was recently done in California, in which State the Gall, owing to taking up the Sandlot agitators and their new constitution, became so dictatorial that only a combination of parties has succeeded in bringing it to reason. The struggle is now between the politicians who have rebelled against the dominance of the hated journal. This is the first time in Australia that a struggle has been witnessed between a political party and the Frankenstein it has created, and the result will be of interest to all.

So the lively Frenchmen played a trick upon us. It turns out that M. Montmahorn, who was made so much of by our Education Minister and his department as Inspector General of Schools in France, ■was nothing of the kind; he was merely Inspector of the Department of the Seine! All this bother about a sub-inspector, verily the Major must feel keenly the way in which he was taken m. I always thought tho white-headed old gentleman in the French Educational Court was a bit of a humbug, and that he had come out here as much to represent Messrs Diderot and other booksellers as the French Republic. The last letter forwarded from Paris to Major Smith by M. Montmahon was the gushingest of the gushy, and thoroughly amusing.

Some of our blind beggars are wealthy men with landed property. One of them —he reads the Blind Bible in the streets to admiring country audiences in a voice which is a combination of Uriah Heap and Pecksniff—has three wives whose fights over him occasionally lead to Police Court cases, The factory lads had capital fun the other day during their lunch hour with a fat old blind man, who has been a prominent figure at a street corner for many years. His " missus" brought his dinner, boiled fowl if you please, and he got into <i great rage because she had not added cream sauce!

The Australian cockatoo has always been recognised as possessing more than ordinary intelligence and perception of humor. The following incident is thoroughly authenticated and shows these birds arc of exceptional mental power. Two neighbors at Ararat had each a cockatoo pet, of the common kind. It is difficult to tell ilio difference of sex in these birds, and the two families did not know of what sex their pets were. The birds occasionly " foregathered " when they went out with the children to play. Both birds wore missed at the same time and it was thought that tired of civilization they had resolved to return to the old wild life together. What was the astonishment of the owner of one of the birds when as she sat sewing in the kitchen one afternoon she heard a familar voice saying " Pretty Cocky," and turning round she saw her cockatoo marching in at the door, followed by two young cockics ; Madame Cockatoo responded to her mistress's endearments as of old and partook of the dainties offered her, carefully feeding the young ones, after which she climbed up the dresser, followed by the juveniles, and attained a roost on the mantelpiece between a china shepherd and shepherdess, where she had been accustomed to roost. The cockatoo chicks took it all as a matter

of course. Afterwards it was found the two birds had built in an old decayed tree half way between the two house , !, and how they had managed to elude observation when everyone was looking for them was a mystery. Mr Cocky returned to his home on the same day that his lady did to hers.

We are promised two novelities presently. The great violinst Professor Wilhelmj is on his way hither with a superior concert company. The professor is one of tbe greatest violinists in the world, the only rival of Merr Joachim. Of a different class, is Professor Denton,. the great scientific lecturer, who, encouraged by Proctor's success, will shortly be here. His forte is the world in prehistoric times, and in a series of lectures he deals with tha history of our planet since if; was a gaseous ball whirling through space. He is a firm believer in evolution and traces back man to the half bird half lizard pterodactyls, at the period the lizaids separated into reptiles and birds, and he specially holds that we are descended from some antediluvian frog. I have seen men who resemble frogs and therefore I look kindly on the professor's theory. He also holds spiritual views and looks upon life as one ot many progressive stages.

A friend who is now travelling in the States writes me that a system is in force on the railways which works admirably and which might be copied here. ..You give an order at any station to have a lunch basket at some station further on the line, containing whatever you please, and on arrival, the basket is handed into the carriage. There are six bills of fare and the uniform price is forty cents or Is Bd. J.

The Pirates of Penzanee have about finished their piracies, and Pinafore is to be produced. My predictions as to the run of the Pirates have been fulfilled ; there was no "go " in the opera or the performers. Mr Marshall is to open as a manager on his own account next October at the Old Princess' (the Salle de Valentino) with several London novelties. He has quite taken the public taste, otherwise theatrical matters are quiet, and socially there is little life, the Exhibition having left us exhausted.