Our Contributors.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 532, 19 August 1881, Page 3

Our Contributors.

ECHOES OF MBLBOtJKNB.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

August 2, 1881.

The last of the war vessels that were attracted to our port has departed. The Bacchante, having got her nidler thoroughly repaired, left on the 26th, and the Italian man-of-war, Europa, departed on the 28th. The bay looks quite deserted and it will be long e'er it wears the same appearance, or Melbourne appears like a naval port as it has for some time.

Mr Berry has spoken in public twice since the elections, but has been very quiet, mainly relying in his addresses upon the importance of keeping the Education Act intact and the necessity of preventing the aggregation of large •estates. The Age, more bold, has sounded the trumpet for a crusade against what it calls priestism and landlordism, the Catholic vote and the land monopoly. Should it come to a brush between the two great religious sections you will hear of warm times in Victoria.

Dixon's gas is now patented aud the shares have doubled in value. The principle of the gas seems simple encngh. Astronomers and spectros•copists know that the metals in the sun exist in the form of gases and being in a right proportion their combustion produces a white light and intense heat. Mr Dixon only imitates what is going on in the sun on a smaller scale, using kerosene as a medium. He builds greatly on the heating power of the gas. The value of the company's shares is now about £200,000, To show how equally divided the electors of Victoria are, I may mention that at the Ministerial elections 4902 electors voted for the Ministry and 4620 against, the majority for the Minißty being only 279, Mrs Henderson has been adjudged the stores of the Ferret, and whatever money remained after a judgment against Henderson that had just come out from England had been satisfied. She will not get much. The prisoners at Pentridge are much rejoiced to see the " swell" fellows degraded. A variety of the arrowroot plant (Canna edulis) is allocated at the Aboriginal station, Ramonguck, Gippsland, and capital arrowroot made which is sold in Melbourne at Is per packet. It can be made just as potato flour or starch is made.

William Henry Hall and James Hall, aged ten and fourteen years respectfully, were tried at the Geelong Assizes for the murder of tbe halfcaste Chinese boy, Tommy Wing Hock, aged five, and found not gu lty, on the ground that they were incapable of comprehending the crime, that is, that they had not a guilty knowledge. The boy William was so small that he had to be placed on a stool so that he would be raised above the railing of the dock ; and during the trial he was playing, laughing, blowing through his handß and amusing himself generally. There was, said the Judge, "apparently no conception on the part of this young savage as to what the proceedings had been about. The parts of the evidence brought forward at the trial which would move responsible beings comprehending their nature seemed to have no influence on this child, and he appeared to regard his elder brother, when at times he showed some little emotion, as a perfect curiosity," Comment on the judge's words is superfluous.

A young man named O'Connell, manager tor Parer Brothers, has been sentenced to six.months and the lash for a grave offence. He was in a good position and greatly respected, and the community has been much surprised Is crime after all a mania 1 I believe it is. If we give way to a certain passion the portion of the brain that produces it becomes abnormal and overpowers the reasoning faculties. The moral is, let us keep each passion in subjection and maintain the balance.

I have heard only one amusing thing in connection with the late elections. Some enthusiastic Gaunsonite Natives chalked, " Vote for the Native " on the flags. A little girl of six who had conceived nn enmity to the " Australian statesman," and taking a bit ot chalk she made the sentence read thus: "Vote for the Native Cat."

The diamond drill has found another reef at Stawell, at a depth of 1778 ft. These drills are working a revolution in Victorian mining.

A fine handsome young fellow has become a hermit at Mount Cole, near Ararat, cutting a cave for himself out of the soft sandstone. In answer to a visitor he said he had been living there for months, and liked it better than living in an. hotel at Carlton, which he Had been doing prior to taking up his residence in the cave. He buys flour etc., but when he wants meat he kills a kangaroo or opossum. Fearing a lonely life may imperil his reason, the police are bunting up his brother who lives in Sandhurst. Mr Pirani, the professor of languages at the University, who was staying at the George Hotel, St Kilda, having his honeymoon, was thrown oft his horse and seriously injured. It is doubtful if he will recover. Professor Denton's lectures are well attended, especially by the Spiritualists of the city. His lectures work ap to a point, that point being an endless progression towards the perfection of the human race, in this and the next world.

The great violinist Wilhelmj has appeared at the Town Hall, and been

hailed with rapture. I have heard Miska Hauser and oth-rs, but ho far oVrtops them. The technical difficulties are nothing to him, and the tone he evolves from the instrument is pure beyond conception. He produces effects on the G. string that others could not obtain from the four. He is a very handsome man of 86, somewhat in face like the late Walter Montgomery or the poet Goethe.

A painfully plain young lady of select Melbourne society, but of a tendency in her aspirates—says she " doesn't object to being Mg\y, so long as the Bacchante officers are hug-iy inclined." An American editor thus retorts upon v would be critic : —" We are sorry you don't like our paper. We publish it simply to please you. We should ask you to come to the office and edit it, only, if wo did, some iniquitous idiot might write and tell you how much better he could do it himself, and that would annoy a nervous person like you."" As Barnum, tlie showman, was selecting a turkey before Christmas, the owner drew special attention to a largo fat gobber. Suspecting that it was an antideluvian, Bam urn said "What do you sell that old gentleman for?" With an air of triumph the owner replied : I sell him for a profit l" v A prophet! Oh I supposed he was a patriarch 1"

There is a comic as well as a pathetic side of the Mormon polygamy. Among the Morman woman in Utah was one who accepted in full faith the polygamic revelation. She had found in polygamy an ample compensation in the supposed right of the first wife to choose her husband's succeeding wives. This was her argument: "If the first wire selects tho other wives, it has the effect of showing them that the husband thinks much of her judgment, and is willing to abide by it, and they will have to do the same. This is, of course, as it should be. But if she lets her husband choose his own wife, he is almost certain to t-ike a fancy to some one whom the first wife does not like at all, and consequently her authority is undermined. The first wife ought to have all the power in her own hands." The sequel of this lady's story is extremly ludicrous. After she had chosen two other other wives for her husband, he was so perverse as to choose a fourth for himself, the fourth being not at all to her liking, as she herself admitted. This is her account of the matter :—'•' I tell you,' said I, ' I am quite disgusted with you ; a man with three wives—and me one of them—to go talking twaddle to a clattering hussy like that with her cat's eyes and red hair !' * Golden Imir, my dear,' he said ; • Charlotte's hair is golded.' . • I say red ! It's straight, stairing red—as red as red can be,' I tod him ; and then we had a regular fight over it. I don't mean that we came to blows, but we had some hot words, and ho went out and left us two alone. Then that hussy was impudent, and I don't don't know how it was, but somehow when we left off our conversation I found some of Charlotte's red hair between my fingers, and there," she said innocently, holding out quite a goodsized tuft of auburn hair, "there I put it to yon, Sister Stenhouse. is that red or is it not?"