THE GOLD BAR MAN

Auckland Star, Volume III, Issue 636, 25 January 1872, Page 3

THE GOLD BAR MAN

Loots Feenandez, one of the three Spaniards arrested the other day charged with victimising a saloonkeeper by borrowing six hundred dollars on a chunk of brass represented to be gold, was acquitted in the Court of Criminal Correction as no one could swear that the bar was not really gold. Yesterday Fernandez fell into the clutches of Judgo Cullen of the Police Court. He was arrested by a detective on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon (a pistol), and pleaded guilty. The detective gave him a bad name, and said he had the reputation abroad of having played the gold bar game successfully in other cicies. To add to his other offences, it was stated that he came from Chicago. Judge Cullen fined him 500 dollars, and gave him a stay of execution for five hours. Fernandez could talk nothing but French and Spanish, and he agreed to walk the latter in five hours. —From the St. Louis Democrat, November 18.

The following letter appears in the New York Herald :—" Sept. 3, 1871.—T0 the Editor.—Please insert the following in your paper, and oblige a reader : —Mr Snook would be conferring a great favor upon the public by having the tier over the dress circle in his theatre made waterproof, and so preclude the tobacco juice from dripping on the audience in the front seats of the dress circle."

The people of Eoss appear to have -somewhat singular ideas as to what constitutes Christmas sports. In the programme for Boxing Day appear the following interesting items :— Smoking match, one prize, Bl ; eating hot porridge, £1 ; grinning through a collar, £1. It is a great pity that the names of the successful competitors are not published for general information.

The Neio York Times says :—Three steamships, the Baltic, the City of Brooklyn, and the Wyoming, arrived at this port from Liverpool on the 24th of Sept., each, of which have the passage within nine days. Whether the passage will ever be made in a week or not it would be hazardous to predict; but certainly stranger things have happened." Other American papers have the following paragraph : —" It is asserted that when the European and North. American railway, from Bangor to St John, is completed, the ocean voyage to Europe can be made in five days."