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Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 221, 3 February 1874, Page 7

A Kapler contemporary learns that there are about 50 men employed on the railway works between Napier and Pakipald. This number gives about three to a mile, so no surprise need be felt at the delay in the completion of the line. There is a 'story told of a traveller who, riding across the Kuramu some months ago, and noticing one man using a spade in the middle of the plain, asked him what he was doing. The man replied, “Oh ! this is the railway. I have got a contract.” The traveller naturally remarked that it would be some time before the. railway would he finished, when the man, in tones of injured innocence, informed him that there was another fellow, working'about ; two miles off. At the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s death, ty/o chapters of his unfinished “ Dollivsr Romance” had appeared in the AthxnHr, . Monthly , the third chapter having been left in manuscript in possession of bis daughter, Una Hawthorne. His collected writings were some time ago announced for publication, and the projected volume is intended to include the unfinished romance. An untoward incident, however, has interposed delay. Up to the present time no one lias succeeded in deciphering the manuscript, which still remains a puzzle. Mrs Hawthorne was most skilful in deciphering her husband’s singular chirography—indeed to her patient labour, it is said, the world owes the conservation of “ Septimus Felton,” one of Hawthorne’s best productions-, which had for its main idea the secret of living for ever—but sure her death no one has been found equal to the task ; Miss Hawthorne, by whom the work has-been undertaken, having hitherto only partially succeeded.