Local and General.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1008, 12 August 1881, Page 2

Local and General.

Alexandra will in future be known as “Alexandra South.”

The Electoral Registrar’s fees at Wakatipn, Dunstan, atd Mount Ida have been reduced to £2O.

We learn that the ticket which drew Iroquois in Cameron’s consultation on the English Derby is in the possession of a well-known storekeeper resident at St. Bathans,

Mr Fache directs us to notify the sale by auction of the freehold farm and stacks of produce, at Spottis Hundred, to-morrow (Saturday), the 13th inst., on account of MrM. Barry. The sale by auction on Wednesday next, at Bald Hill Flat, of mining property, in the estate of Mr P. McDonald, deceased, is worthy the attention of those engaged in mining.

Mr Stuart, of Victoria Hotel, Cromwell. has made some substantial additions and improvements to his hostelry lately. May his enterprise meet with the success it deserves!

So continuous has been the exertions of the Manager of the Ardgour Station to eradicate the rabbits off the Dunstan Range, that where hundreds could be daily seen once, only a dozen or so are now visible.

Mr A. Fraser, the representative of Hawea Riding in Vincent County Council, has signified his intention not to again seek re-election for the aforementioned riding at the general election, which takes place in November. The heaviest fall of snow we have ever experienced fell during the beginof the week, covering the surrounding mountains and hills with a mantle of virgin whiteness. On the Hunfttah Flat it lay to a depth of fully six inches on Wednesday, morning, and the youngsters—in fact, many of the oldsters—took advantage and entered merrily into the time-honored game of snowballing.

An important feature baa been lately added to the Dunatan Hospital. For the future, those requiring to be vaccinated can have the operation performed upon them by Dr Leahy any Thursday.

TnEploughing-match, under the auspices of the Blacks Fanner’s Club, -will be held to-day at Mr J. 0. Chappie’s farm. Tiger Hill. The Committee have done everything in their power for the comfort of competitors and visitors. We shall hope to see a largo attendance. Shepherds in Vincent County will be glad to learn that the'r petition in favor of the exemption of their sheep-dogs from the dog-tax has been favorably considered by the Petitions Committee, who have announced to the House that there is no feasible reason why it should not be granted and made law.

We (Dunedin “ Echo ”) welcome Mr Vincent Pyke as editor of the “ Morning Herald.” Mr Pyke is ever fresh and over happy, and we feel sure that under his management our morning contemporary will not only take a side but will also have something intelligible to say on our colonial concerns. Mr Pyka has our best wishes for his success.

We are inclined to the opinion that the editor of our illustrious contempoi ary, the “ Cromwell Argus,” had a more than usually severe attack of biliousness, when, with his natural presumption, he vainly attempted to deliver an opinion—Sam Veller-like, but without that gentleman’s characteristic humor—on one of our leaderettes hearing upon the proposed electoral changes. It is nothing unusual for our worthy friend to attempt to deliver an opinion upon subjects which his insignificant mind cannot by any possible means understand, neither is it uncommon for him to hash up and obfuscate the subject he attempts to delineate ; therefore we will charitably place his stupid remarks anent the article in question to his penchant for interfering in matters that do not concern him, his diseased propensity for scribbling, and his lamentable, unprecedented ignorance of Journalistic etiquette, coupled with the biliousness afore-mentioned, or some other such hereditary indisposition

To prove the petty mean malice that exists in Alexandra, directed against our member and the welfare of the districts, we publish a telegram which appeared in the “New Zealand Times” (Wellington) of August 9. It goes to prove that there is somebody amongst ns who is trying his hardest to bring rum upon the district, and discredit upon the Pyke, besides attempting to misrepresent unvarnished facts. The following is a copy of the telegram referred to “Manuherikia, August 8,-A meet ing, instigated by Mr Pyke’s friends, was held here on Monday, between 11 and 12 o’clock, to protest against the Government proposals regarding the new electorates. Eighteen persons were present including the County Chairman’s son-in-law, and others from Clyde. The majority here are in favor of the Government proposals, as are also the electors of Blacks and Tinkers.” First of all, the meeting was not held on Monday, as the “veracious ” correspondent insinuates but on Saturday evening, not between 11 and 12 o’clock. The only person present from Clyde was Mr Macgeorae, and he happening to be in Alexandra on business probably thought worth his while to attend the meeting, and did so. If the meddlesome correspondent in question will take the trouble to look in the advertising columns of this paper of Augusts, he will find that the meeting was convened by the Mayor of Alexandra, and not by “Mr Pyke’s friends.” Verily, to the manufacturer of falsehoods under discussion “ Truth is stranger than fiction.” The following reply, sent by a resident of Clyde, to Mr Pyke, speaks for itself: —“ Telegram in New Zealand ‘ Times ’ is a tissue of falsehoods. Meeting at Alexandra on Satuulay was called by advertisement by the Mayor, and no Clyde people were present, except Macgeorge. The meeting was unanimous against the proposals. My telegram of yesterday explains that McDonald ami McKersey are the only favorers. Blacks, to a man, is against proposals.”—Further information can be obtained upon reference to the special telegrams.

Mr Alex. Rodanow, alias Ganz, the enterprising individual who managed to obtain a few hundred pounds from the colonies by the aid of the advertisement which appeared in this journal (as well as in all the other papers published in the colonies) announcing that the “ Rodanow Watch - manufacturing Company” had silver and gold watches for sale at prices that would not pay for the material, leaving out of the question the cost of manufacture, was lately arraigned in Boston, Mass., on the extremely mild and considerate charge of using the United States Postal Department for fraudulent and illegal purposes, and was, we regret to say, acquitted through defective evidence. Thus has another of the greatest scoundrels that ever went unhung been allowed to escape the punishment he richly merited for his misdeeds. In Democratic America, if a man borrows his neighbor’s hack, the aggrieved person calls together his relatives and friends, makes them gloriously jolly with mountain dew, arms them with bowie knives and sixshooters, explains the reason he made them drunk, asks them to follow the fugitive, and upon catching him to bring Judge Lynch into requisition. With a bloodthirsty and demoniac yell of acquiescence (as novels of a sanguinary character say), the Bacchanalian administrators of justice, put on their warpaint, and soon come upon the trail The absconder is soon overhauled, pulled off the horse, a rope put round his neck, and then quickly strung up to the nearest tree. On the other hand, a clever, unprincipled vagaband swindles the public to the extent of £20,000, to say nothing of the sums he lets the paper men in for, and is arraigned on a charge which it would be an impossibility to substantiate. Tmly, we live in an age of unparalleled wonders ! We presume that as murder has already been partially legalised by our American cousins, they will allow barefaced swindlers to exist in their midst, provided that they go from home to perpetrate their vile deeds. Who can tell ? Further comment is needless.

An Irish Land League branch has been formed in Wellington. To all appearances the Re-distribntion Bill will never pass. General V. Baker, of unenviable fame, has received an important appointment in the Turkish army. Juuoe Harvet is a victim to the Government retrenchment policy. His compensation for loss of office amounts to £834.

The Queensland Legislative Assembly, by 27 to 20, expressed satisfaction that Premier MTlwraith had been cleared from the charges made against him m connection with the steel rails business.

A rather pecnliar case is being investigated by a doroner’B jury at Adelaide. A young lady named Mary Ann Clines, 20 years of age, feeling unwell, took some Epsom salts, and died very shortly afterwards,

Anovkity in the shape of a joint stock company for the establishment of a school is in course of formation a Waikiwi, Southland.

Mr Alex. M. Houston, who so gallantly saved the life of the seaman Jasper on the occasion of the Cerberus torpedo explosion, has received the silver medal of the Victorian Humane Society. According to the “Lyttelton Times,” Mr Hoskins, tho well-known comedian, is about to enter the matrimonial state for tho third time, the bride elect being a Melbourne lady still in her teens.

Mr Marcos Clarkr. the well-known Australian author, is dead. He was only 34 years of age. He was an able writer. His most distinguished work is “ His Natural Life.” He contributed to the leading papers and reviews. A Colorado judge recently acquitted a desperado who had committed a murder, but the crowd hanged the rascal from the court-house window, and told the judge that the next time he let a murderer go they would hang him. Thereupon his honor promptly sentenced three other murderers to be hanged. A singular funeral took place lately at the Sheffield Cemetery, The remains ware those of an old lady who had been deaf and dumb for,years. The mourners were all deaf and dumb, and the service was entirely celebrated by deaf and dumb signs by Mr Stephenson, the superintendent of the Sheffield Deaf and Dumb Association.

The death of a child at Ipswich in Queensland is reported under curious circumstances. The mother received a letter from a friend in service, who was suffering from fever at Rockhampton, and the child nibbled at the envelope, and so, it is believed, contracted the fever. At Odessa 2000 persons who were arrested during tho anti-Jewish riots have been summarily flogged, without so much as the form of a trial, by the police. This punishment has caused surprise, because the rioters had every reason to believe that the authorities connived at what they did. Flogging, moreover, has long been abolished by the law in Russia.

At an enquiry at Maryborough (Victoria) into the cause of the death of a Miss Hilder jury found that “ deceased died from congestion of the lungs a”d brain caused by taking a narcotic poison prescribed bv Dr Cecil Jackson,” against whom a verdict of manslaughter was returned. Dr Jackson, who is well-known in Southland, has been liberated on his wife’s bail of L 590.

A converted clown in London has been convicted of bigamy. The culprit, Henry Llewlyn, with several aliases, became a shoemaker in early life, and later a clown with a travelling circus, and manned wife No 1. After a few years he tired of the wicked life, and happening to be in gaol with another of the troupe, embraced religion and the opportunity to sever his connection with the saw-dust ring and his wife. Ha advertis 'd as an evangelist, preached, and married again ; and for this he has been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.

A music publisher named Benjamin Hind was selling off a stock of damaged music. He had the list attractively displayed, his name being attached to each piece. The result can be imagined from the following specimen lines :

“ Where shall wo stand when freedom calls?” B.Hind <( i *h, let me like a soldier fall ” B.Hind 1 ‘ She wore a wreath of rosea ” B. Hind “ I fear no foe ” B. Hind “ She’s all my fancy painted her ” B. Hind The effect was even more ridiculous in others In fact, we cannot continue the list, for (to quote Hamlet) we might say, ‘‘Thus bad begins, but worse remains ” B. Hind.

The *' Glasgow Herald ” reports that 40 cases of scarlet fever recently occurred simultaneously at Keswick. Dr Robertson medical officer for the Coekermouth Rural Sanitary Auth irity, stated that the disease had been traced to a milk dairy at High Hill, from whence all the persons attacked got their milk. One person escaped through boiling the milk. He did uot know how the contagion got into the milk. A member stated them had been a case of fever next to the diary, and the theory of the doctors in that neignborhnod was that in the disinfecting of the bedding and carpets, ami the shaking them outside while some milk vessels were standing near, some germs of fever had been shaken into the milk vessels and milk containing these germs was supplied to the various customers.

.\ most sensational and remarkable escape of i* convict was made from the penitentiary of Goldsborough, N.C., on the morning of Aprils. Kinohen Ginn, and another convict were sick in the same cell, and on April 2 Ginn’s companion died. The body, after being neatly' shrouded, was placed in the coffin, and the undertaker wont out to get dinner, leaving Ginn in the cell with the dead man. As soon as the door had been looked Ginn got out of bed, took the dead man out of the coffin and placed him in the bed, carefully covering him, and then got into the coffin himself. In an hour afterwards the burial party came in, and placing the coffin in a wagon, drove off to the Potter’s Field. Before they reached the place Ginn began rolling about in the coffin and making noises, which so frightened the burial party that they ran away, whereupon Ginn lifted the coffiu lid and escaped. Thus writes the Melbourne correspondent of tue “Timaru Herald“ At Sandhurst the Mayor took the opportunity of the princes’ visit to be revenged on the aristocracy of that quartz-mining city. The Mayor is an honest, thriving grocer, and an old identity, but the aristocrats—composed of cattle salesmen, bankers, and counter-jumpers—took offence at his plebeian occupation, and refused to accept his invitation to attend the Mayoral ball. Mr Mayor Hayes saw his opportunity to be revenged, and gave a series of princely entertainments to the royal middies—a procession, lunch, raining excursion, banquet and ball—all supervised by the veteran Boniface Hefferman, to not one of which the 1 upper ten ’ were invited. The result was that the aristocracy had to stand in the gutters, and watch the democracy parading royally about, ft was the 1 hoighth of fun, ’ as the Mayor afterwards observed. ”

The experience of an ex-Christchurch resident, as detailed to the “ Press,” does not confirm the letters received in Dunedin lately as to the good times prevailing at the South African goldfields. He says :—“At the diamond fields we found diamonds just about as scarce as gold was on the goldfields. One or two companies are doing well, but lota of men are on the point of starvation, and the only thing that prevents them leaving is the want of funds. One of our number got work as boas over a gang of Kaffirs wheu we came back from the diamond fields. It was a Government job, and the wages he agreed for was 7s per day—pretty good as things go there, and not easily got. What between Kaffirs and coolies from St. Helena, it is worse than a place colonised by Chinese. Kaffir labor brings 16s a month, as a rnle, and coolies are paid at the rate nanally of Is fid per day. Some of our mates are at one place and some at another just now, but most likely wo shall all decide to return either to Hew Zealand or America,”

U.NTifc tho reign of the Empress Josephine, a handkerchief was thought in France so shocking an object that a lady would never have dared to use it before any one. The word, even, was carefully avoided in refined conversation. An actor who would have used a handkerchief on the stage, even in the most toarful moments of the play, would have been mercilessly hissed ; and it was only in tho beginning of tho present century that a celebrated actress (Millie. Duchesnoise) dared to appear with a handkerchief in her hand. Having to speak of this handkerchief in the course of the piece, she never could summon enough courage to call it by its true name, bnt referred to it as a light tissue. A few years later, a translation of one of Shakespere’s plays, by de Vigny, having been acted, the word handkerchief was used for the first time on the stage, amid the cries of indignation from a great part of tho house. It is doubtful if even to-day French dandies would carry handkerchiefs if the wife of Napoleon [. had not given the signal for adopting them. The Empress Josephine, although really lovely, had ugly teeth. To conceal them, she was in the habit of carrying small handkerchiefs adorned with costly laces, which she continually raised gracefully to her lips. The ladies of the court followed her example, and handkerchiefs have rapidly become an important and expensive part of the feminine attire ; so much so, that the price of a single one of the trosseau of the Duchess of Edinburgh would make the fortune of a necessitous family.