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Evening Star, Issue 3525, 10 June 1874, Page 2

Mr Fish has tabled a motion affirming the desirability of opening the Museum for at least three hours on Sunday afternoons. The Presbyterians at Camara intend to build for Mr Todd a handsome church, which will seat 700 persons, and cast L 4,000. The architect is Mr Forrester. A child, the daughter of Mr Thompson, blacksmith, at Lyttelton, fell down a deep well. The mother besought a man to rescue it, but he not responding quickly, she seized the wellrope and went down and was drawn up safe. The mother and child had a narrow escape from drowning. Some extraordinary schedules are occasionally filed in the Insolvency Court. This one (says the ‘Age’) is a sample:—“ Thomas Blythe’s insolvency has been caused by sickness in his family, and want of employment, Blythe, who is a carter by trade, has received advances from a friend in Hobart Town, to whom he has given acceptances to the value of Ll3l Is sd. This friend has endorsed them to a person in Melbourne. Mr Blythe has no other creditors at all; his butcher and baker are paid, in fact eVerydne, ekeept the Hobart

Town friend. His house expenses for the two years previous to the date of his petition have amounted to L 7. He has no furniture or property of any kind except LI in cash, and he has had no losses. The “Orange Girl” was repeated at the Princess’s last evening, and despite the unfavorable weather, there was an extremely good attendance in all parts of the house. The drama, taken as a whole, passed off far more successfully than on its first representation. To-night “ Black Sheep” will be produced, with a really good cast, to be followed by the afterpiece of “The Alabama.” Such a programme ought to draw a large audience. One of the neatest and prettiest things in monumental ornamentation to be seen probably in any part of the world, certainly in any of the Australian Colonies (says the Melbourne ‘ Herald ’) is that over the grave of Signora Tamburini Coy’s baby. On one side of the grave is a photo of the child, enclosed in wax flowers, and protected by a glass; opposite to it, and similarly placed, is an inscription in Italian. In the midd.e of the grave is a marble cross, in the centre of which is a picture of a child being borne aloft by angels. The whole affair is exceedingly chaste and artistic. At Nelson recently one Stephen Mathews was committed for trial for endeavoring to provide his wife with a quick passage to the next world. When the decision of the Bench was made known, Mrs Mathews appealed to their Worships to give her husband a month and then let him go, as if he were committed she did not know what she and her children would do. The Bench then called upon her to find security for her appearance to prosecute, which she was unable to do. She and her daughter, aged thirteen years, were therefore committed to prison until the trial, in order to secure their attendance.

The following from the ‘ European Mail’ will be of interest to Freemasons The other night a ceremony connected with the higher orders of Freemasonry took place in the Royal Masonic Hall, Regent street, London, it being the usual assembly of the Grand Conclave of the Masonic and Military Order of the Red Cross of Constantine, and the enthronement of Sir W. Williams, Bart. M. P., as the illustrious Grand Sovereign of the Order. The knights appealed in the full insignia of the Order, and the ceremony observed was precisely the same as that adopted at the enthronement of the late Duke of Sussex, who was also Grand Sovereign. The elaborate customs peculiar to the Order were duly observed; all the high officers were in attendance, and performed their several functions with scrupulous exactness, and the ceremonial was most brilliant, the array of robes and jewels being very considerable.” _ At a recent sitting of the Auckland Provincial Council the “ ruling passion” was delightfully exhibited by the Provincial Treasurer (Mr G. M. Reed), in moving the second reading of his Education Bill. The ‘ Cross’ says “ The ancient pulpit afflatus overshadowed him like a dream of (pity ’tis so) half-forgotten times, and instead of saying the thirty-first ‘ clause’ of the Bill, he referred members to the thirty-first‘verse.’ Then ran round the legislative hall-one loud guffaw ; and Mr Reed, with native doffed the ancient cassock, assumed the legislative robe, said ‘ clause’ by way of correction, and proceeded with his argument. The laughter ceased, but a solemnity, induced by the reverential quoting of chapter and verse, cast a very temporary halo of seeming devoutness over the congregation of councillors, and the sneering philosophers scored one against the reverend treasurer.”

The Oamaru paper complains of the local immigration barracks being turned into a sanatorium, and says : —“Of the immigrants (about 100) sent up a fortnight ago, ex J. N. Fleming, there were two women who required instant attention. Both of these have since brought children into the world, the one still-born, and the other dying two or three days after birth. A. barracks full of immigrants, with troops of children running about, is not by any means the place for women in the ch’cumstances of those we 'have mentioned, and we certainly think that there is something savoring of inhumanity in compelling such persons to incur the risks and discomforts of a steamer passage, transhipment by boat, and the rough and ready accommodation of the barracks. But this is not all —with the same batch was sent up an infant in a dying condition. It is since dead. • Then, with the next lot, received last week, was sent up a man (father of a large family) suffering from consumption, and his wife also in very bad health ; and, in another family, a child regarding which it was hard to decide whether it were living or dead wl en it was received into the barracks. But there is another matter too which affords some cause of complaint, viz., the unduly large proportion of married couples with families of from three to six children. Of the thirty-two immigrants sent up by the Samson, there was only one single man and one single woman ; of the remaining thirty, two families accounting for sixteen. At present, of seventy-nine immigrants in the barracks at Oamaru there are no less than fifty-one children. Of the first lot of married people sent up, most of the men have found employment in the town, but their families remain in the barracks at the charge of the Government; and there they will have to remain until house accommodation can be obtained, and there is not such a thing as an unoccupied house in the town. The Horticultural Society’s meeting is postponed till Monday next, 16th inst. The Naval Brigade will muster at the Drillshed, to-morrow evening, at 7.30, for inspection. 1 The regular monthly meeting of the Otago Kilwinning Lodge will be held at the Ma sonic Hall to-morrow evening, at 8 o’clock. We are requested _by Mr Keith Ramsay to state that the donation of L2O to the Benevolent Institution, acknowledged in our advertising columns of Saturday, sth instant, represents a donation given by the Caledonian Society of Otago, in the name of the President, in order to qualify him as a life member of the institution.