MAIL NEWS.

Evening Star, Issue 3690, 19 December 1874, Page 2 (Supplement)

MAIL NEWS.

FREEMASONRY. The Earl of .Shrewsbury, presiding at a Provincial Grand Lodge of the .Freemasons of Staffordshire, held at Alton Towers recently, said, in proposing “ the health of the Prince of Wales,” that he deeply regretted the r - tiremsnt of the Marquis of Ripon. and he beieved had he more closely studied the teachings of the English Church, and of the craft, he would still have been a Protestant and a Freemason. Nevertheless, it was a great consolation to know that his place would be occupied by the Prince of Wales, whose health was drunk enthusiastically. A FRENCH WRITER ON ENGLISH CUSTOMS. A writer in the Paris ‘ Figaro, ’in an aecount of a visit to London, gives the following description of the manner in which we convey our de.d to their last resting place : —“ The manner in which the dead are conveyed in London to the cemeteries is utterly wanting in decorum. Ihe hearses are vast closed chests, upon the upper part of which the relatives sit with their legs dangling all round. In returning, the same relatives come back, still upon the chest, but unceremoniously smoking their cigars or pipes. The journeys are done at a sharp trot.” Of courso it will be understood that the “relatives ” referred to are no ether than the “ undertaker’s men.” A TALE OF A SPRING LATCH. Mr Kelk, cashier to the building firm of Withy and Co.. Middleton, Hartlepool, has melancholy reasons to deplore the fixing of a spring lock that opened only outside. Quite recently married, ho had invited a party of friends to his house, and his young wife in her anxiety to get rid of the hot air, ventured upstairs, and seeing a small closet with a ventilator, she eutced to open it, when the current of air closed the door. In vain she called to the servants although she could hear the door bell ring and her visitors enter ; and as none suspected that the imprisoned lady was in the roof of. the house, all the other pa'ts of the dwelling and gmumls were searched. One of the visitors suggested that there might he an ol > oak chest with a secret spring, and this gave the clue to the closet, and when at last found, Mrs Kelk was seriously ill and ir.sterical! Violent epile tic fibs follow-d, and the shock being more than the nervous system could sustain, death shortly put an end to the poor young lady’s sufferings. The said affair has not only prostrated the unhappy husband but cast a gloom around the whole town.— ‘Builder.’ THE FAMINE IN ASIA MINOR.—STARVING BY THOUSANDS. In fi sia Minor, over an area of country almost as largo as the S’ate of Few York, people are dying of starvation and of the diseases which res ilt from lack of nourishing food, and it is stated that as many as 150,(.00 have died. Every day adds new victims, while emaciated, staggering men, women, and children pour into adjacent cities and towns begging for bread, and this in a r< gion once formerly a garden in all its fruitfulness. In 1873, the drought cut off the crops, and the stores on hand were exhausted during the. succeeding winter. All eyes were turned toward the summer and the harvest of 1874. but this, too, failed, less from lack of rain lhan lack of seed to sow, cattle to work the fields and the wane of health on the part of the famished people. Mr Farnsworth, an American missionary, who has recently made an extensive tour in the region, estimates that less than one quarter of the usual area has been sown, and that this year’s harvest will brin® scarcely any relief. The writer draws the fo lowing sad p cture of the s tuation In one village, out of more than 1,600 sheep a >d goats, just oue sheep and one goat remain, and of 100 cows two remain. In

another from a flock of 1,200 sheep and Koats, eight are reported ; and from anothei flock in the same village, numbering Sl'O < f which 700 were Mohair goats, eight are ie ported. The poor have sold everything they had, even to the timbers of their houses and the garments that covered them, to buy bread at the cx -rbibant price at which alone it can be obtained. Almost the whole population is demoralised, and the regular pursuits of industry are disturbed and broken up, and, failing to And honest employment, men resort to violence and brigandage on the highways. A RAG AND BONE MAN’S WEDDING IN KENSINGTON. The marriage of George Clapson, of Kensington place, Warwick street, Earl’s court, and Alisa Esther Snell, of Brick lane, Whitechapel, in the parish church, brought together one of the most disgraceful assemblies ever witnessed. The church was crowded with people anxious to witness the ceremony, which for a time was delayed by the unruly and unseemly behaviour of those present in the sacred edifice. The chief actors iu the I -° r ifc deserv ’ es uo other name, were the biide and bridegroom, who follow the enviable calling of rag and bone dealers in their leapective localities, and evidently a very prosperous calling it must be, or three carnages and pairs of greys brought the wedding party to the church, the retinue being composed of broughams (a la Westminster) and their occupants m fancy dresses, donkey barrows adorned with paper flags of various colors, Ethopiana, clowns (a goodly number), and other human ab ur nties following in the rear. We shall hurry over the ceremony in the church, where the bridegroom of sixty summers was supported by the bride of twenty, his tottering frame evidently under the influence tiud. the effects of a too frequent worship at the shrine of Bacchus. However the register was signed we know not; but emerging from the church the bridal party, accompanied by a large black dog—decorated with red, white, aud blue round its body, a white night-cap on 'ts head, and a white favor fixed on its tail—was the signal for a repetition of yelling and ho -ting, which heralded their arrival. The carriages at last got away with their occupants, and proceeded to a public-house adjacent to the future residence of Mrs Clapson, where a scene of the wildest excitement prevailed thioughout the day and evening. Impromptu decorations of dirty wall paper were strung together ami hung across the streets, bearing th ; words in letters of whitewash, “ Welcome to George and Esther.” Flags of unknown colors, illustrations and caricatures abounded whichever way the eye turned. The streets in the immediate neighborhood being thronged with a noisy set the whole evening, great difficulty was experienced by the police in keeping anything like decent order.

EXHUMATION OF THE REMAINS OF A BISHOP.

The grave of Dr Milner. the Homan Catholic prelate, who wrote “ The End of Religious Controversy.” “Letters to a Prebendary,” “The History of Winchester,” and other works, has bean opened, a id the Rev. Gecrge Duckett, the rector of ,st. Peter and St. Paul s Homan Catholic Church, North street, Wolverhampton, supplied the local Press with an account of what happened The rev. gentltman describes how, after much labor in searching for the precise place of interment, the body duly encased in lead and wood, and correctly endorsed with the usual c-'flia pla'e, was found in “its deep resting place which had been cut out of the rock,” and says, “On the fol owinv day (August 20), in my presence, and that of Thomas and Edwin Gough, Hugh Riley, and Miles Joyce, the lead was cut, and the top removed. Next, the ltd of the oak shell, which was nailed down, was taken off, and to our great surprise, the body, which had been buried forty-eight years, was seen whole and entire. It was covered with a neat and elegant plaited shroud, made of flannel, and trimmed with amber silk. The hands «ere placed by the sides of the body ; there was no ring on the finger, or. indeed, any sign whatever to show that it was the body of a priest or a bishop. The face wore its natural color, save a small part, covered with a kind of white mould ; the tip of the nose was of a dark color, the hands were di colored, though perfect, and like the hands as represented in the portrait of the bishop A scapular was suspended from the neck. During the course of this and the following day hundreds of people came to see the body. SeVeral who had known the bishop well in life now distinctly recognised him in death. The coffin having been open from Thursday morning at ten o'clock until four in the afternoon of Friday, the body had assumed a dark brown hue, yet it retained its former sizs and shape, the flesh remaining firm. The ceremony of reinterment took place on Monday. 24th instant, and was performed by the cleigy of the town.” Mr Duckett’s account concludes with a narration of certain of Bishop Milner’s widely-recognised virtues, hut it does not supply any reason for the rifling of the good man’s tomb.—‘Standard.’ A REAL “ENOCH ARDEN ” IN COURT.

At Clerkenwell Police Court, recently, Emma Croker, aged forty-seven, a married woman residing at 15, Derry street. Sn. Pancrass, was brought up on a warrant by Police-constable Charter, 250 Y, one of the warrant officers of the Com t charged under the provisions of the School Board Art for London, with neglectin to send her girl, under the age of thirteen, to school. Un the fourth of the month an elderly man, of the name of William Kingsworth, was summoned at this court for not s nding the same girl to school, and he then Sit up in defence that he was nob the father, though he resided in the same house as the present defendant. That summons was adjourned, and one issued against the present defendant’, aud failing to attend she was apprehended on & wsiTtint, as stated £ibov6, I 4 answer to the charge, she now sa d that the child was hers, and id not b long to the -nan Kingsworth. She hid rohaoited with hj m, but he was not the father of her p child, though he had bihaved kiiidly to her and her children, and she was detrained to stand by the old man now he had got too old to work. Mr Cook asked the defendant if she was a married woman. The defendant replied that she was married, and had her “ marriage lines ” with her. Her husband was alive. Mr Cook asked the defendant if her husband lived lived with her. The defendant replied fn the negative, but added to at though he did not live with her he would come home with her when he pleased, and did sometimes c< me home When she first became acquainted with the old m m Kingsworth, her husband had been away from her for a long—very long time, and she had written to the War Office for his whereabouts, aud had received a reply that he was dead. The old man wanted to marry her and she went to live with him. This continued for somo years, and then h-r husband returned, and finding her aud the children well attended to, (fid not wish to live with her again, but requested h?r to keep on with the old man. he going to reside in the same neighborhood, and* not far from her— ( ensatiou ) She had not cohabited with the o d man since, though she iooked afte r him, aud resided in th same house with him. As she before had said she was determined to live with him. and keep him, for she could work and the old man was unable to do so. He had b •• haved to her children more like a father than the father had himself. There was no secrecy about the matter, for her husband was well aware of the fact, and came home

to her when he libel. With regard to the present charge, she night say that she considered it very bard she should be brought here, for by doing so her children were deprived of a meal’s victuals, and the School Board people were well aware tha 1 the girl in question had been at school for more than a fortnight. Mr Cook said it was plain that the defendant was the guardian of the child, and was therefore liable for her if she did not attend school. She was not here lot not sending her child to school now, but for not having done so at the date of the summons. It was an extraordinary case. The defendant would have to pay a fine of Is and 4s costs, or in default, to be imprisoned in the cells of the court for one day. The defendant, who said she had no money, wan removed in the custody of the gaoler.— ‘ Glasgow Weekly News.’ MISCELLANEOUS. The annual cost of funerals in London is estimated at over a million of money. A new lamp has been patented for taking photographs at night, in which bisulphide©! carbon is burned in peroxide of nitrogen. Itt is said to equal sunlight in its effects and intensity. The Local Option Liquor Law, passed by the last Legislature of California, has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It is in all essentials similar to the Maine Law. Some interesting relics have lately been male at Pompeii. A shop, supposed to be a tanner’s, has been excavated, and a number of tools used in the manipulation of leather found. These tools bear a strong resemblance to those used in the present day. Some idea may be formed as to tbe enormous extent of land required to grow trees for building and other purposes in Europe alone, when it is stated that no less than 500.000,000 acres are at present estimated to be in cultivation as woodlands. This is a very large per centage on the whole area. Hay tablets, prepared in tbe following manner, have been used in France for some time, as a convenient and portable food for horses Hay and straw, very finely cut, are well mixed with crushed oats or rye, moistened with a solution of rapeseed or linseed oil-cake, the mass well worked, and then formed into tablets under pressure. A new kind of steam printing press of the fast kind, specially intended for newspapers, has just been perfected aad put in operation in London by Messrs doeand Co., fortheuse of the London ‘ Daily T*'egraph.’ The cost of each press is L 17.500, The ‘ Telegraph * is to be supplied with ten of them, and thus have the means of printing 220,000 copies of the paper in sixty minutes. Mr Bail w, F K.S., recently read a paper before the Royal Society, in which he desciibes a method which he has devised for making diagrams of the articulations of speech. Thus, every word spoken has a certain percussive energy, and, by means of a suitable instrument, he produces lines which vary with the words spoken, aud with the intensity or suddenness of the production. , Tae ‘Journal of the Society of Arts* says there is a paper church actually existing near Bergen, which is capable of oeatainirir about 1,000 people. It is circular withini and octagonal without. The relieves outsides, and the statues inside, the roof, the ceiling, are all of papier tnacbe, rendered waterproof by saturation in vitriol, limewater, whey, and white of egg. The competition between the steamshipowners of Liverpool in the American trade is now so great, and the feelingso antagonistic that two of them-—the Canard and the National—have tor some time carried passe gers from New York to Liverpool for b i teen dollars (L 3); while the Scotch line sold their tickets at twelve dollars (L2 8s), It has been ascertained that between May and September, at these cheap rates fifty thousand emigrants left New York for Encland. 6

By the mail just arrived from China, details of a gigantic conspiracy have been received. A large body of Li Hung Chung sol nery, headed by General Whang, had determined to seiza Tientsen, plunder the place, and put to death all the foreigners therein. Thirteen of the ringleaders have been arrested, but General Whang has escaped. Two English gunboats—the Curlew and the Hornet—were at Tientsen when the mail left and the English, American, and French Vice-Consuls had asked for reintorjements.

The ranks of the medical profession have lost one of their noblest soldiers in Dr Franc s Edmund Anstie, who (says the ‘ Spectator’) died from the results of a punoture in the hand with a needle, while performing a post mortem examination on one of the children of the schools of the Patriotic Fund at Wandsworth. The child had died from au epidemic form of peritonitis due to some sanitary mischief in the school believed to be a supply 0 f ba l water to one of the rooms. The puncture led to oornxplion of the blood, and to death within the week after the time it occurred.

Advices received from Br.mssa allege that on the 7th November, about 203 Turkish soldiers led by an aide-de camp of the Governor, and by members of the Mussulman ' 'ouncil, obtained an entrance, not only into the Armeno-Catholic Church, but also into the Epis opal Palace, the walls of which they scaled. They dragged the bishop, who was dressed in his Pontifical robes, down the stairs, and having broken open the doors ®f the church, desecrated the sacred vessels, and struck wi’ hj their sabres and wounded the men and women who were worshipping at the time. An immense crowd of Catholics Greeks, Armenians, and strangers were col* lected outside the church, and loudly protested against the sacrilege which was perne* traced. l

i or s-mie time past petty thefts from goods trains have been of frequent occurrence on the western district of the >orth British Railway.,and in order to discover the depredators, recourse was had to the expedient of concealing detectives in goods waggons Two detectives, named Donald Mackay and John M’M.llau, had a somewhat perilous venture a short time back while on duty of this kind. They were hid u .der the covering of a truck of part of a tram leading Sighchill station shortly after eleven o clock that evening; and when near Garnkirk siding, and the train proceeding over twenty miles an hour, they saw the two guards in charge of the train coming over the trucks. They stopped at the truck m which the detectives were concealed; and, the cover being securely strapped down, each guard took out a large knife, with which he proceeded to rip up the tarpaulin. I his entailed much danger to tho detectives, who lay on the top of the goods, and one of them narr wly escaped receiving a stab in the head from one of the knives? Springing up through the opening made by :> he guards, the detectives attempted to seize the thieves, but they retreated to the van, the detectives following, at the risk of their lives, over the moving train. The guards were apprehended in the van and taken to Glasgow. They are young men, residing m Coatbridge, and named Alexander Walker and George Walker. They were, at the Justice of Peace Court, found guilty of being on the truck for the purpose of stealing, and were sentenced to sixty days’ imprisonment