INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 17, 21 July 1885, Page 2

INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS

Lpbb unitkd peers association. Auckland, July 20. The Supreme Court has granted a decree nisi for a divorce granted in the case of Emily Burchell v. Arthur Burchell and co-respondeat, Alice Hopkins, on the ground of adultery and desertion. Respondent is a country publican. Shams — •> — . — TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, — Will you kindly allow me to express the disgust I, with many others, must feel at the way shams are upheld through the Press by interested parties. A notable instance has been in our midst lately, and not a few have been gulled by well got up deceptions. I refer to the supposed thought-reading power of the Baldwins and others. As these show people advance from one district to another the papers take up the echo of stories, pretending to believe and bo astonished at this " marvellous power," and large sums are taken from districts and people not able to afford it. We do not now argue against the existence of this power amongst men, although we confess being very dubious of it indeed, but to say that any instance of it has been shown here not explainable by the words " sleight of hand " or "conspiracy " is simply ridiculous. Spiritualism. — We are here reminded of a seance held not far from Feilding, where a notorious medium was discovered shaking his pocket handkerchief to imitate the noise of angel's wings! Medicine. — Take another profession, when one gentleman, wishing to consult another " adapt " over one of his patients, ingeniously confessed to previously having used an instrument in examining the said patient about as effective as a piece of suplejack. Oh yes ! there are shams in all callings, and it is the business of the Press to expose, instead of helping to deceive. — I am, Ac., &WAJOL.

Old Grumble Tells His Grandchildren a Fairy Tale So you want to hear a fairy tale, do you, my deara ? "Well, once upon a time — all fairy tales begin that way — there were magicians living on this island who for a long time held the people under enchantment. Sometimes they were called Ministers of State, but more eften the Stout-Vogel Miniitry. The chief of these wizards was the Premier, while the second one was fancifully called the Colonial Treasurer. Of course this was quite a matter of fancy, for instead of there being any* thing in the State coffers the country was always borrowing, but these magicians said if the people let them govern them they would cause showers of gold to fall, and everybody should be prosperous and happy. The people believed them, but the magicians were not clever at their craft, and did not* know how to work the oracle like the, <& witches in Macbeth, who made their,, hell-broth of all the most delicate, ingredients that could add to the potency of the charm they worked. Instead of this the magicians clumsily threw into the political cauldron a tariff bill and barmaids clause, and then danced round the fire uttering incantations. But the spell washroken, so wriggle hew they would they could - not get the charm to work. When they chanted " hubble bubble, toil and trouble," the trouble recoiled upon themseles ; dissensions arose amongst them, some of the magicians declaring a tariff bill was only a goose's bill, and that "property" was the bird whose entrails they ought to have used. Any how, the people became disenchanted, and all the magicians' sophistry could not make the laborer — with his baker's dozen of children, whose appetites were as large, and digestions much stronger, than Jonah's whale, for there was small probability of any thing being cast up again that they had swallowed three days proviously — believe that with a duty upon every thing they ate, drank, or wore, he would not be paying more than his share towards the revenue, compared with some childless millionaire. When - the Premier found he could not work:, the spell he was wroth, and fishing out the barmaids' clause he made a stout commandment — " Thou shalt hare no barmaids." (Here Grumble wisely ignores the question of a little four-year-old, "Does barmaids have claws?" but inwardly concludes that Nature has provided barmaids in common with other women with these weapons— he knows Mrs G. has them — and continues): For this cruel attempt to do- ■■ prive upwards of one thousand respect- . able young women of the means oi subsistance, he shows a petition signed by 21 ,953 persons comprised of women, children, and monomaniacs, and emblematic of jealousy, simplicity, and virtuous craze. I must tell you that a petition is a scroll at one time supposed to have some mystic power in procuring from King or Parliaments all that. was desired by those who signed it. Of course this only shows how silly people used to be in their beliefs. Aided by this petition, he became double stout of extra virtue, and in this disguise he endeavored to bar the barmaid from getting an honest living* But some of the zealous magicians who envied kirn opposed him, and . blowing his frothy eloquenoe to the winds, they showed he was not even pale ale, and made him feel very small beer by refusing to be the cat's paws to his clause. Then he tried to be . allowed to do it in six months' time, when Hatch, with all the tenderness of a chicken (though the barmaids say he was a duck), declared it was the duty of Good Templars to find husbands for them. Now you know that in these days marriages were made ia heaven, and when the celestial officials in the hymeneal departmentjheard of it, they 'kicked up a row, declaring that such an amount of work could not be get through in the time unless polygamy was admitted, and as polygamy was not to be thought of when the probability of having to pay more for every thing made the expense of living so great that many men would have felt glad if they could have disposed of the wife they had got, and were not likely to go in for plurality of them, so the heavenly match makers struck, and the end of it all was that the double stout battle became so heated that the cork which restrained him flew out and after harmlessly effervescing for some time he became so flat nobody thought of looking at him, while the Colonial Treasurer said the country was indebted to him for the golden shower he claimed to have made. Whether he ever was paid I dont know ; perhaps he was, and went to England, and giving up necromany lived respectably ail the rest of his life. The moral of this is that statesmen should not waste their time, and the country's money, in frivolous legislation, but go and leave the girls alone. OldGbumbzje.