Miscellaneous Items

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 131, 25 April 1893, Page 4

Miscellaneous Items

. « If you breed stock for immediate profit, cross breed. A cross-bred beast grows from the first more rapidly, reaches the stage of puberty sooner, and matures its carcase at an earlier age than does anything which is considered pure- bred. The chief cause of the advancing retail price of meat are the rings which stand between the breeder and the public, and manage co keep the meat at an entirely artificial price. Live-stock is now about half the price it was thirty years ago, but the retail prices of meat are as high as, if not higher thau, ever. The profit goes mostly into the pockets of middlemen and butchers who, it will be noticed, retire with fortunes earlier and more frequently than any other class of tradesmen. Boys who learn to smoke should know that before they are 50 years old the habit will cost them the price of a farm or the capital for a good business. It is easy to begin but hard to stop. " The tougue is an unruly member," quoted the Sunday school teacher. " Mine is anyhow," assented Tommy. 11 1 can't keep it from sticking out every time whenever I try to write." A little girl went into a chemist's shop holding out a bottle and addressed the chemist as follows-: — " If you please, mister, you'll find Che smell ia the bottle, and I want twopenneth on't. It is an unusual thing for a Wesleyan clergyman (and a teetotaller, too) to be the means of a publican's license being granted, yet this is what occurred at a New South Wales Licensing Court. The applicant wrote to the clergyman for a reference as to his character. The reply came in the shape of a distinct refusal to give one. "My views as to the infamous nature of the traffiic prevent me giving you any testimonial." Then he added in a postscript : " You are far too good a man for such a calling in life." The Bench, on the strength of the postscript, unanimously granted the license. — Wanganui Herald.