Local and General News.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 203, 30 December 1893, Page 2

Local and General News.

Th-3 Feilding Star will not be published on Monday next. A garden party will be held at Mr Gould's Clairville House on New Year's Day. TheHon W. Rolleston attributes his defeat to the thimble-rigging of the three P's- Prohibition, Petticoats, and Priests. A youth named Bird, aged seventeen, recently fell into a tank of boiling tallow at a Battersea (England) factory. He was literally boiled to death. The surrender of Siani to France was due neither to weakness nor to cowardise; but a King who has several hundred wives does anything ' for the sake of peace. The Victorian drink bill for 1891 was £6,500,000. Last year it was about 1,000,000 less. This (says the Age) means an average of nearly £'30 for every household in the colony. The Napier Telegraph says :— Strange to aa v, the parents who are to be proceeded against by the Napier School Committee for neglecting to send their children to school, include two of the committeemen themselves. A Press Association wire from Napier states that the body of a newly born female child was found wrapped m an old towel undor & stable in Dalton Street on Tuesday. It was fully developed, and ap« parent ly died from exposure. Thomas Carlylo, in one of his most acrid moments, said it was a remarkable anthropological fact that a Scotchman was the only created being ever known to get " praying " drunk, and that only on New Year'B day. The people's poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, was made a ganger ; the people's poot of New Zealand, Thomas Bracken, has been made a Registrar ot Electors. "Verily, a prophet is not without honor save in his own country and in his own house. " An interesting ruling iv a divorce case base been made by a Cincinnati Judge. A woman who had secured a divorce applied to the Court to restore her maiden name, but was refused on the ground that there were children. The Court held that it was the common law that the children should be protected in their name. This ruling, says a Home paper, will be universally approved as being common sense as well as common law. A good many stories are told of the reasons given by some women for voting for certain candidates at the late general election, but there was one story told re- 1 cently which is so good that it is worth mentioning. A lady was asked why she voted for So-and-So, as he scarcely seemed to be of her school of politics. The querist was rather startled when she replied "He has .such a beautiful skin and complexion ! " A German Emperor (says the Westminster Gazette) maintains his boycott of Bismark. In hit speech at Bremen at the unveiling of the statue of his grandfather, he had a good opportunity of paying a compliment to the real founder of the German Empire. |But a bald refer ence to the Emperor William having to " find great men who should share in the honour of carrying out big ideas and cooperating with him as his councillors " was as near as the Imperial speech-maker could get to a recognition of the part that Bismarck played in the establishment of the German unity, Thus "Mercutio" in tho Auckland Herald : — " A correspondent writes asking how it is that every lawyer on leaving liis office between four and five o'clock carries with him a little black leather bag. It is wonderful what questions do occur to the minds of some people. There are two solutions of the problem. These bags contain the lunches of the lawyers, as they are too much engrossed with business during the day to be able to go out, or, they are forced to take home papers so as to deeply consider knotty points iv the evening, which they have not leisure to ponder over during the day. The matter is a mystery, and had perhaps better remain so." The Northampton (Eug.) Corporation, having a large reservoir some seven miles from the town, stocked it with trout. This season fishing tickets were sold at five shillings per day. So eagerly were the permits applied for — the number per day being limited— that bookings took place weeks in advance. No fisherman was allowed to kill more than a certain weight, but despite this precaution 1018 fish were caught, their weight being 1 ton lcwt lqr 2341 b. The amount received for tickets was jL'l7s ss, so that the average cost of each fish to the ticket-holders was a shade under 3s 6d, or Is OJd per lb. The fish averaged close upon 2 jib, and so satisfied are the members of the Water Committee, that steps are being taken to expend another £'60 in fish culture.