GENERAL NEWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2187, 17 September 1907, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS.

Juvenile dissipation seems to bo carried to extreme lengths in Victoria, if the statements made in Melbourne last week by a deputation from the I J arents’ National Educational Union, which interviewed the Secondary Teachers’ Union, may be relied upon. The deputation protested against the present forms of amusements indulged in by children; in the way of late parties and dances. One speaker, Airs. Bage, said she had known of champagne having been provided at dances for young people, and of these entertainments being

kept'up till ’■> or three o’clock in tho morning. Dr.' Hughes said that from his own hospital experience he had found pationts of 14 or 15 years of ago breaking down in health through Luring tho candle at both ends—going out to lato parties 1 and endeavouring at tho same time to carry but their school work. It was absolutely necessary, in tho interests of future generations, that efforts should be made to stem this evil. Dr. CioWther observed that parental control seemed getting weaker and weaker, whilst that of tho children was gradually getting stronger. He hail heard of a case of a boy who had attended 45 theatre parties land entertainments in a single term, and another of a boy ivlio had actually attended 60 daiicbs "and matinees out of a total of 100 days. Dr. Hughes did not wish'it to be understood that the union looked upon dancing as immoral. It was' the number of dances that was immoral.

A - local medical man, says 1 the I’etone Chronicle lias added a new epidemic to his long list of diseases. He lias called it tangi-itis, on account of its prevalence during the Maori tangis. The complaint, which is caused by over-eating, over-drinking, and over-sleeping, is far more serious than ono would imagine. During a recent tangi at Waiwotu, quite a muiiber' of natives were seriously ill \Vitli' the complaint,' and it is possible that some of them will not recover. It is a common' occurrence for natives attending tangis to contract the complaint, with fatal' remits.

It is not often that "we find our public men apologising for tlie weather, says the'New Zealand Herald, but yesterday the Mayor (Mr. Arthur M. Myers) thought it incumbent on him'to do so. ' In opening the flower show tlib‘Mayor said lie believed there had not "been so miicli' rain in Auckland lor the past' 40 years as there had' been" lately, and it was only right 'that he should' tell" them the reason why, as otherwise people might think Auckland was losing its prestige’ as far as the weather was concerned. Last summer they had great misgivings that the water supply would run out, and prayers were offered up for rain:—and now they had got it. “Evidently,” concluded Mr. Myers, “wo have been more successful than the'people in the South, where they also prayed for rain.”