Untitled

Globe, Volume II, Issue 176, 31 December 1874, Page 4

The new gasometer of the Boston Gaslight Company, now building in Swett street, will be the largest lifting gasometer in the world. The iron tank receiving the gas will be 200 feet in diameter, and proportionately high. An amusing story (says the Ballarat Star) has been going the rounds lately. A certain young lady, who considers herself in the cream of society, was betrothed to a wellknown merchant. Before the ceremony her " ma" persuaded her to pay a visit to the fashionable Bourke street drapers, where au elaborate trousseau was purchased to the extent of about £6O. Injunctions were given that the bill should be sent in to the expectant spouse, but not until a certain date, a few days after the ceremony, the approach of which was not of course mentioned. By an accident the bill was sent out at the end of the month in the usual course, and the bridegroom expectant, of course, at once called to explain to the drapery firm that being still a bachelor, he could not possibly have incurred a heavy liability for feminine frippery. The state of the case was represented to him, the result being that he declined to fulfill his matrimonial engagement and to pay the bill. The lady (says the Ballarat Star) is therefoie left without her sweetheart, and with her trousseau on hand for the next emergency of a similar character, for which " pa" will probably have to payThe London Standard says that M. Giguel captain of a frigate in the F'rencb navy, finds himself in a singularly awkward position. The gallant officer, who has been stationed for some time in the Celestial Empire, having been lent by his own Government to assist the Chinese in organising the maritime arsenal of Foo-chow, has been awarded the order of merit of the first-class Ti-Tu. To refuse the decoration would be an insult to His Ethereal Majesty, the brother of the sun; besides, no Frenchman was ever known to refuse a decoration, and Captain Giguel had not the discourteous courage to go against all precedent. He accepted the distinction. But here the difficulty arises. The order confers on the bearer the exalted privilege of wearing a jacket of yellow —the Imperial colour. To join a band of knighthood without the intention of ever wearing its insignia would be a piece of lubberly sneakishness, of which no French seaman could be guilty ; but to walk about the Boulevards dressed in a gamboge nightgown, like the doomed heretic of an auto da-fe, is a procedure hardly to be contemplated by a sane mind. Captain Giguel is very unhappy, and oscillates between the exquisite national sense of courtesy, and the delicate national dread of ridicule. We are happy (says the Dunstan Times) to congratulate our Carrick Range friends and the directors of the Carrick Range Water Supply Company on the success which has attended their labors. We are the more pleased to be able to do this as it was feared by many knowing ones that they would be unable to complete the undertaking ; but we may state, on the best authority, that one week's labor will bring the water on to the "Young Australian Mill," and thus dissipate the doubts of the unbelieving, and be the means of making the Bannockburn, and showing what pluck and enterprise can accomplish.