INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS.

Grey River Argus, Volume VII, Issue 307, 31 December 1868, Page 2

INTERPROVINCIAL NEWS.

The Wellington Evening Post of the 6th December says : — A meeting of nearly all the members of the Jewish persuasion w..s held last evening, at the private residence of Mr Jacob Joseph ; the purport of the meeting was to take immediate steps to erect a synagogue in Wellington. A resolution to that effect was unanimousily carried, and funds to the amount of nearly .£SOO the Jewish trustees have on hand, will form an excellent basis for at once commencing the erection of a Hebrew place of worship. The following gentlemen were duly appointed a building committee to carry out the above object : — Messrs Moeller, Joseph, Nathan, L. and S. Levy, and L. Moss. A Wellington contemporary is responsible for the following :— A short time ago there appeared in the advertising columns of a contemporary, in Wellington, an invitation to young ladies desirous of entering the married state, to communicate with the advertiser, who was simply described as ' ' a gentleman desirous of settling for life." The young lady, it was stated, must be " respectable," and possess an "amiable temper" that would "conduce to the happiness of both parties." Some mischievous wags thought this too good an opportunity for a practical joke to be lost, and having persuaded one or two lively damsels to act as their confederates, they addressed sundry epistles (the ladies acting as their amanuenses), purporting to come from maidens on the look-out for husbands, to the advertiser ; to which the latter duly responded, enclosing copies of his caHe de visite. A trysting place having been arranged with the most likely of the fair correspondents, the amorous swain duly attended, and was received by a blushing damsel. A sweet hour of bliss followed, and another meeting was agreed upon. Flushed with his former success, and doubtless eager to push on his conquest, the deluded bachelor was punctual to his appointment, bnt instead of being met by the sweet smiles of his lady love, he was. welcomed with a peal of derisive laughter from a score of young men, who, moreover, refused to allow him to depart until he bad " shouted" all round. The tale, we beg to inform our readers, though romantic, is perfectly true. We (Timaru Herald) make the following extracts from a letter written to a gentleman in this town by a friend in Auckland. The writer was a resident in Christchurch for a number of years, and owns considerable property in the northern part of the province. He says :— 1 do not know exactly what move to make. My income from Canterbury is vanishing by large lumps at a time, and there is no investment with a certain interest now in , this place to be made. You can buy | anything you like for an old song ; but I hesitate about exchanging investments on , the Canterbury Plains, even so unsatis- \ factory as they now are, for what may | turn out a mere speculation on the in- , crease of the value of land , without any annual return. The great lesson that ha 3 been taught by this crisis is, that property iii New Zealand has not necessarily a money value — land is particularly value- • less — in bad times it won't fetch anything '. at all. I saw at an auction a forty-acre 1 block of good average land sold within the last month at eightc enpence per acre. , I have bought a block of 300 acres, in the ' pick of the country, said to be the finest land in the Northern Island, for five shillings per acre. I have been offered , 5000 acres, fronting on Tauranga harbor, for two shillings and threepence per acre. The new " Auckland Waste Land Act , authorises the actual giving away of land to any one who will cultivate it. And this is not in out-of-the way places, and odd bits, but in the pick of the country, within easy distance of markets, such as they are. I must allow, I never expected to see in New ZeaVid such a complete prostration as now exists in and around Auckland. People here have become careless of consequences, heartless, and all more or less ruined ; large failures take place every week ; creditors look on with a melancholy smile of satisfaction and consent to anything, under the conviction that they soon must follow.