NAPIER NOTES.

Hastings Standard, Issue 62, 8 July 1896, Page 2

NAPIER NOTES.

[From Our Own Correspondent.] Napieb, July 8. If I may say so, you are to be congratulated on having so much attention paid to you in the Legislature. It is not always that the case of a newspaper —no matter how deserving that case may be—-is considered worthy the attention of Parliament. In the case of the Standard there are exceptional circumstances, and it would have been incomprehensible that the Press Association should have demanded so unjust a sum as an entrance, had it not been explained that the Chairman of the Association was also the proprietor of a Napier paper with which you were to enter into competition. The members of the House will doubtless see that tardy justice is clone you ; that is, if they have any power over the Association. The offer you made for entrance was decidedly a very good one—too large a fee, I consider, having been put down by you in that instance. I have said so much on the subject with one object in view : that of convincing the people of Hastings that the dispute -with the Press Association is as much their own quarrel as yours. My remarks in your issue of day on the football question have' caused considerable discussion in athletic circles. It is admitted that much of what has been written has had but very little real bearing on the position, and players tell me that while they do not altogether agree with all my contentions, or with the reasons I have given for a falling-off in the interest in the winter game, they are not unmindful of the service 1 have done all players by the references in this column to the game. I am afraid that it will now take more than paragraph-writing, or even letterwriting, to galvanise the game—this season. What a set of savages some of the Clive folk must be, to be sure ! The constable whose dog was undoubtedly poisoned as an act of revenge is a very quiet and painstaking officer. He will not tolerate open breaches of the law, nor sit at ease while he knows that wrong is being done in his neighborhood. Because of this conscientiousness Constable Kennedy has been " got at " through his faithful " poor dog Tray." The animated biped Avho would thus kill a dog by administering poison is fit for any meanness—perhaps worse. A decision, I believe, has been arrived at, after much consideration, as to the style of house which is to be reared on the site of the Masonic. It is said it will lead all New Zealand in the matter of not only size, but in the modernity of its arrangements. It is to be three-storied throughout, and much of the present wooden building will be removed as the work progresses, so that there will be very little of the original Masonic. It is not always wise to accept the stories one hears from the man in the street, or even which one sees in the newspapers, but I have just had a story told to me which has been referred to in a local paper concerning the owners of private stone quarries here and the Corporation overseer. The story runs thus: —" A considerable amount of metalling was to be done on the streets of the borough, and it was noticed that the quarry which is worked by the hard labor gang from the prison was being levied upon. A number of men who have worked away and prepared road metal in their quarries with the hope that the Corporation would some day purchase it, went and complained to the Mayor. They were referred to the overseer, and that gentleman at once said he would use none other for his road works while he could get the prison quarry stuff. Another sort of protest was next entered, this time to the authorities in Wellington, when up came an order directing that while men who were dependent upon the sale of road metal from their quarries for a living had supplies on hand, none was to be delivered from the prison quarry. Thereupon the overseer swore by his beard that he would not put a barrow-load of stone on the streets and he ordered the carting of shingle from the beach." There is only one way in which to characterise such a paltry way of spiting men who are anxious to make an honest living, and I trust the Mayor will see justice done in this as in other matters. Mr Turnbull sat on the Bench at the Magistrate's Court this morning. Two first offending drunkards were dismissed with the customary rebuke. Patrick Beresford, charged with the theft of an overcoat, valued at £1 los, the property of Blythe and Co., was remanded till Monday next to enable the Police to procure the necessary evidence. John Heslop pleaded guilty to a charge of purloining a suit of clothes valued at £2, the property of Thomas Parker, and was sentenced to a month's imprisonment with hard labor. John Allardice and Charles Tiewes were charged with stealing from a tent pitched on the river bed near the Town and Suburban racecourse, 2 shirts, 2 pairs socks and other articles to the total value of lis, the property of , Henry Pritchard. It appears from the evidence adduced that Constable Kutledge arrested the accused on the Pukatapu cutting. Allardice was . wearing one of the shirts when arrested and the other was found in the swag of Tiewes. Allardice stated that he bought the shirts off two swaggers for Is 6d, but this the Bench refused to believe, imposing a sentence of 14 days with hard labor in each case. Allardice is a boy apparently 16 years of age and Tiewes a foreigner. They came from the Wellington districts.