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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 902, 27 December 1870, Page 2

At the headquariers at Meaux tlie King occupied the front. Count Bismarck the back rooms of the Arch-, bishop's Palace. The apartments of the Count were on the ground floor, and looked out upon the extensive gar? to the rear of the Palace. The

16th September, had been a very busy day to many of the Prussians, and not least of all to the Count. He was riding all .day, and in the evening he had a long conference 'with the King. Tired with these different labors, he hastened, when he reached his room, to prepare for bed. He had Hcarcely, however, begun to undress himself when he heard a rustling among the bedclothes, and found there to his astonishment, an infant not more than four weeks old. On looking closer, he found by the side of this enfant trouvt the following note-- :c My husband fell at Sedan ; I have nothing to eat. Despair forces me to part with my only child. It has been baptised Vincent." Nor doe* the story end here. The unfortunate mother committed suicide The matter is said to have reached the ears of the King; and -orders were given that the desolate infant should be sent to Berlin. Was ,«ver a life more lamentably begun ? The execution of Mrs Waters, which took place on Tuesday, Oct. 11, {says the Leeds Mercury) has closed the career of one of the most wretched criminals known to the calendar of English crime. The story of her life as she told it before her death is as sad a history as any one can care to read. In her early years, and even up to the time of her husband's death in Glasgow in 1884, there was nothing to foreshadow the miserable life which has terminated beneath the gallaws. She was well educated, in a wider sense than is often understood by the term, and as long as her husband lived she stood before the world with an unblemished character. No sooner, however, was she left to her own resources than she wasted the money which she realised from his effects, and sank rapidly from one degradation to another, until landlords and money lenders mado her life a perpetual struggle for existence. In time all that was loveable in the woman seemed to have been withered up, and the helpless babies which she took under her .charge excited neither pity by their sufferings nor sorrow by their death. They were simply so many victims which the laxity of "the law had enabled the sinful jaiiJ the wicked to place with her, and we need no;, wonder that she was less feeling than the mothers that bore them. After the payment of the adoption fee the parents had no more thought of the jcniiilren which had come to them through a life of shame, and to Mrs Waters they represented only so much money and an ,e vrly death, with a grave on the nearest dunghill. The law has been slow to vindicate itself, and even now it has only done so in part, for the companion who aided Mrs Waters in her nefarious work, .day by day, is simply undergoing eighteen mouths' imprisonment for conspiracy to defraud. So far as Mrs Waters and Mrs Ellis are concerned, we have now done with them, but there is much to be done before the terrible system of which they were the representatives can be crushed out The immorality of Loudon is fearful, and we have not yet fully realised the horrors of the systematic infanticide of which it is the centre. The Medical Press says :-r-There is something in the belief that tight boots produce weak eyes. Since the newfashioned boot worn by ladies has come iiiif.) use, we have been consulted for a weakness of vision, which we found at j&rst difficulty in accounting for, being nnable to detect any condition of the eye to cause this disordered vision, or to trace any constitutional disturbance likely to provoke it. A mother, wise in her generation, asked if the tight boots worn by her daughters might not produce the distressing symptoms complained of. To this we assented, and upon the tight boots being dispensed with, discovered that the cause of the mischief must have been removed, for the injurious effect upon the eyes ceased. However disposed ladies may be to wear the high-heeled boots of the period, which throws the foot forward, and tends to compress it in a narrow space; and however anxious they may be to imitate Lady Hester Stanhope, whose foot betrayed a fioyal race, for water flowed beneath the instep, this we tell them, that the localised paiu suffered from compression of the foot, and the consequent production of corns and buuions and swollen toes, are nothing to be compared to other symptoms which pressure provokes, and which may be recognised in the unsteady look about the eyes, $9 peroetual winking of the lids, and the

contracted brow, so indicative of apj roaching weakness of sight; and we now teach them that, at the expense of a neat foot, they must not injure their eyesight. In the Supreme Court at Wellington a few days ago bis Honor the Judge drew attention to an anomaly in the way jurors are paid, that looks very much as if there had beeu great hurry or great, want of reflection in framing the act. His Honor pointed out that while jurors in criminal cases are paid from - 3s to 8s a day for their attendance, civil jurors, who are drawn from exactly the same class receive 10s for each case on which they sit ; so that it might happen, if the cases were short and the chances of the ballot placed a juryman on three or four consecutive cases he would reeeive 30s or 40s for a day's attendance. This would be a windfall to a needy juror out of work and a resident in the town, but to a juryman who lived some fourteen or fifteen miles out of town, and whose chance compelled him to hang about the Court three or four days without being balloted in any case, so" that he would receive nothing, this would be very hard lines indeed, In the case of special juries, each of whom received his pound per case, the chance of having to serve two or three days in listening to the windings of a tortuous case, it does not so much matter, as these jurors are drawn from the supposed wellto do classes.