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Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1631, 24 November 1874, Page 438

The following item from the New York Weekly, contributed by “ Josh Billings,” is of interest. In the original, the author follows his usual eccentric style of spelling which we have taken the liberty to correct“ For fear that I might forget it, let me mention here an incident of my travels : I lectured at Grass Valley and Nevada, and left there for Placerville by stage, and must say the ride across the mountains at this point is one of the wildest, not to say the roughest, that I ever invested in. During this trip we hauled up to a little shanty tavern on the road, and while the driver was treating his horses to a drink I stept into the hotel, and found two old men there, either one of them sixty-five or seventy years of age indulging in that aristocratic game known to all the literati as “ old slede,” I watched the greasy game for a few moments, and upon the entry of the driver I was introduced to one of the players, whose whole wardrobe was not worth one dollar and seventy-five cents, and who looked like the tail end of poverty and despair. And yet this man was probably the most interesting one to look at for five minutes that is now living in the United States of America. His name was James Marshall, and he is the first man who discovered the gold in California while at work in the wheel-pit at Suter’s mill, on the south fork of American river, El Dorado county. The state of California pays him a pension of one hundred dollars a month, for life, and this lasts him about two weeks, and he lives the other two weeks on the drunken glory of being the greatest discoverer of the nineteenth century. Who can ever compute the splendid fortunes, the ruined hopes, the intrinsic values, and countless woes, this vagrant opened to the world?” Under the heading of “The Royal Tigers,” the Wanganui Chronicle says : The gallant 65th, which bore the above familiar name, and the badge of the first cousin of the king of beasts, was quartered so long in New Zealand as almost to acquire the condition of colonists, and very many of them took their discharges in the colony and settled down in the different provinces of the North Island. In Wanganui and Rangitikei districts, to say nothing of Auckland, how many hard working and prosperous settlers have we not, who formerly shouldered arms and stood at case or at attention in the ranks of the regiment named. And not a few shed their blood in defence of the Queen’s flag, in the various “ scrimmages ” of the New Zealand war. At Rangiriri in particular the “ Tigers ” were conspicuous, and on many other occasions they faced the “ imminent deadly breach,” or swept with levelled bayonets the savage foe from their open field. It will no doubt interest many in Wanganui to hear the latest news of our old friends, who are now serving in India, under the colonelcy of an officer who will be particularly well remembered as Captain Blewitt, who not only served well with his regiment but did something as a Rangitikei stockowner and quasi settler also. We clip from a Tasmanian contemporary the following interesting notice of the gallant Colonel and the brave “Tigers”:— “ Colonel Blewitt, of the 65th Regiment, at present stationed in India, has recently had certain statistics prepared by his Adjutant respecting the state of the regiment. From the table thus issued by authority of the Colonel, it would appear that there are 250 teetotalers in the regiment, and some 620 men who drink more or less alcoholic beverages. Amongst those who drank in the last six months ending in March, there were five who died. Amongst the teetotal section, none, Amongst the moderate drinking section there were twelve men who lost rank in the regiment mainly in consequence of strong drink, but amongst the teetotalers there were none who lost rank. There were thirty-nine who lost their good conduct badges amongst those who drank moderately ; not one among the teetotalersColonel Blewitt is so pleased with the result in his regiment, that he very strongly recommends that teetotalism in the army should be more encouraged than it has , hitherto been.”

An extraordinary and melancholy death is recorded by the Bendigo Advertiser : " The deceased, a young man named Vincent Courtney, arrived from England some two years ago. As soon as he had become settled he wrote to a lady, a Miss Hyde, to whom he was engaged before he left England, to join him here. The lady arrived by the steamship Durham, and the pair were married by the Rev. Father O'Cornell. On Thursday morning the deceased rose about six o'clock, and, whilst dressing, he was attacked with a violent fit of shivering, and became speechless. He pointed his wife to a neighbor's house f and, by his gestures, evidently wished her to send for him. This she accordingly did, but upon the arrival of the neighbor he had expired. We are informed that the grief of the lady on finding herself a widow in a strange land was indescribable, so much so that she has become almost insane. The deceased, who was twenty-four years of age, was well connected, his father being a merchant in Drogheda, Ireland, and he has a brother a surgeon in the Indian army." The same paper reports that the jury, in accordance with the medical evidence, returned a verdict that the deceased died suddenly in syncope, from enlargement and dilation of the heart. The deceased was a very sober and steady man. The Sanitary inspector of the Nantwich Rural Sanitary Authority recently reported on the horrible state of the cottages and their inmates in the villages of Ridley and Bulkeley, West Cheshire. At the former place generally pigstye, shippon or closet joined the dwelling, and numerous complaints were made of offensive smells. Referring to the size of the cottages he said that in Ridley the majority have but one bedroom, and this of but very small dimensions. The room was generally taken out of the roof, and it was often only possible to stand upright just in the centre. If sickness entered these cottages the sick and hale had to lie down together, and when death came, the living and dead had to repose side by side. In one cottage he was iuformed 15 children had been born, and the same number had, with their father and mother, occupied one of these small places. During the wedded life of the parents, they told him four adult corpses besides the bodies of several children had been laid out in that one room, and the wonder and fear of the children going to bed at night at the " mystery," from which they were only separated by a thin sheet, was described to him, and might well be imagined. At another house he found that human beings had slept in a small room with a corpse* Families of ten and'more he had heard of as being reared iti small rooms like those he had described. The board discussed the subject, and the state of the cottages will at once be brought under the notice of the landlords.

Mr Adam, the Immigration Agent for Otago, was in the extreme north of Scotland in July last, and writes to a friend in the Bruce district an account of his more recent travels. Travelling from Lairg to Tongue, Sutherlandshire, he writes:—" On the road the coach stopped and picked up an elderly gentleman who had been angling. On seeing him I said to him, ' Come up beside me ; I want somebody to talk to.' The gentleman smiled, and said, ' Well, I will do so ;' and, as we were the only passengers, we talked away about twenty things during the three hours we were on the coach. Once or twice I wondered at some things and people he seemed to know, and as he had previously said,' I see you are a public man, 1 I was so persuaded he must be a public man himself that I said,' What is your name, please?*'John Bright.' 'What,' I said, ' the great parliamentarist ?' I said that I was glad I did not know him at first, as I should not have been so free and easy with him; but that I was proud to hava been with him on the journey to Tongue, and arranged with him to come down to my lodgings and I would shew him a large number of beautiful photographs of Otago scenery and public buildings." Mr Adam spent some time with Mr Bright, but his report of their conversations is not very entertaining. "He seemed," says Mr Adam, " to know all about the public men of Sydney and Melbourne, but I had to give him some idea of Mr Vogel and others. On showing him photographs of the runs and stations of Mr Stafford and Sir F. D. Bell, he asked me very playfully " How those gentlemen looked after being knighted?'" The " German News " of Berlin describes a lively scene which it states occurred at the Leipsic railway station in Dresden lately. One evening several young gentlemen entered the waiting-room of the station preparatory to taking their places in the train starting for Leipsic. One of the company, still very youthful, seated himself very unconcernedly on the bar and paid his most devoted addresses to the barmaid, who, however, did not seem to relish his compliments particularly. One of the waiters stepped up to the young gentleman and requested him civilly enough to take a chair, which, however, he refused to do, telling the waiter to mind his own business. The landlord was called in, and told the young man to descend from his perch, or he would be pulled down by main force. To this the youth in replv threatened to box the landlord's ears, and on the proprietor of the restaurant attempting to lay hold of the young man he received a blow which almost stunned him. This was the signal for the waiters, who rushed with one accord at the stranger, and having thrown him down, beat him most unmercifully. The public, who bad been

indignant spectators of the young man's conduct, assisted at his castigation conspicuous among them being a cattle • dealer, who made liberal use of a thick stick. The police at length came to the rescue of the prostrate youth, who then informed the officers of the police that he was no less a person than the heir apparent to the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. He is studying at the University of Leipsic, and had come to Dresden on an excursion.

JOURNALISTIC ITEMS. A libel case—Gilfoy v. the late proprietors of the Wanganui Chronicle—has come to an untimely end, the defendants, at plaintiff's urgent request, having permitted him to withdraw from the action on his undertaking not to bring another. The case appears to have been a very ridiculous one —the plaintiff, who had nothing to lose, having taken umbrage at the publication of a telegram read in evidence by a solicitor in open Court—the publication of which was of course privileged. The Cromwell Argus, of the 24th October, makes the following apology to its subscribers for its non-appearance : "We were compelled to omit our last Wednesday's publication, as our supply of paper has completely run out. A new stock has deen lying at Westport for the last month, and there it will remain unless the weather is such as to enable the boats to make another trip. If the store-keepers will kindly assist us with the loan of some butter-paper we shall be able to give two issues next week, but without their aßsistence this cannot be done. We would assure our subscribers that it is through no fault of ours that the present irregularity has occured." Editors do not usually appear as defendants in police court cases. They are ordinarily model observers of the law, practising what they preach, though—as human nature is frailty itself they sometimes break out into a libel now and then. There is no rule, however, without an exception, and an exception has occured in New South Wales. " The Hawkesbury Times," says a Newcastle journal, "has lately undergone a change of proprietors, and some vicissitudes in the typographical department as well. A 'substitute' halfsheet of the paper describes how that the late editor, Mr Delaney, having been re moved with the other changes, but allowed to remain temporarily with his family in the occupation of the upper part of the premises, amused himself, during the absence of the printers, in 'pie' making—that is, upsetting the contents of the type cases, and sundry ' forms' in a mixed heap, to the no small consternation of the propiietors, who, on arrival in the morning, had to force an entrance into the office, and found things as deseribed. This more than'Roland for an Oliver'return was to result in a Police Court enquiry." Some handsome premises have been erected as a publishing office for The Times, in Queen Victoria-street, London. The main elevation in Queen Victoriastreet is sixty feet in length, and upwards of sixty feet in height, from the street level, the central portion, which is surmounted by a bold and massive carved pediment in stone, Leing carried to a he : ght of nearly eight} feet. The building has a deep and specious basement, containing one large workshop, extending over the entire ground area. The materials used are red wire-cut brick, with yellow brick dressings. Each storey contains a range of nine windows, which are segment-headed. The entrance is at the west angle of the building, and is an ornamental feature. It is in carved stone, and circular in form, the arched heading being supported on each side by massive granite columns and bold stone cantilevers. The facade is surmounted by a projecting stone cornice four feet in height, and above this, in the central portion of the elevation, and extending across nearly two-thirds of the entire frontage, rises the pediment already mentioned. The carving on the face of the pediment is a reproduction of the design which has long daily appeared in the Times. In the centre a huge block of stone represents an open book, with the words "The Times" inscribed in large black letters; on one side is another open book, also carved in stone, having on it the inscription "Times Past," and surrounded by a profusion of oak leaves in full foliage and bunches of acorns, the foliage of the oak-leaves obscuring some portions of the book of "Times Past." On the other side is a third book closed, on which is inscribed " Future." In the central portion of the upper part of the pediment, over the carving just described, is a large and ornamental clock. The architect from whose designs the building has been erectced is Mr Deacon.