"By Independent."

Horowhenua Chronicle, 24 November 1913, Page 3

"By Independent."

Cabled from Abroad. (Special to Sydney Sim). HA UNTED I , AH MHO U SE. A three-century old farmhouse at Ipstoues, in Stagordshire, is reputed to be haunted. The residents state that when they are going upstairs they feel a sensation like a breath of air pssing' and they also fancy that someone is walking , near them. A lady in one. of the bedrooms was suddenly pulled down to the floor by some invisible agency. Also the furniture moves about, and the doors cannot be kept shut. LYTTON'S EXTRAVAGANT WIFE. Lord Bulwyer Lytton's life has been written by his grandson. The volume demonstrates that though he was famous as an orator, notable as a politician, and renowned as a writer, his domestic relations were of the unhappiest description owing to the fact that he and his Avife were of opposite temperaments. Lady Lytton was beautiful aud clever, but was ill-disciplined, wayward and exacting, and lived at the rate of £'5000 a year when their income was only a few hundreds. Lytton worked hard with hit pen to make up the balance. He completed ten novels, two long poems, a political pamphlet, a play, three volumes of history, and innumerable articles for the press, besides doing his duty as a member of Parliament from 182r to 1837. The story also reveals his grand, mother's indiscretion before her marriage, and the critics question whether the biography needs de- ] tails of such brutal frankness. ' TAPPING WIFELESS. New York, November 1(5.

Mr Whitman, the New York District Attorney, has confirmed a report which lie recently obtained regarding , the stealing of wireless messages by a clever gang. The confessions involved statements that payment of graft for police portection had been made to a civilian, a high authority in the police headquarters, a police inspector and (wo police lieutenants. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars were apparently obtained by the swindlers, who work~ed on similar lines to the old wiretapping plan, and who gave ten per cent of what they made, and a retainer of £500 a year, to those in authority who allowed them to praciiee their nefarious schemes George McCrae, the leader of the gang, who confessed, said that in one period of a feAv months a Chicago woman was fleeced of £80,000. The police were warned beforehand of the swindle, and that ii; was going to be carried out, but no arrests were attempted, and officers would wnii outside the building where the crooked deal was taking place and would collect their commissions immediately.