NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 981, 20 April 1911, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

A remarkable case of carelessness on the part of a contractor came before the Bruce County Council at its last meeting (says the Otago Daily Times). A letter was received from the contractor, who stated that when he sent in his tender for one of the Council’s contracts he was guided solely by an advertisement he had seen in the Bruce Herald. This contained no reference to twelve chains of cutting and filling that were in the contract, but of which he had known nothing until six months after he had signed it. He considered that, in the circumstances, “between man and man, the Council had a right to pay him extra for these twelve chains.” The Council, however, took a quite different and somewhat unsympathetic view of the situation. “ If he has any claim,” suggested the chairman, “ he might refer to the Bruce Herald, probably.” The letter was merely received.

A Yorkshireman who was converted by the Mormons and became a priest of the sect has returned from Salt Lake City, disillusioned, to Pudsey. This man went to Utah with his wife and daughter. Speaking the other day of his experiences on the way out, he said : Aboard the boat were some hundreds of Mormons, bound for Utah State, Seventeen of them were elders, and all the rest, with the exception of about ten or a dozen, were women and girls from all parts of Europe. Conduct worse than unseemly took place between the married elders and girls at night, and all the precepts about virtuous living and self-ab-negation, so stringently taught in England, were cast to the winds of the Atlantic.” As to the practice of polygamy in Utah, this expriest says : “ A man is, of course, allowed to have only one State recognised wife ; the others are celestial wives— ‘ wives for time and eternity.’ The only difference is that the ceremony is entirely an ecclesiastical one, supposedly binding in the eyes ot the parties concerned, but not in the eyes of the civil authorities. Some of these ‘celestial wives’ have families nevertheless. I have met numerous polygamists who are quite open about it. It is only over here in England where anyone thinks of denying it.”