GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 2033, 25 September 1919, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

For selling unlit tomatoes (o a blind fruiterer, Percy 'Backhouse, a Hull fruit merchant, was recently fined £3O. He placed the man’s hands on sound tomatoes only. “A dirty trick,” the magistrate, called it. Having in mind the large number of cases of bigamy required to lie tried by him, Mr Justice Darling stated at Surrey Assizes, Guildford; —“My experience on this circuit is that if a man-leaves his wife for a time lie will find when he returns that she has committed bigamy.”

A Scottish west coast missionary, Mr Angus MacXeill, and his wife, died within four days of each oilier, and have been buried in the same grave at Tarbert, Loch Pyne. During his married life of 40 years, iMr MacXeill had been transferred from one place to another no fewer than 42 times.

On the quay at Como, Italy, a visitor i'ouml two shoeless hoys playing at marbles with pearls. He collected the pearls ami handed them to the police, leaving the hoys sufficient money to buy real marbles. The pearls, which formed a beautiful and valuable necklace, were found by the boys in a neighbouring forest,- The police arc now trying to liml the owner. Mines may make good targets for stone-throwing boys, but around the Orkney Islands they will be lot severely alone in the future. A lad who scored u bullseye from what he thought a safe place on a cliff was thrown into the air and badly injured when the derelict mine he attacked blew up. The-side of the cliff was blown away by the explosion. The Abbe Poulain, Cure Eglise Trinite of Paris, true to a vow which he made in 1914, recently set out to walk to Orleans. When Joii're started Ids counter-offensive on the Marne the abhe promised that he would make a pilgrimage on fool: to the shrine of Jeanne d’Arc at Orleans if France emerged victorious from the war. Consequently the day peace was signed saw the übbe, in spite of his great ago,‘setting out upon Ids pilgrimage with ’ a light heart and a vigorous step. I 'understand, says “The Clubman 15 in the Fall Mall Gazelle, that the inhabitants of Havre, where the first of the old and gallant “Contemptihles” landed in those fateful August days, intended to erect a suitable monument at the entrance to the harbour to their memory. The Havrais more than any other section of French people, seemed to have imbibed British manners, and I should say at least twenty per cent, of the population can speak English more or less fluently, lam told that over 2,000 of the young ladies of Havre have married British soldiers. , *