GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2144, 26 June 1920, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A strange story of tin* recent. Hood in the King Uoimlry is told. A Maori hoy travelling on horseback to Pio Pio was earned away by the current, his horse becoming entangled in the wire of the fence, and the hoy, reaching a widow tree a chain or so away. The horse ultimately freed itself and -AVam ■■'•lraiMil for the boy, who mounted, and after a hard tussle, got safeh through.

Some time ago a man was about

l.u be hanyed in <>m- of llii' outlying American St;ilThe sherlll asked him whotlu*f he would like lo address (he crowd which had asscmhli‘d lo waleh Iho ceremony. "Xo." said 1 lu. 1 condemned man, ”1 am md much of a speaker." Whereupon a member of Ihe crowd pressed forward and remarked: “Well, 1 should like to say a'Tew words!" “'This is a very unusual replies!," remarked the sheriff, “Iml il is really a mailer for ihe prisoner." Then, turning lo the latter, he 1 asked: ‘‘lio you object lo lids gentleman making a speech J” “No,’’ replied the prisoner, - '‘l don’t object;, but hang me first, please!"

In the possession of a sense of humour, General Birdwood is equipped with one of the chief {Traces of a public-speaker, and it ran like a thread of sold through his address a.l the Art Gallery (Dunedin) on Saturday afternoon(says the Otago Times). In describing the difficulties with which he was faced when men came up to him and said “Don't you remember me?” he recounted an incident which occurred in the north, when a man said to him: “Don’t you remember oire night when you were going round the trenches at Quinn’s Post, you came along and trod right in the middle of my stomach ?” “I could only say.” added the General, “that I was very sorry that I did not remember him,

but nuclei' the circumstances I must have made a much greater impression on him than he did on me.” Seventeen brotherhoods and unions of the American railroad workers have submitted to the United Slates Railroad Labour Board a detailed survey of wages, prices, and profits, which shows the combined corporations of the country as having earned net profits of approximately $4,800,000,000 (£900,000,000) more per year during 1910, 1917. and 1018 than during tlie three years prior to the beginning of the war.