GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2178, 18 September 1920, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

A performing seal, awakening an attendant, war? the lirst to give the alarm when a lire broke mil at the Palaee Ballroom, The building was gutted, and the dancing hall, which has held 0,000 people, and was considered to be the largest in the world, was destroyed. The damage is estimated at £60.000, but the rents and protits are covered by insurance. Unable to agree with his mother-in-law. George Finton, an engineer, was ordered to leave her house at Guildford. He went to Newcastle, and established a new home. His wife refused to go there, and not having heard from him, sued Tor desertion. -She said that in June he appeared and kidnapped the baby. The Bench arranged that if he returned the baby to the wife he need not contribute to her maintenance so long as she refuses to join him. A 17-year-old girl, who had been looking in vain for a situation as governess, was praying in a Paris

church,' when she was approached by an aged woman who said she was a widow in comfortable eireumsl ahees, and would like to adopt her. The girl, rejoicing at her supposed good fortune, went to her room and brought her luggage, which she look in .a eal> to (he address the woman gave her. The woman asked her inside, and said she would pay the cabman. The girl waited and wailed, and then Avenl out: into the street and found that her “benefactress,” the cab and the luggage had disappeared. “Ferguson is much to blame for having stopped the lift at all, for it was no part of his duty to llirt with a housemaid,’’ said the 'Westminster coroner, at an inquest on George William Double, a young lift .attendant at Whitehall Court, who was killed by falling down a lift shaft. Alfred Ferguson, another lift attendant, said 1 hat Double came into his lift to pass the lime. He took the lift up to the sixth floor, and lowered il so that he could speak to a housemaid who was in a tradesmen's lift. Double left the cage. A little later he heard shouts, and found that his friend had fallen down (he lift shaft.

Scented notepape.r is the newest key used to unlock jealously guarded business doors. The general manager of a large wholesale market calls the method “the latest manifestation of the alert post-war commercial mind." “In my case," lie says, “the buyers get the letters first —and buvors are a body not

over-given to encouraging new blood. They are apt to lie conservatively content with those who are comfortably established iu their ‘ring.’ But a letter in feminine handwriting on puce nutepaper delicately scented got through the ‘ring.’ It reached me, and to my astonishment I found its information distinctly worth while from a business point of view. A semblance of romance is not always iimeparal.de from bard commerce.’’