GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2383, 24 January 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

A short time before a war memorial to municipal employees was unveiled at Croydon Town Hall, unemployed demonstrators created a scene. Some of them appeared in fancy dress, one representing the mayor, and another the town cleric. Speeches were made outside the town hall complaining of the inadequacy of local relief measures. After the singing of the Red Flag, the mock mayor disrobed, and his garments were burned in the street. A 'French banker named Delisle had a narrow escape from two bandits who tried to chloroform him in a taxicab. He had dined at Montmarte with a friend, who to pay the bill pulled out a poeketbook stuffed with bank notes. When they hailed a taxicab to drive home, two young men who had been in the restaurant asked permission to share the cab, as they were going the same way and were in a hurry. The banker agreed. Soon he noticed a strange sickly smell in (lie cab, and he smashed a window. He then became unconscious. The chauffeur pulled tip, and the Hvo young men were captured. They said that the sight of the bank notes made them decide on (he robbery. Among the wonders of the won-der-ship Aquitania, of the Cunard Line, are the gardens with their 3,000 blooms scattered in. various parts of the ship. They are in charge of Mr Charles Riuier, a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society. “I have had wonderful lilies during the last three journeys to New York and back, and now I am getting chrysanthemums,” he told a Daily Mail reporter recently. “I have also got Scotch heather, and during the summer had roses, rhododendrons, and geraniums. In my garden lounge you can sit at small tables, as you do in a garden in the country. I have proved that the theory that flowers do not thrive so well at sea as on land is wrong.” A woman sailing in the Aquitania for New York a few weeks ago, held the following conversation, by the aid of a man with a megaphone, with her grand-daughter on the quay at Southampton, as the vessel was leaving:—“What have you done with grandmama’s spectacles?” the man bawled with the megaphone. “She savs you took them from the piano to play with, and you are a naughty child.” A leather-lunged official on the quay put his hands to his mouth and answered, says she gave you them back.” “She didn’t,” came the answer. “All right,” came from the quay. “She remembers putting them on the piano again. She will send them on to you.” “Good-bye, Effie,” shouted the megaphone man. “Good-bye, grandmama,” was the reply. A thousand west-country, folk attended the 20th annual Devon and Cornish Festival at the Central Hall, Westminster, S.W., a short time ago. Among the dainties sent from Devon and Corwall to the feast, were the following:—1,000 pasties containing meat and potatoes, 2,000 “splits,” 2501 b. saffron cakes, 1001 b. “nobbies,” and 2001 b. of Devonshire cream. “Nobbies” look like rock cakes, and contain saffron, while “splits” are buns cut in two and spread with jam on which is placed a layer of cream. West-country songs were sung at the afternoon concert, and in the evening the “exiles” forgot for a little that they were in London, with the las lie of pastry in their mouths and the sound of Devon and Cornish voices all about them.

Two men who had quarrelled over the payment of a£2 grocery bill stood in front of a Brooklyn grocer’s shop and blazed away at each other with revolvers until both fell, one dead and the other dying from wounds. When the xiolice arrived the street was deserted except for the duellists. The. dead man was Vincenzo Cummo, 35 years old. ■Antonio Bartatlan, 2(i, is in St. ■John’s Hospital with wounds in the chest and abdomen, and is not expected to recover. He is charged with homicide. Bartatlan’s sister Dora was arrested and held on the charge of aiding the escape of another brother, who is believed to have’ taken part in the battle. According to the police, Cummo owed the bill to Bartatlan’s father-in-law. Louis Caruano, a grocer.