NEWS AND NOTES

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2447, 29 June 1922, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES

In commenting on the solar eclipse whch will be observed in parts of Australia on September 21 next Professor Cooke told the Grafton correspondent of the Sydney Sun Jliat a few minutes after three o’clock the moon would he just alongside the sun, almost touching it. Before nine minutes past 3 o’clock the moon’s edge would go across the sun. For the next hour people would simply see the black moon over the sun. “Your next thrill,” he said, “will be when the eclipse is complete. During the eclipse everything will be still. The fowls will go to roost. A weird wind will blow' towards you. Then that shadow will come rushing at you at a speed unimaginable, and just at a moment’s notice you look up to see one of the most wonderful events iu the total eclipse. In that wonderful, magnificent event the corona forms a completely dazzling halo of glory flashing round the sun.” Curious slips at inopportune moments have not infrequently endangered the dgnity of solemn occasions. Whatever festivities may attach to a wedding breakfast, or in these days the more fashionable wedding supper, the religions portion of the marriage ceremony is always invested with a solemnity proper to its devotional nature. But even here humour will sometimes obtrude. At a wedding which was solemnised in a leading city church the other day, states the Otago Dai-ly-Times, the officiating clergy made a. slight mistake in the number of the hymns, and, found that instead of the familiar “Voice That Breathed O’er Eden,” they had been asked to sing, “Courage Brother, Do Not Stumble.” The timely intervention of a watchful organist averted what might have been an awkward situation, and the congregation eventually lent their voices to the more appropriate words. Wearing the blood-stained coat • of his master, win.) lay in the'bush with a broken thigh, received in a fall from his horse, a faithful dog returned ten miles home and brought assistance to the injured man. Alfred Hackett was out riding in the Nettle Creek district, near Grafton. N.S.W., when his horse fell and rolled on him, breaking his thigh. The horse galloped away, and Hackett lay helpless on the ground in the lonely spot, with his dog as the only means of bringing help. With mute understanding that his master was in trouble the dog ran about yelping excitedly. Hackett calmed the dog: then the idea occurred to him to tic his coat round his canine friend and send him off for assistance. At first, however, the animal failed to understand the part he was expected to play, but eventually he was scared by the whip, and raced away with his strange burden. That was at noon, and two hours later the dog led the relatives of the injured man to the spot.