NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2585, 26 May 1923, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES.

Two out of three Te Puke flaxmills have closed down. This will mean putting: a large number of workers out of employment. A Masterton resident has received a postcard from Germany on which the stamps amounted to 180 marks. At par, this would mean £G 15s to send a single postcard from Berlin to New Zealand. “How does this compare with New Zealand?” writes a Palmerstonian now resident in Japan, to his father in referring to the bank rate of that country, which, he states, is G per cent, on deposits for 12 months, and 5i per cent, for six months. “If proportional representation has not received its death blow at the recent municipal elections in Christchurch, then the plain lessons of the elections—of confusion, unwarranted expense, informal voting, and undue preference received by candidates whose names appeared early on the ballot-paper—will have been overlooked by bewildered void’s, stales one of the candidates at the recent elections in Christchurch.

Sir Harry Lauder at Wellington told a story of a tramp who called at the house of a clergyman and asked him to spare him a piece of bread. The clergyman did so, but in handing it to the tramp said he did not do it for his own sake but for (he Master’s sake. “Then not for my sake or your sake, bnt for the Master’s sake put some butter on it” replied the tramp. A school girl was required to write 200 words about a motor car. She submitted the following:—“My uncle bought a motor ear. He was cut riding in the country when it busted going up a hill. The other 180 words are wliat uncle said when he was walking back to town, but I know you wouldn’t want me to repeat them.” Dr. 11. E. S. Stiven, the principal medical officer at the Govern men* Hospital, Port Said, gives an account in the Lancet of a perfectly white negro whom he treated. “His father and mother are typical black Sudanese,” w’rites Dr Stiven. “No relatives of his mother were abnormally coloured, and his father, by another wife, had all black children. His eyes are hazel brown, hair on head and body fair flaxen colour, and his skin perfectly white all over the body, but of a curious thick texture. He had a sister and a brother, both dead, who were white like himself. “Never speak ill of anyone, refuse to listen when anyone speaks ill of another, but gently say, “Perhaps this is not true, and even if it is, it is kinder not to speak of it.' ” Thus ran the text of a neat wallcard which the Auckland Education Board agreed to permit the Hamilton Theosopliieal Society to supply to schools in the Waikato district. “An excellent maximum,” commented one member, “and I suggest the sample be hung up in a prominent position in this board room!” The little tilt was greeted with laughter.