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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 161, 10 July 1868, Page 2

The Argus of the 25th ult. gives an amusing notice of the first appearance of a new member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, Mr T. Cope, who delivered his maiden speech on the previous evening, and did so with such a peculiar intonation, such a copious shrinking of 'h's' in uncalled for places, as fairly set the house in a roar of laughter. Mr Cope begun humorously, by observing that in the course of the debate on the Darling grant they had been carried back to the creation of the world and on to the crack of doom, And over all things between. They had had the * hark' on ' Hararat * for ' hall ' the ( hanimals,' and they had also had the 1 holive branch.' They had had ' Holiver Cromwell ' to ' hinterfere.' There was he (the hon. member said, 'Here I ham'), however, to carry ' hout ' the purpose for which he had been returned to the House by his constituents — an object, of course, as dear to him as the ' hair he breathed.' But the laughter these oddities of pronunciation occasioned were greatly increased when he proceeded to say that he knew the late Sir Robert Peel would not have taken a certain course had he been a member of that Assembly, and to state that he made that assertion from an intimate acquaintance with Sir Eobert Peel, based on the fact that he (Mr Cope) had been born in the same town as that great statesman, and had lived within 20 miles of him. Madame Anna Bishop is giving very successful concerts in Melbourne at St. George's Hall, and it is stated that her Voice shows no symptoms whatever of decline. Quin on being asked by a lady why there were more women in the world than men, replied, 'It is in conformity with the other arrangements of nature, madam; we always see more of heaven than earth.'