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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 41, 15 February 1873, Page 4

Mr Cop-piN*, of the Melbourne Theatre, recently received the 1 following amusing letter from Heller. The letter was dated October 29, and was written on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer Travaneore, on the voyage from Singapore to Bombay: — "Have you heard' the last npws ? I've jusfc got letters from E. P. Hingston, in which he fiivps concise evidence of the fact that poor Heller died of cholera at fiea, ou his way home from China. In Ceylon it was all the talk, nnd a gentleman at the Lanaham Hotel, London, wrote to E.P. all the particulars. This gentleman was one of the pnf*sengers on the ship, so that I am afraid the report must be true. Poor Heller ! Well, I can't tell bow much I am interested in thp sad news. He was the nearest relative I ever had, and he always treated me as if he could not do enough for either of us. From earliest infancy — earlier— he became intimately connected with my affairs, and in the ups and .downs of life has always risen with my up?, and done the best he could to keep afloat when the indications of position were contrariwise. He was a good fellow, take him all in all. He would take all he could get — no more; therefore you can well understand how I loved him. He ate my bread, drank my soda and brandy, wore my clothes, spent my money when I had any, and when I hadn't, he spent somebody else's that was fool enouah to let him. But it is all over now. He's gone. The trouble lam in personally on account of this mat fpr — i.bia certified rpport — is something difficult to explain, for to the best of my belief I am as well and as lively as- I ever was in mv life — in fact livelier. What does it mean ? I have asked everybody ou the ship who! am. They all declare it's irne. I ask ifl look like a wandering defunct? Tbey say, No. Ooe man in the second-class-was kind enough to observe, Ihat if I was dead as reported, I was about the healthiest looking old corpse he had come across. Hence there is but one solution of the mystery — the report is not true; it can't be, and I won't torture myself any further at present, but wait patiently for further proofs of hie — of my — of somebody's deceaep, which wiil doubtless be made kaown to the world during the progress of the present century."

We find the following in the leading columns of the Neio York fVo?ld: — "Here come the English twelve cricketers, who play as ' gentlemen amatuere. ' It is asserted on the authority of their own scorer, and not denied by anybody, that Mr Grace, the famous batsman who plays with them, receives £25 for every game he playf-s in. In England, also, Mr Grace is paid for plnying in matches. He is still claimed as an amateur on the ground that he has another business, or at least; other other means of living than the game he plays so well. But nothing is clearer than that a player who receives money for playing in a match is, quoad that match, a professional player, and it is deceptive and unfair to call him an amatuer. Either the English defination of an amateur, or else the sporting morality of English cricketers clearly needs revision aad improvement."

A Scientist has at last- solved the ancient problem. '"Can an Ethiopian change his skin ?" This is the way he proposes to do it: The candidate will flrst be subjected to a bath of alkaliue water. Having been well cleaned, he is placed in a room where a reliable thermometer indicates 120 degrees of Fahrenheit. After 15 minutes baking, tbo partially cooked victim is conducted to a bath ot Chlorine water, at the ordinary temperature. The heat has opened all the pores, so that the chlorine flows in and reaches the colour ing matter. To close the pores, the subject must be introduced into an ice cellar where he spends ten minutes in absolute agony, but relative bliss, for the next step is to drop his exhausted form into water heated to ,180, degrees. In this tbe pores open, and the chlorine grapples the: colouring matter- and departs with it, and our coloured brother is coloured no more. -„,...,