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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue IX, 16 March 1874, Page 2

Subscriptions were being collected in Auckland on behalf bf the workmen in the iron trade recently locked out in Sydney. A Hen Revenged. — An Essex street man killed a hen that belonged to a neighbour. The neighbor made no demonstration. But he went round among the juveuiles, and told them that the one among them who could say " Shoes and socks shock Susan " four times running, without mistake, would receive two dollars from the hen killer. So they went up to his house, in the guilelessness of childhood, and filled the hall and the stoop, and crowded the jard, nnd ma le up their minds they would earn tbat two dollars or die. Aod they sailed in, and tho man tried to drivo tbem off, but couldn't; anu then he went upstairs, but they followed him. The air resounded with "Shuwack, sneozen, socker," with hideous variations in tbe shrillest of voices keyed to the highest pitch. In vain the victim appealed for mercy with ink bottles, nnd hot water, and mustard boxes. His arguments were unheeded, and his cries were unheard, and be finally scaled a fence and fled, pursued by wbat he was firmly convinced were a score of demons. The hen was avenged. — Danhury Aeics. A laughable story comes from ono of the Courts of Common (cays a London letter,) Two costermongers claimed individually the ownership of a donkey, and as tbe case was one calling ior friendly arbitration rather tban judicial interference, the presiding judge recommended the suitors to go out into the yard and settle the matter between them. His Lordship's kindly meaning seems to have been misunderstood, for in the course of half-an-hour or so the "costers" returned into Court, one of them with his eyes blackened and his face cut and bleeding, and the other in a state of excitement betokening the authorship of his friend's injuries. The Judge learnt, .when it was too late, that his advice had been accepted in its Wbitechopel sense, dnd that the two men had belabored each other until one of tbem resigned the donkey to save his own person.