LONDON TOWN TALK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 33, 7 February 1877, Page 4

LONDON TOWN TALK.

; . (.From the Argus Correspondent) I. have as yet seen in no London paper the very best bon-mot I have ever heard upon a public matter. How did. it happen that the late Arctic expedition came to miss the North Pole ? Because those on the Discovery, were not on the Alert, [Nothing, by-the-bye, has exoited more public indignation againae Mr Ward Hunt than bis rumored conduot towards the Arctic captains, r say rumored, beoauae I have not aeen it contradicted, and because it is characteristic enough to be trae*, Ha is .said to have reprimanded them for coming up to town without reporting themselves, and to have sent thesa back to their ships at Spithead. Now, though this may have lain within the strict lines of Hs duty, every (pan with an intelligence beyond that of a common policeman would have avoided^ under the circumstances, exercising such an act of authority. Moreover; in hie case, it ia especially "bad form," since no man baa made more mistakes, or cost the country so much as Mr Ward JSunt— not, indeed, by leaving his post, but by stopping in it. R.i The; case of the barrister accused of throwing his wife over the Stelvio I»aas has become a subject of much public iaterest. < The whola story was common talk enough this autumn among tourists i, in that district who had returned to England long before any legal proceedings were taken. And that the law was put in motion in the matter was owing, I am informed, to a well-known novelist, who being on the spot— and having, perhaps, a professional feeling for the romance of the adventure — caused the affair to be taken up. Of course it is freely stated lhatUm is not the first wife the accused has treated in a similar manner. . One would imagine, indeed* to hear some folks talk, that he had made a practice of pushing wives down mountain passes every long vacation (for he ie a bwriater); bpt.l believe that it is really true that iv addition to this present U-unpieassntnesß," he had th» misfortune to aboot his mother-in-law with a revolver ~ quite accidentally. The revolver went off, and the old Irdy happened to be within range, that is reaHy^ail," and even if it was not altogether aimless, she waa his mother-in-law, and some temptations are irresistible;-- •:- ■ ' -. : '' ■■ ■• ' Talking of shooting, a Jew has shot another Jew at Ramsgate, and 9 Hebrew gentleman baa written to the papers to. day. that such a thing has jpever before been heard of. A Jew may, have killed a Gentile or two a»es ago, he says, but for 200 years no Hebrew has ever suffered in England on a capital charge. I can only say cay that if this be so, the Jews—'judging from my own personal acquaintance of them— must have had great luck. Lately I saw one " 8.L." wrote that he thought it " highly undesirable " that the Jews should be considered better than other people, and pointed out that it was only 10 years instead of 200, since one Mr Levy, a Jew, was hung in your part of the world, namely, at Nelson, New Zealand,— for helping to murder " between twenty and thirty people,"— a very creditable endeavor, it must be confessed, on his part, to "restore the average." It is extraordinary how people besides those in waut of money still contrive to interest themselves in the chosen race. In a late will case in Dublin, a lady is proved to have spent vast sums in " facilitating the return of toe Jews to Palestine." How she did (his, except by paying their fares thither, ia not stated. She spent much of her ticae in copying the four Gospels in needlework, and an Italian duplicate of them, which ought to have been German, since it was in Berlin wool. Believing also, that after the resurrection the Just would be without clothes, she employed herself in making garments for them — but all of a Lilliputian size— -to enable them to make a decent appearance in public. Id the case of this lady Y will, a compromise has been effected, the jury thinking it an open question whether she was mad or not. 1 need not add that it was an Irish one. Some curious incidents have recently occurred in our competitive examinations. There is a gentieman-cadet at Woolwich, who, though only 16, and the youngest, in his batch, has passed 3000 marks ahead of any other competitor; but he is co short of stature that the authorities can only allow of his admittance upon his solemn promise to grow. He actually obtained the full number of mirks that it was possible to get in " obi^utory mathematics." B causr I have no love tor the Turks, I do not therefore wish it to be believed that I have any high opinion of the Russians. The late trial of Dr Strousberg — whose life is a romance of commerce Dot second in interest and splendor to that of John Law himself — proves how barbarous is that nation which is in the habit of calling herself "holy." The counsel for the Crown demanded a conviction upon the ground "that htroußberg was a German, and had btea a Jew, and the jury found every German prisoner guilty, and accquitted :e very Russian! It is fair to add that the Emperor has mitigated the verdict co far as to send Strousberg out of the , country, instead of to Siberia; but the Russian proper still stands revealed. To show the contrast between a civilised end savage country, we had an English Judge recently sentencing a foreiguer to half his due amount of imprisonment with the remark, " Had you been an

Englishman I ahould have punished you twice as much." He may have been wrong (I think he was), but he certainly erred on the right side. As for a " mixed! jury," I suppose the Russians could no more realise such an institution than they could imagine an official who didn't take bribes. It must not be supposed that all the failures of our diplomatic system take place at Constantinople. In a certain capital nearer horne — though still not so very near— there is an ambassador with a temper. To call him hasty is to use a very moderate expression indeed; only to counterbalance this he has an attache who is as cool as a cucumber. On a certain important occasion this young gentleman was sent for by his chief and directed to start for England on a critical errand. " Very good, sir; how am Ito go?" "Go? Walk, if you like; what do I care? " It was not a time to discuss a question of special trains, and besides that was a subject for another department. The cool young man took six weeks to reach whal is called in diplomatic jargon "the Court of St James's." Everybody thought he had been robbed and murdered, and his place only not filled up because it was of no consequence, Ha was summoned, of course, before the Foreign Office authorities, butstack to it that be had been told to :" walk if he liked," and be had walked. The "Portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire," purchased for £10,000, and stolen from the exhibition ia Bond street,;. is<. still advertised as missing. The advortiß6meht is stated by the cynical to contain three flaws. They don't believe — 1» That it was the portrait of the Ducheds; 2, that £10,000 was ever really given for it; and 3, that it, .was ever, stolen. This Js . worse than the commentary upon the usurer's sfatement that he was poor but honest — " two lies in three words."