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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 54, 4 March 1878, Page 2

A Hobarton paper chronicles the death at an advanced age of Mrs. Elizabeth Cole, who was well known, and whose name is inseparably connected with the early history of Tasmania. Many years ago the deceased and her husband and family were attacked by three desperadoes who had escaped from Port Arthur, and who had become bushrangers. The chief of the outlaws had knocked down Mr. Cole, and was about to murder him, when Mrs. Cole picked up a carving-knife and drove it through the assailant. In recognition of this heroic conduct on her part, the Government granted her 100 acres of land at Little Snake Island. A Boston journal thus refers to marriage aud its effect on longevity : — " A job to coax bachelors out of single blessedness, and to decrease the stock of old maids by an increased demand for wives, may be iuvolved is some statements made by the London Review in regard to the relations existing between marriage and longevity. Old maids and bachelors, it says, rarely attaiu to extreme old age, and then it tells of people living to extraordinary ages by wedding a a dozen times or so ; while Jacob Jay, of Bordeaux, died in 1772 at the age of 101 years, having laid seventeen wives in the grave, and Margaret McDowall, a Scotchwoman died in 1705 at the age of 105, having wept at the untimely demise of thirteen men, whose names she had borne in rotation. Thus far the Review does not put an extraordinary tax upon one's oapacity for bolting a tough morsel, but the strain is rather severe when it goes on to speak of a pair named Eovin, who died in Hungary in 1741, the man aged 170 aud the woman 164, leaving a tender youth 116 years old to bewail his orphanage, and reflect on the strength of that tie which held his parents together for 148 years. The New Zealand Trades Jo.xrval learns from correspondents that hundreds of young girls are engaged in sundry factories in Dunedin, who are employed at nominal wages for twelve or eighteen months, and then discharged, and fresh hands taken on in their places. By this means the girls are unsettled for other means of obtaining their liveliuood, while they have failed to learn enough of a business to enable them to gain a living at it. The probable consequence of such a system need no expounding. As a means of checking the growing evil the journal quoted suggests that a Female Trade Society should be established to take cognisance of this and other matters, A Mrs Stiney who keeps an hotel at Salisbury Beach, has commenced a libel suit, setting the damages at 10,000 dollars, against a temperance paper called The Word of Truth which denounces her as " a woman more debased more degraded than any being siuce the days of Potiphar's wife." The paper further spoke of her hotel as " one of the breathing holes of hell."— New York Times. <' This," says the Ballarat Star "is what our Germau friends in South Australia think of Mr. Berry and the Victorian crisis. We translate from the Australiscfie ZeUung (Australian News) of the 32nd January. In a leading article it states :— ' We have very often had occasion to draw attention to the wants and usages of the Parliaments of the Australian colonies. The crisis which at the present time has broken out in Victoria demands that we should put the following question — What can a constitution be worth which makes it possible for a colony that has been until now prosperous to become all at once reduced to a state of anarchy aud confusion by the destruction of order and morality with an unsparing hand, which ruins the peace of a nation, overturns everything that has existed, aud under cover of constitutional freedom, tyrannises in the worst form in human society by introducing a communistic revolution, where ouly a war of parties and the gallows are wanted. The writer then goes on to state that the turmoil has been caused because Mr Berry cannot obtain 4300 per annum for his followers, and censures Sir George Bowen for his complicity in aidiug Mr Berry to bring about this sad state of things."