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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 33, 7 February 1879, Page 2

W I I HI J !*— in ~m~ "Whereas, dresses with trains raise in the streets clouds of dust injurious to the public health, the wearing of such dresses in tbe street is hereby prohibited," says an ordinance just promulgated in Prague. A fearful catastrophe occurred at Glazier's Bay, Tasmania, lately. The hut of a man named John Grace caught fire whilst he and his wife were a short distance away, and their three children, who had been left inside, with the door fastened, were burnt to death. The eldest was four years old Fifty tons of granite are calculated by the American Traveller to have been sold in bits to our Transatlantic cousins as portions of Cleopatra's Needle. We clip the following from the Auckland Star:— Yankee ingenuity, which is inexhaustible, bas succeeded in inventing a new motive for the acquisition of Cyprus by Great Britain. To the eminently practical mind of American journalists, Earl Beaconsfield's object in securing a kind of great fever cemetery for a large portion of the British army was utterly incomprehensible. They '• suspicioned " that some sinister and mysterious scheme must be concealed beneath, and they set themselves to work to find it out. To an American journalist a mystery is as the apple of his eye; it is what a whisper of scandal is to a woman. The New York Herald has fathomed this dark enigma, and, with all the joy of a young hen over her first egg, it hastens to proclaim its sagacity to the world. Eureka!—" It is now whispered that Cyprus was acquired, less to obtain au overland route to India, than to secure the expected results of Captain Burton's auriferous discoveries in Midian and Hedjaz Continual and ample supplies of gold are essential to British supremacy. She has a single gold standard. She is the creditor of all other nations. All her vast transactions are made.in gold. The world's supplies of gold are rapidly diminishing. In 1862 they amounted to 220,000,000 dollars ayear. At present they scarcely equal a third of that sum. The world's stock of gold has greatly declined. Ten years ago this amounted to 2,500,000,00Gd018 ; it now scarcely exceeds 2,00t),000,000dol9, of which England possesses a third, and this she holds on to with a desperation that evinces her great necessity for it." Thus says the New York Herald and much more in the same strain. Of course the decrease in the world's stock of gold is easily accounted for. It i3 caused — tell it not in Gath— by the depression on the Thames Goldfields. This by the way. The Yankee writer, however, is ready to reason this matter out, and, of course, the conquest of Afghanistan is only another means toward the filling of English breechespockets with gold-dust from the land which gave a father-in-law to Moses.

A^n old Thames resident now living ib , Melbbirrne,- m at letter to a friend residing" 41 the Thdtifes,- afnd published in the Thames Stur aays :— " Tori cannot instill a policeman here more than to fltefltion the word ' Kelly.' o,'rii New Year's night a number of the ' happi'S' Vere enjoying thems'feltes in the customary ruafiitefv aud' ontJ of them stole a barber's pole. He tfriu arrested by the guardians of the peace, who" enfEed him soundly. A man iu the crowd said * These chaps should be after the Kelly's,' and foor or five of the police pitched on him and gave him a sonnd hammering in the middle of the crowd. Policemen here do pretty well as they choose. Just fancy a Thames policeman hammering a man in the middle of Brown-etreet for telling him to go and catch I Winiata 1 On New Year's Day I took a trip j to Sorrento in the old Thames boat Golden ; Crown.- which is a great favorite here. The j Williams, another old Tname* trader is on the same line, running in opposition to the Crown. Everyone hefe has * Kelly on the brain/ as the present mania is called. The papers sometimes sell three or foor extras just now, and pttotographs of the Mansfield victims aud the gang ate all the rage. Jem Mstee is still carrying on hfs boxing saloon, and I hive seen some prize lights there with bare fists, arid the so-called glove fights are nearly as bad, as the combatants' fists arc merely covered with the kid gioves. In a flght between Larry Forley and Peter Newton, 4S rounds were fought before the police stopped it. Both men were considerably damaged. Mace's hall is licensed, and he has just had the license renewed. I don't think such proceedings would be allowed in New Zealand, and from the fact that Mace is well patronised, it would seem that the present laste of the Victorian public is very much depraved." Several million bushels of grain are annually converted into spirituous liquors in the United States.