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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 101, 29 April 1879, Page 2

Mr J. Steward, master of the Tamumu I*?, 00 ]* ne * r W «P awa > Napier, has been fined £27 7s, including costß, for using undue aevent7 to one of his pupils.

The New York World's estimates of the shipment of American wheat to Europe i during six months previous to March Ist, and of the amount yet retained, are interesting. Taking its estimates as approaching correctness* they give us caase almost to wonder at the great strides this country has made in competing with other nations in supplying bread for the hungry of Europe. Its estimates are that we have, in six months previous to March, shipped to Europe /5,000,00tf btisheis, reducing flour to the bushel measure; and that we have yet , 45,000,000 bushels for export. Of the amount shipped, 32,000,000 went to the Continent, and 20,000,000 to Eugland. Reports are that the promises for the coming crop are not very flattering. . Accounts from Great Britain and Western Europe ate tailed indifferent; while the progress of tie plague excites alarm, and if it progresses westward td any consideraile extent, it must inevitably cut off from European markets much of the supply usually reeeired from Russia. It seems, from £ll ttte circumstances, that American wheat will not want for a Market. There seem to be some a&'e' y6u"ng ruffians down at Christchurch, judging froth' iu± fsl lowing telegram which is dated from the City of the Plains :-A lad named Taylor obtained the first prize, a platedtea service, last night at Ikiner's Diorama. After leaving the theatre j and passing through the right-of-way neat the tiiiiet office,- he \vas set Upon by three boys who robbed him of the articles and got away. The French Republic have adopted a new crest, a laurel wreath with d dart of gold, in place of the ancient bird which led ftome, and Napoleon, and fortis Etruria to victory. The eagle ba3 had a long history as a military emblem, and it seems almost a pity that the Republic think fit to change srich an honorable and martial symbol. One man described to me his night of peril — twelve hours in the water clinging to the masts, after a day of great labor, beat about by winds and waves. One of their number was washed away. "We threw him a rope and would have . lashed him to the mast, but he was too weak to hold on." " How did you feel when you saw him going down ?" someone asked " Oh, I did not mind much, for I thought we must all go soon. I. did not believe we could hold out long, for every time the wave3 rolled up we had to duck our heads under water so as not to be swept oft." He stopped talking for a minute, as if it was more than he cared to think about, and then he said, " But that man was the only single man among us. He had no wife and no children, and that, I believe, is the reason he conld not hold out. I think it was ray wife and my home that kept me alive that night. If I bad not remembered them I should have let go many times." — Elleswortb, Me., letter in Boston Tramcript. It is only fair and just (says the Auitralasian), to presume that New Zealand Ministers know what they are about in running about from one to another great native meeting, all of which seem to end in nonsensical futility, and with no effect save a very increased sense of importance to the native stump orator who has arranged them. We sometime ago drew attention to the extraordinary proceedings at some of thesfe ifteetings, where the Premier, Sir George Grey, waa reported to have gravely made speeches which read just like pages out of the novels of Fenimore Cooper and the rhapsodical orations of Hawkeye or the Last of the Mohicans. Recent papers give accounts of " the great Parihaka meeting," which, we are told, as an item of novel intelligence, "proved a complete fiasco." The particulars supplied indicate the shape the fiasco this time assumed. It seems that some thousands of natives assembled to see a prophet named Te Whiti raise the dead and remedy at a stroke all of the grievances of his people. Instead, bawever, of doing this, Te Whiti delivered an incoherent and mystical harangue, and the meeting was over. Regrets were expressed for the absence of the Native Minister, but Mr Sheeban did not arrive till the meeting had ended, when he, too, had an interview with the prophet, by whom he was snubbed and insulted. Really, constantly taking part in savage absurdites of thi3 sort hardly seems the way to maintain the prestige of Government in the minds of the native race. And now we are told by a later telegram that the Governor is to be taken to another" great King meeting" accompanied by Sir George Grey. Sir Hercules Robinson is not likely to be taken with his eyes open into a position in which he would necessarily be made to look ridiculous, but it is impossible to repose the same confidence oa the discretion of his constitutional adviser, Sir George Grey. It is sometimes said, Justice is blind, and that British magistrates are incorruptible, but the following paragraph from the Sydney correspondent of the Burrangong Argus, a new South Wales paper, would indicate that even Justice, although she may be blind, has a soft side: — "In future, if any of your readers are, unluckily, engaged in a lawsuit in any of the country towns, all they have to do is to get the Judge to stay at their domiciles and they are right. Such was the course adopted by a suitor, in five cases, and he got them all. If Justice is blind, she ien't insensible to good hospitality." The number of visiting, or rather nonvisiting, cards delivered in Paris this new year were 7,449,000, as compared with 4,680,000 last year. These cards are transmitted in unsealed envelopes for a halfpenny. " iEgles " writes in the Australasian :_ The death of the Rev. Hugh M'Neile, lately Dean of Ripon, recalls to the memory of some people in Melbourne his splendid pulpit oratory in his church in Prince's-park, near Liverpool. His " presence" as a preacher has, probably, never been surposaed. Erect in figure, bis pulpit was cut low, so that he stood as much out of it as in it. His bold, clear-cut face, olive in complexion, was crowned with snowy locks, which suggested a halo. I shall not readily forget one — of many, sermons — I heard him preach on the Sunday after England rang with the glorious tidings of the battle of the Alma. Nor was his platform speaking inferior. He waa a thorough-paced politician, and at many a crowded meeting in the old Amphitheatre the brilliant canon swayed his audience with a power which stamped him as a fearless leader of men. He was a graceful horseman, perfect in seat and dress, and constantly rode a dark brown hackney which might have cost three hundred at Tattersall's. To cheat the parson is one of the meanest kinds of theft. Imagine Splitrail, Tussock, Spinifex, and others now comfortably settled in life and with growing families, attending a District Ministerial Committee to secure the services of a spiritual overseer. Strainedwire nominates the Reverend Mr Milk-and-water, and proposed that his stipend shall be £300 a year. Carried by acclamation, and spiritual operations commence. A year having elapsed, the pastor sends in his resignation, and then the committee find the stipend is in arrear, and no money in hand. Someone proposes that the committee should make up the deficiency. But Speargrass, who is a clearheaded disciple, and sharp as a needle, discovers that the guarantee to the minister was not in writing. He considers it very un-bosineas-like, and, to show his resentment, forthwith resigns his seat on the committee, blandly declining to pay any money. One after the other his fellow members follow his noble example, and then the meek Mr Milk-and-water discovers in a moat touching way through bis empty pocketa the influence of hip moral teachings during the paat year in a rich pastoral district.— Auttrahtim.

1 " "' '* The Queenilandw saya :— The childliker and blsad Chinese hare of late betaken themselves to the manufacture of spurious gold. It consists of a granulated alloy of sitter coin and gold, to which the true gold colour is afterwards giren by attacking the granules with boiling nitric acid. It requires a very experienced eye to detect the impossition. The alloy is worth £1 16s per oz., and it having been pretty freely mixed with the ordinary gold, worth on an average £4 per oz., some heavy losses have been already made by gold-buyers. At a marriage in Dunedtn a few days ago there were 1? carriages; the horses were all dressed with white saddle-cloths and white gloves on their ears. The coachmen and postillions were resplendent in white favors, gloves, ribbons &c The Burlington Hawkeye has noticed that from the time a boy is eight years old till he is thirteen, he devotes two solid hours of every da^ of bis bU3y life to learning how to make a new kind of noise. The Patent office Is tbtte spoken of by the Auckland Star:— The Patent office is to be reformed. The Government, as we gather from 1 a Wellington telegi^ m » has , ita «8| e eye otf that department ana ™ 11 ?ho™y propound d scheme, for", it* fe©rganu. ation - Any step in thai dfrectfon in t!ne'. egfotW condition of th<= Patent flSffee at WeflfngSeH would best take the shape of reforming the thing off the face of the earth. It is ©we of those things no fellow can understand, it was forrtied dpoti the antiquated model of the great Circtfmlocatfon or How-not-to-do-it Office, wbifeb the hte Charles Dickens so trenchantly satirised in "Little Dorritt," and it has been presided over for some years past try a sitigulaF living likeness to the ideal yoitog Tite Barnacle Ferdinand of the great novelist. The primafyjrlan upon which the New Zealand Patent office waa established was the collection of fees, and this idea has bec'n so 1 ingeniously expanded, worked oat, and complicated, that the office is one puzzling labyrinth at fee's; vrnteb baffle and amaze the most skilful and persistent explorer of official mysteries. The officers oi the department live on fee3, and their appetite grows by what it feeds on. The applicant for a patent is beset by a maze of forms, plans, and fees, which increase in geometric proportion as he proceeds, while the officials are lying in wait to trip him up if he vary but so little as a barley-corn from the prescribed number of inches in the length and breadth of plans, or a line in the forms, and then the unfortunate is compelled to begin de notio another weary, heart-breaking, and exhaustive battle with the demon of fees. In the words of Barnacle Ferdinand to the ruined patent seeker Clennam in the Mar-' shalsea. "It is there with the express intention that everything shall be left alond. That's what it means. That's what it's for. No doubt there's a certain form to be kept up that its for something else, but it's only a form. Why, the offices were nothing but forms. Think what a lot of forms you haze gone through, and you have never got nearly to the end." We have heard of Clennams in New Zealand, and of indtances in which polite Tite Barnacles were always willing "to find a fellah" that would be able at a moment's notice to construct plans, in triplicate of course, with all the requisite forms, and the precise nnnmber of inches of red tape, for a consideration. It is high time the Government turned its attention to the Wellington Patent Office.