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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 245, 7 December 1880, Page 2

Another debtor at New Plymouth has teen offering to square accounts by fighting his creditors* There iB a rongb. and ready bluntness about people dp there which has a charm of its own. Jesse Phillips had a fire in his Btore; and then Jesse failed. Nothing cou' ; d. be .more natural. £esse met ( his creditors the other day, and one creditor, who perhaps never " goes to meetings," had the cbolness to put an uncivil question to the debtor. Jesse could hot tolerate impudence from 4, creditor, a man whom he had taken into his confidence to the extent of using his money, and thereby making a bosom friend of him. Said Jesse :— " If you meant to insinuate that, ray store was not bbrnt down by accident, I'll punch your nose, sir ; that's what I'll do for you, dr any other man." The creditors were reduced to a proper frame of mind, without tTosse being compelled to bleed them in that way in addition to the other kind, of bleeding. The chairman, a meek man, said Jesse was the most impudent bankrupt he had ever met, with one exception. Jesse did not reply : he was top indignant • but perhaps he settled with the chairman outeide. — Patea Mail. The San Franciscfo correspondent of a Northern Contemporary writes :-A short time ago a forking man was buried by his family with the pomp and show they love so well to display here. The corpse dressed in a brand new suit of black cloth costing ninety dollars* and the usual handsome casket, which is a long box the same shape all the way down, thus differing from the old fashioned coffinj with a glass top from the waist upwards, was laid in the grave with three other members of the family. A few months afterwards tho four coffins were taken to a new burial lot) and, tb the horror of the relatives who viewed the ceremony of removal, the last body had been stripped of the 90-dollar suit, and was perfectly naked in death, the coffin being lately broken. There have been several similar instances of grave robbery of late years, whioh, iudeed,< behoves the living not to waste such ridiculous sums of money on finery for the dead, which only excites the cupidity of the wretches who, it seems, make a practice of robbing the dead. The London Economist says hundreds of thousands of sheep, if not millions, have died of the plague in England, and the Russian, Turkish, and Afghanistan wars, as well as those of Turkey, Syria, Persia, and the Tridan country, have caused tens of millions of sheep to be killed. In fact, wool growing in Turkey, Kussia, Persia, and Indit has been almost given up on account of the wars and the low prices current for the past five years. A good story, in which Hon Pihama ie the central figure, comes from Hawera, and is thus told by the Wangauui Herald. When the A.C's were stationed at Oeo, at Honi Pihama's homestead, -he informed the authorities there that the Constabulary were not to touch any pigs beyond certain boundaries, as the pigs there belonged to the I natives scattered abroad. But in his own paddock, about 500 or 600 acres in extent, enclosed by a wire fence, the men could huut and kill at their pleasure, which they did to their hearts content, and with great profit to the men's table. Honi thus got rid of the enemies of his sheep and lambs, and pleased our men. The second chapter now comes to hand. A few weeks since a polite little bill for so many hundred pigs at so .much per head is forwarded to the powers that be " for piga killed and taken off my farm at Oeo by the Armed Constabulary." Without any ado the bill is paid, and with this money, for aught we know, he Is now buttering the feet of Te Whiti. In coining 20,000,000 dola in silver and 23,000,000d01s in gold at the San Francisco Mint, in 1878, there was lost- only 29d015. The carpet, which had been down five years, was taken up last spring, cut up into small pieces and burned in pans. The debris was put through the same process as the. mining dust, and there was got from the old carpet 2500d015. A short time ago, a shire council in Tictoria adjourned for lunch, leaving eighteen envelopes containing deposits accompanying tenders lying on the table. When they came back the envelopes and their contents bad disappeared. All efforts to clear up the mystery have proved fruitless. A young artist who lives in a boarding house wants- to know how he can learn/ to play the violin without disturbing the other boarders. Soap your bow, young man, soap your bow and bathe the strings twice a day in sweet oil. Then you can sit up all night and play overtures, and nobody will mind it. Proctor says the ocean contains about 9,500,000 tons of water. This tallies with our figures the last time we weighed it, but there have been several heavy rains since. — American paper. Pur.eh gives the following as an example of self -sacrifice :— Boy (to lady teacher) : " Teacher, there's a gal over there winkin at me!" Teacher: "Well, then, don't look at her." Boy : " But if I don't look at her, she'll wink at somebody else I " The following advertisement is from a Canadian newspaper : — " Will the gentleman who stole my melons last Saturday night be generous enough to return me a few of the seeds, as they are a choice variety." The greatest hail-storm ever known recently prevailed at Stevens Point, Wisconsin. Hail-atones from blx to ten inches, fell, arid covered the ground from four to eight inches deep, killing thousands of sheep and other animals, and turkeys, geese, and prairiechickens. According to the Fiji Times of the 16th October, Levuka was almost on the verge of famine, through the quarantine of a vessel containing provisions. It says:— Should the quarantine of the Gunga be a protracted one, Levuka. will be reduced to. the most unpleasant strait it has known for many a day* Butchers and bakers are alike at their wits' and their supplies' end. Mr Page informs us that, depending on the sheep on board the Gunga, he has not pro*, vided himself with a supply of cattle, and a few days will throw the town on to preserved .meats; while the bakers hare not. only exhausted the usual monthly Btock of flour, but have bought up all in the bands of the storekeepers, and but two days' supply remains. The only resource is biscuit. The market is bare of vegetables. Yams cannot be procured for love or money, and a few kumulas represent the entire stock of tubers. If the quarantine continues Levuka will present the novel spectacle of a community starving in, the midst of plenty, and lodgings on board ttie" Gunga, even at the risk of infection,,will be at a premium." The Australasian says that Mr Vallance has disposed of his share of Mata to Mr H. Prince. There's a Government clerk in Melbourne (says the Sydney Bulletin') who is as baldheaded as a Lachlan codfish, and being asked the other day why this was thus, he replied that be didn't know, but he thought he'd lost his hair by allowing so many young Berrys to step over his patient head. The Melbourne Argus publishes a list of the officers whose services have bee.n dispensed with in the Customs Department, together with the amount of their individual salaries. 'The dismissals number 85, and the salaries represent a total of about £20,000. The vacancies created . have, in every case, been filled up by the appointment of persons already in the department, and a re-arrangement of the working staff has enabled the work to be conducted efficiently without extra assistance being required, ... - - Ciarkapn, who made over £50,000, in the Shotover Claini, at iho Thames, was lately working as a miner in one of the coal pits at Newcastle, N.S.W.

During his sermon on Sunday evening (says the Ky.ueton Guardian) Mr 11. Bell, M.L.A., in dealing with the injunction in : the first Psalm to avoid the ways of the ungoldly, came, by a very natural transition of • thought, to speak of the Victorian Assembly. 1 He said ho had bden warned by his friends I tbat he could. never retain his religion if he : went to Parliament, but be had found grace ' to preserve him, and now he believed that if ; the Lord thought fit to flend him to the i " gates of hell," He would give him stif • ' fioient grace to occupy the position. Mr Bell i did not say, but he left it to be inferred, i that the one position could not be much i worse than the other. This is somewhat i worse than Dr Wallis, who did not get further than to describe his fellow legislators as •' rogues and trimmers." A correspondent Writes to a contemporary from Ban Francisco i— Seven hundred Mongols have just departed for the Flowery Land, 1 to the great joy of those who love them not. 1 These are men who bave worked and accumulated money during tbe summer and harvesting, atid nW} possessed of some 200 dollars pet head, prefer taking & trip to visit their friends to staying here without work, and being cdmpeiied to lite on their earnings Large suras of money were transferred by other Mongols to their distant relatives through these men, with a singular and remarkable confidence •, the fact of their belonging to certain tribes being guarantee for the safe disposal of the forwarded property. There is no diminution in the Chioese population. As they migrate, another shipload fills up tbe vacant placesj Their disgusting habitations have lately undergone a compete investigation and cleaosiDgj in consequence of the small-pox breaking out among them. The epidemic is mild in form, and has exconded beyond the pale of Chiua Town, without, however, any serious results. Vaccination is compulsory at this season, which looks like alarm among the faculty. The Mayor of Sydney and the Herald have received from the Irish Land League cable messages, asking them to publish the fact that the Lord Mayor of Dublin has opened a subscription through Freeman's Journal in order to secure a fair trial for Mr Parnell and tho others about to be prosecuted for participation in the land agitation. The trials will commence immediately, and the expenses of the defence will be enormous. Similar cablegrams have been received in ; Melbourne. Fred Grace, says a London eontemprriry, was, as it were, to the manner born. Before he was ten years old he knecked down over a dozen wickets on Durdham Down with as ' clean bowling as any one could wish to see. . Strange and terribly easy are the exits of this life, and a damp bed has killed one whose life was full of the brightest promise. As showing the advantage of having a dock, it may be mentioned that the German warship Hyena, which recently refitted at Auckland, Bpent no less than £7000 in the place, a considerable portion of which went in wages to the working classes. In the Native Lands Court at Napier the Chief Judge took tho opportunity of telling tbe old chief Renata that the old style of war was even preferable to going to law about their lands. "Yes," said the chief, "the lawyer is the gun that costs the money." An amusing story is told of a local preacher, who, when a boy, had committed- some offence for which his father decreed as a punishment that he should be excluded from tfhe family table on Christmas Day. When the young delinquent passed by the kitchen ; and saw the great preparations that were . being made for the feast in which he was not to take a part he took his punishment to : heart and felt somewhat chagrined, but nevertheless was determined not to be without a joke on that festive occasion. He accordingly contrived to obtain secret access to a veal pie, on which the cook had exhausted all her skill. Having gained her confidence, he carefully removed the cover of the pie so as to avoid any mark of fracture or disturbance, proceeded to take out the greater part of the meat, and filled up the dish with a quantity of grass, replacing the cover as it was before. On the company meeting the dish was, of course, served up to them in the state in which our young joker had prepared it. The young wag's father, after some ceremony, broke open the pie, and his surprise may be more easily conceived than described. In his indignation he stirred the grass about with his fork, which encountered a small slip of paper, on which was written, these words, " All flesh is grass." Special attention is called to the pricelist of the Rodanow Manufacturing Co., of Boston, U.S.A., published in these columns. All those wishiDg to secure an excellent and correct timekeeper are recommended to address themselves to this old and reliable firm No further evidence of the invariable good quality of their manufactures will be required beyond the following fects: The firm was established in 1849, and since then has gained prize medals at the Exhibitions of London, Parip, Vienna, etc., for excellence of manufacture. They are appointed, by, warrant, watebmakers to the Queen of England, Prince of Wales, the Emperor of Russia and the Bey of Tunis. ,