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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 246, 8 December 1880, Page 2

There's a girl in Kansas only nineteen years old who can knock a squirrel out of the tallest tree with ber rifle, ride a kicking mustang, help " round up " a herd of cattle, and ride down a jack rabbit, and yet the jhcal paper Btates in tones of surprise ancl a little anxiety, that ff she is not married,"

Mr Proctor has addressed the following letter to the NZ. Times, from which it will be "seen that there is no probability of bis paying Nelson another visit : — When I was last in Wellington I stated that I should probably return and deliver two or three lectures here. In like manner at Christchurch and Dunedin I mentioned the purpose i then entertained of returniug and giving such of my lectures as I had not delivered during my stay in those cities. In each case the kindness with which I had been received caused me to desire to revisit scenes where I bad had such pleasant greetings ; and in each case the wish to return was father to the thought that 1 probably should return. Indeed, I planned my future course so as to include fresh visits to Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales^ where I had already been most kindly welcomed, and a visit to Queensland,, where I have not lectured; and now never shall. For I find that two feelings — home sickness and a sense (which has always been strong with me) of the irksomeness of lecturing—grow so much upon me that I am at last compelled to assign an early date for tbe close of my lecture work I have decided tb let the course of lectures 1 am to give at Auckland (ending- December 24tb) conclude not only my colonial lectufes> but my lecturing career. This will have lasted eleven yearsj during which time I shall have given 1123 lectures in all, 6 01 out of Great Britain, and of these 116 in Australia. In saying tbat I have received as kindly a greeting in Australasia as in America, I should have thought three months ago I was saying all that could be said, for I can hardly express my sense of the kindness and genial warmth of my reception in tbe United States and Canada. But New Zealand bas certainly gone a li tie a-head (she could not [ possibly have gone far a-bead) even of America, Australia, and Tasmania in this respect, t shall always retain tbe warmest recollections of the kindness of my welcome in tbis colony. A peculiar smuggling case is at present before the Melbourne Courts. According to the Argus the parties concerned are a lady and a gentleman holding a high position at South Yarra. The gentleman was a paßsenger from London by ibe mail steamer Cotopaxi, which arrived here about a fortnight since. The Customs officers noticed that a case in bis cabin . waß not sent on deck with bis. other luggage. When he went to clear his luggage he was accompanied by a lady without a jacket, but after visiting his cabin sbe was seen to be wearing a handsome sealskin jacket, and to be carrying another on her arm. The officers also visited the cabin, and they then found that the case had been opened and emptied. The matter was re ported to tbe Commissioner of Trade and Customs,, and the same evening the gentleman was waited upon at a ball at Toorak, and asked for an explanation. This was to the effect that the jackets were second hand. They were, however, given up to the officers, and upon being submitted to an expert, one was declared to be quite newj and of the value of £70. Mr A. T. Clark, the Magistrate, fined the lady and gentleman £100 each, but as tbey had declined to pay this amount in structions were given for their prosecution. The Brassey family in England must, next to Mr Vanderbilt} be almost the largest holders of securities, other than real estate, in the world. Their father left them over £6,000,000 in personal property, and they do not own more tban £20,000 a year of real estate. The. increased, duty on foreign grain which. the Victorian Ministry propose will, if carried into effect, practically exclude New Zealand oats from the market of the sister colony. The amount of the duty at present is .a shilling per hundred pounds, and it is proposed to double this. Tbe proposed amendment in the Victorian Land Tax Act is expected to increase the revenue from £123,000 to £900,000 a year. The maximum rate of a shilling and the minimum of threepence an acre will remain as at present, but the number of classes, will be increased', Tbe retrenchment scythe in Victoria is now in full swing. Tbe President of the Legislative Council, the Clerk of Parliament, and tbe Clerk of Assembly, have each been docked £200 a year, v tbe Speaker of the House has been cut down from £1500 to £1300, and the Chairman of Committees from.£Booto£7oo. An Australian contemporary notes the cutting of a gigantic eucalyptus, felled in the Dandenong Range, Victoria, that had attained the height of 300 feet. Small change should be plentiful in Wellington for some time to come, as the Bank of New Zealand received no less than fortyfive boxes, containing £17,000 in Bilver coin, by the steamer Te Anau, the other day. The examination of tbe accounts of the Wellington Hospital reveals some curious facts. It costs about £6000 a-year, and contains some 80 patients. The butcher's bill for the month is £48 , firewood, £13 ; 300 bottles of lemonade were drunk in 25 days, in addition to the liquors represented by a "grog bill" of £28; a quart of milk per day appears to have been consumed by the patients, at a cost of £34 a month. The only inexpensive thing is the funerals of the patients, which cost only £2 19s. Amongst ! the chief remedial agents used, "tinned, lobsters." " Worcester sauce,'' " prunes,"; " currie," " peaches," " jams," " chutney," and " green peas " prominently figure. Twenty thousand men are daily employed' in various parts of the Caucasus in endeavoring to check the plague of locusts. The last sayings of dying men, (writes the author of " London Town Talk " in the Mel-, bourne Argus) have always had a great attraction for their fellow-creatures, and few ; sentences bave moved the hearts of England . more (the heart that beats quite outßide, | " the clubs and drawing-rooms ") than those scratched by Michael Smith when shut up and doomed to death in Seaham coal mine, upon his tin water-bottle. "There was forty of us altogether at 7 a.m., some were singing j hymns, but my thoughts were on my little Michael " a child whom be had left ill at home. "Oh dear wife, God save you and the children, and pray for myself. Dear wife, farewell. My last thoughts are about you and. the children" — and very proper, subject for a true man's last thoughts. An Auckland Mormon has been placed, says the N.Z. Herald, in a somewhat similar fix to that in which Dr Cuoimihg once fell, j when he predicted the end of the world in 1886, and at the same time took a 21 years' I lease of his London residence. The Mormon is enthusiastic on the dogma that the world is to be wound up in 1890. He has also 8 property in the market for sale. A timber merchant, of a theological turn of of mind, in the city, offered to buy the property at a price equivalent to ten years' purchase. The Mormon a3ked tbe would-be purchaser "if he thought he was a fool? n . The latter retorted, " No ; but be hoped he was not a rogue," and if the vendor knew the world was coming to an end in 1890. the price offered was a fair one. It is needless to say tbat tbe sale has not been effected, and that the Mormon prefers possession of ;the property to having the courage of his opinions. The Southland Times says: — ".Invercargill is acquiring notoriety us the home of bogus Reform Associations and sham patriots. It was agreed at a late meeting to send ' petitions for Mr. Shanks' resignation through the district in sets— one for the Premier, one' to Sir George Grey, and one to His Excellency .1' What these high personages, 'are. to 'do with the petition - when they receive it, and whether Mr. Shanks is expected to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, in event of his refusing to resign, by the united- exertions of the three, we do not pretend. to conjecture. Rabid hatred of Mr. Shanks on the part of a few individuals, and chagrin that, after the hopeless collapse of the great Grey party, he had seen fit to assist in carrying on the government of the country, seem to be at the bottom of all this silly furore."The Press of Thursday last says :— By way of bringing into control the dusky prisoners on Ripaflsland who had determined not to carry in their food to tbe ward occupied by them, and who declined to do other and sundry duties required of them, they were sentenced to an abbreviated bill of fare, of which bread and water formed the only attractions. They are on this diet at present, the sentence being for three days, and its salutary effect may be inferred from the fact that whereas before they had refused to eat roast beef and . potatoes unless carried in to them, they now ; find no difficulty in fetching their frugal meal, and. .cau eat it apparently with-thanks,

A young English actor named Stratbmore recently dropped into a fortune of £80,000. It is said that Patti is fond of billiards. She got used to the cue on the stage, we suppose. A man asked a one-armed organ-grinder if he was a survivor of the late war, and the organist replied : " Hang it, do I act as though I was killed in it ?" An indefatigable mamma, who succeeded in getting off seven daughters, bas opened a class for the instruct ion of young ladies in tbe art of husband catching. It is called the " School of Design." At a bazaar in England £10 was given for a rose which had been in the fair grasp of the Princess of Wales. Shakespeare nays that " a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ;" but it may be added that " a rose by any other hand would not Bell as high." _ One of the most remarkable operations in dentistry ever recorded, was performed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, recently. A boy, who had been out for a drive, was descending from the carriage when the horse gave a vigorous whisk of his tail, twisted the end of a hair around one of the boy's front teethj and pulled it out so quickly tbat the lad bad hardly time to feel the pain. A good child complained that ber catechism was too hard j and seriously inquired if there were not some kittenchisms for very little girls. The fashion among youf girls in London, says Truth,, is to walk and dance with elbows akimbo, while the lower part of the elbows and hands wave about and propel the rest of the body i ieet, owing to the high heels, are of little use. Formerly, no people had greater ease and grace in moving than English women. The local flaneurs and retailers of small talk generally (says the Auckland Star), will be disgusted to learn that the "Bertie Sayerna" trouble has, after all, been removed from the arena of legal disputation. Mr Hurst's wounded feelings have been assuaged and ample reparation has been done to the credit of the scion of porcine aristocracy. The artistic treatment ol the animal bas been shown to be merely the outcome of an uninspired desire on tbe part of one of Mr Hurst's employes to improve and heighten its appearance, and was not resorted to as a means of hiding defects. Tbe owner cannot be charged with connivance in this novel process of grooming, nor had tbe chief, operator anything to gain by it. "All's well that en3s well," and Bertie Saverna may consequently re-enter his style with the consoling reflection that he is no longer suspected of dishonourable practices. This amicable settlement of tbe matter is the result of a voluminous correspondence, of which the lawyers, as usual, supply the bulk. A Dresden lawyer, named Senkirch, is reported to have solved the very difficult problem of inventing a " control apparatus" as he calls it, which will make it impossible for cabdrivers to cheat tbeir employers. The apparatus was recently fixed to a number of Dresden droschken, which were driven all day about the streets, and returned home at night with a most exact register of the business done during the day. The apparatus is said to record how many single " fares," and how many double or more "fares" bave used the cab, how far they have travelled, what hour and minute of the day and night eacb person has entered or left the cab, whether each person or party his hired the cab "by tour or by time," and how long and at what period of the day the cab has stood empty. A costly cradle is that in which is rocked I the infant Princess of Spain. Of the form of an open shell, it is made of polished ebony inlaid with silver. The curtains are of silver | gauze, enamelled with white veivet flowers, the coverlet of white satin, on which are embroidered in brilliant colors the arms of ; Spain." One lady grandesse of Spain, stands I at the foot of the cradle during the royal infant's slumber, to watch the precise moment of her awakening ; another grandesse stands at the head armed with a huge feather fau to chase away the flies. The_ Royal Spanish crown, which is in silver gilt, and hangs in front of the cradle, is the work of Froment, the great Parisian goldsmith. The cost of the cradle, without the hangings of fine lace and the garniture of marabout feathers which surround it, is estimated at 7Ooofr. Some time ago the Otago branch of the Anglo- Jewish Association Wrote Home complaining of the visits of the Sheluchim— begging- messengers from the Holy Land — Avho it is said "drain the sources of real charity." The Jewish Chronicle (London), commenting on tbis communication, gives some information regarding the Sheluchim. which we have no doubt will be news to most people. It says : — " A messenger sent to collect money from his co-religionists in all parts Of tlie glCbe, for a presumably beneficient object, invariably receives forty per cent of the sum bo raised, and travels, wherever his will leads him, free of cost of charge. A case was mentioned in our columns in which one individual enjoyed a gratuitous tour of two years, and collected no less a sum tban £5200, on which his commission would be £2080 — a colossal fortune in Jerusalem. He is now enjoying hia otium cum diqnitate in the happy consciousness of having done his duty. The "China Mail ? ' says:—" Canton is covered witb posters warning the people not to go to Australia, where the mouse has g-^t into the cow's ear,' i.e., where the natives are taking a mean advantage of the Chinese monster's helpless position. The police connive at tbe roughs' insulting behaviour, md the authorities are too weak to get at the offenders. The happy land has changed into a country of sorrow. Friends are warned by telegraph to stay at home and eat tbe Emperor's rice. Worst of all, the 'bosses' are levying a poll tax of 100 dols. on eacb Chinaman. Sydney and Newshilun (? New Zealand) are as bad as New California (? Victoria). Reports say the pewter hills of Lanchishan (? Tasmania) are a happy land, but this is only a small valley, and already over-populated by paupers. The officials, with usual Chinese conceit, are spoken of as 'Chiefs' who have given in their submission." The Derby of 1882 closed witb 210, and tbe Oaks Stakes with 159 subscribers. "Yes," said the steward of the steamer, "I admit that the salt beef was very bad, the potatoes rotten, the bread sour, and tbe tea poor — but the rest of the provisions were good." " What were tbe rest of the provisions?" "Oh, salt, pepper, and mustard."