Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 307, 27 December 1881, Page 2

The co3t to the Imperial Government of training the 15.0 m*n who d«_erted from the Detached Squadron iv Australia is astimated at £10,000. "It's a disgraceful shame," exclaimed Mrs Smith, as her lord and mastercame in home a demoralised condition. "You've been drinking again, and it was only last week that you took the pledge " « Just my kick," said Smith, break everything I get hold of " Commander John P. Cheyne of the Royal Navy, who has accomplished three expeditious on a search for Sir George Franklin intends, in company with Lieutenant bchwatlca, to pass over tbat frigid, imper turbable North Pole in a balloon, next spring He is going over it, and is going to descend upon Russian soil on the other side. He is determined that the North Pole shall no longei be a disturber of the peace of modern geographers. It is not as fixed in its mocking defiance, as it has been until now, when a triumphant balloon is, despite of warring elements, to sail grandly over it, and relieve it of its prestige for ever. He is determined to know what it is— whether magnetic or unattractive ; whether it is surrounded by waters enlivened by sporting whales or whether it is the congenial home of land birds, who must eet as Tr ell m fly,

A molt important discovery bai jnst been made out in tbe f_r north-west of Australia - A well was sonk for 300 ft, when a bore wa_ put down, and after passim, through some salt water struck a roagniflcpnt airing of fr.sh wat«r at a depth of 573 ft from the surface. The water immeoia ely rose to within 10ft of the surface. Th. -livery is I a most important on*, ____ will have _ marked ufluence on «ho fnute of the psutoral int.r ests in these waterless plains of the Ultima \ Tkule of _\Tew Sojith Wales. | A singnler death occurred at Paris recently. A man struck a match to light it, and a bit of tho phosphorus flew on his hand, burning it Blightly. The next day there was a white spot, which he covered with plaster. ,A pus vessel formed, which caused blood-poisoning and the man died".According to Sir Wilfred Lawson and his believers, drunkenness has become a national crime, and the curse of this country. But has Sir Wilfred forgotten that England has long been pronounced to be a " right little, tight little island ?"— Judy. First introduced into England- from- Geit many,, we are all familiar with the silver, golden, and di_rn_nd wedding?; which rtaark the twenty -fifth, fiftieth, and sixtieth annnrer.arieß of tbe marriage-day. The Americans have added to these the sugar wedding, which is, of course, the first anniversary ; the j second is the paper wedding; whilst the fifth, tenth, and fifteenth, and twentieth, are styled respectively the wooden, i_on, tin, and electro-pate weddings. As each guest is expected to bring an offering appropriate to the occasion, these innovations aro looked forward tp_ with dread by, bachelors who have many. married friends, and will possibly dri.et_en._D_o matrimony in self-defence. A somewhat . startling statement was recently made by Captain Watt at a "meeting of volunteer s-iai Wanganui in reference-to firing for prizes. He said that a certain trophy had. he.n. presented to his corps .between two And .three years ago,. to herein several times before it became the property of any one member, and the result had been that the company, had spent over £10_0 in ammunition in firing foi- it, and, so' far its he could see, the end jvas.as far off. as ever. A new Chicago theatre has two " fashion boxes," containing 20 chairs, each directly iti front of the customary proscenium .o_.es and so arranged that a clear view of the occupants can be had from the other parts of the house. The idea is to let handsomely dressed women exhibit themselves, and they embrace the opportunity, Roman society has been startled by the action of Monsignor Enrico di .Campello, Canon of St. Peters, in publicly abjuring the Catholic faith and becoming a Methodist The letter written hy the convert to Cardinal Borromeo is of an extraordinary" character. He states that he had often meditated such a letter in the time of Pius IX., but a sense of gratitude to one of such great age stopped him. When Leo XIII. succeeded to the Pontificate; he" thought, with others, that a better time for the Church and country would dawn, but the hope had now been dispelled, and nothing was left to him ~but to carry out his convictions as a Christian and an Italian citizen. He could no longer consent to remain part of an institution which in 'secular matters barred the way of progress and liberty, and j which placed its ministry in the middle of society after the manner of an Indikn caste The condemnation launched, against the [ recent publication of Curci showed that the ; anger of the 'party was -yet implacable After winging many other, bitterly barbed shafts at the Vatican, the writer says -. " The evidence of such facta causes to fall from' my eyes all" the veils of prejudice, and forces me to sever all these ties. I leave the ranks of the Roman priesthood to fight as a pure evangelist of Christ, remaining inso much faithful to my vocation, and persuaded that I shall find in this peace for my soul, for strong in the doctrines of my Divine Master (doctrines unadulterated and undisguised; I »hall with bold front avow -myself a Christian without hypocrisy and an Italian citizen without the mask of a traitor to my fatherland. " Silver Pen " writes from San Francisco : —The ladies of the Pacific Slope have actually taken it into their heads to grow, useful.; to put themselves to the front as women who can rule their households and dress a dinner on an occasion, for which purpose the rank and fashion (?) of the city have resolved themselves into a " cooking class," the teacher of which is the politest of French chefs. The establishment where this high-toned cooking goes on is in the heart of the city, and consists of a large dining-room and good-sized kitchen, which leads off by a small hall, and close to the kitchen is the dressing-room. Here the fair cooks array themselves in snowy aprons, which completely envelope the figure, and these are trimmed effectively •with lace, ruffles, and tucks. Over the arms are drawn long white sleeves, and on each head is a dainty cap. At a long table in the kitchen these would-be disciples of culinary art arrange themselves, and whatever the chief cook does they follow suit to a dot. Thus, the cook takes a fish, and, after preparing it, puts it in the pan, where follow the pupils' fishes in due course, and so with poultry and so on. The intimate gentlemen friends of the lady cooks attend to eat the lunches. I r.ally don't know whether they pay or not, but I presume they do. They ought to, for it costs the husbands of the cooks somewhere about 10 dollars, or £2 per diem each for meat and groceries ; and I know one of them who devoutly hopes he may see a speedy arrival at the end of the cooking school. It is a praiseworthy effort, no doubt, to learn to cook, hut when we con- ' sider that it is only the rich women who possibly will for ever and a day be able to pay well fora cook, it seems a little as though they only wi.hed to make themselves con.picuous. vHow much better it would he if they would establish a cooking ichool for that class of young women who can never ', hope to do more than prepare their own dinners when they marry some poor but honest young man, who would thankfully take a j wife who would put her shoulder to tbe wheel, or, rather, her hards into the kitchen stuff, and make him a dinner without the necessity of keeping a China boy. These fantastic notions taken by rich and fashionable women are very absurd, and tend to nothing but a waste of time and money to save themselves from ennui, which might, I ! opine, be better employed in teaching others. As an instance of " the blessings of protection " in America, the Chicago Time? points to the little State of lowa, which contains abont sixty per cent, of farmers, and shows how protection affects them. Protection denies them the comforts of life. A pound of sugar for which an English farmer pays seven cents, costs the lowa man twelve. He wears coarse clothing, because a §uit that he could buy for fifteen dollars in Canada is charged twenty-five to thirty at home. His wife's dress, made by herself, costs ten dollars —six. says the Chicago Times, for the goods and four for Protection. A flannel shirt is twice as dear as in England. Every article of clothing, every bit of cutlery, all the manufactured goods in the kitchen) in the homestead, or on the farm "cost 3fi to 125 per cent more than they should do because of protection." So it is all throu trh his personal, and family, and business expenditure. He is a slave who toils and saves for the rich manufacturers .r ho are making fortunes in the Eastern cities. He is beginning to see this. He will see it more every year. But while the Western farmer is thus awakening to the need of free trade, j it cannot be that our own farmers should wish to go with open eyes into similar slavery. They will never succeed in getting a duty put on corn ; but they might help in resioring protective duties on some manufactures, and in doing so deprive themselves of the one great advantage which the universal cheapness of English " goods gives them over their burdened brothers in the West. The Bth of October was the tenth anniversary of the Chicago fire In that calamity of thirty -six hours, 2,124 acres were burned, over 17,450 buildings were destroyed, 98,860 persons were rendered homeless— 3oo of them losing tbeir lives— and the total value of burned property of all kinds was placed at £39,000,000. Yet in a single decade all this has been replaced and more. The value of the buildings destroyed in October, 1871, was estimated at £10,000,000, while those newly built, up to this October, are estimated at more than £30,000,000. The lost ones were largely of wood ; those tbat replace them are of brick, stone, or iron.

Hpre is an item that may be of interest to a largo number of people. . Tbe I land Revenue (England) have published a report for the year 1881, _ hich contains the following, remarks :— ' Since the introduction of the' Beer Duty a large increase has arisen in the manufacture of beverage's to bedruiik instead of beer. Some of these the Commissioners consider as so t-vMently intended to take the place of ordinary bet-r, as to be liable to duty. They are usually made with sugar, flavoured with hops or other vegetable bitters, and fermented bo as\ to produce a certain amount of spirit, sometimes as much as 6 per cent. The Commissioners add that it has lately been .found, that " horehound beer" and " nettle beer" have recently been so flavoured with hop and ginger as to make them palatable like ordinary beer. It may be necessary for the - Commissioner to bring these under the scope of the Beer Duty Act." The Commissioner says : — " In any case in which liquor is flavoured with hops or contains more than three per cent of spirit -generated by fermentation, or is put forward \ as a beverage under any of the names usually applied !to ordinary . beer, it does not seem open to question that such beer should be taxed according to its gravity when brewed. '