GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4438, 10 June 1875, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

It is rumored that the man who personated the Nana Sahib died at Gwalior a few days after he had been given back to Scindia. A woman gave birth to a fine healthy child in the ladies'waiting-room at Crewe railway station lately. ' ' ' Disraeli, it is" said, looks thin and worn, Gladstone fresh, as if his athletic exercise in fighting with the Romish Antichrist had put him in good condition. The keeper of a Paris restaurant went into his cellar, where he had a moment's vertigo and fainted, and before he was discovered he was half eaten up by rats. Tho Irish American citizens of New York are organising a testimonial to Mr. Dion Boucicault, expressive of their appreciation of his efforts to elevate the stage representation of Irish character. In a recent English suit for breach of promise, the Judge refused to accept as a valid defence on the part of the naughty man the fact that the woman was addicted to the too free use of beverages that cheer and inebriate. On dit that at Sarrelouis, in France, a baby was born which lived less than one day, and in that short period informed the good people about that "1875 would be a good year, but 1876 a bloody one." M. Thiers can neither eat nor talk without a chauffrette or foot-stove under his feet, and the apparatus, to dissimulate its true character, is made in the form of a little valise that always goes with him. Easter cards have been introduced by the London stationers, engraved in the form of crosses of great variety, and many of them of great beauty. Some of them sell as low as twopence each, others as high as half-a-crown. Goldsmith's "She Stoops to Conquer" is being acted at Copenhagen in a Danish translation of 1875, and with immense success, under the title of "Eejltagelserne," or "The Mistages."— Academy, The War Department has decided to pa £5,000 to Major Moncrieff, in termination of the arrangement by which his services and inventions have been secured to the Government. The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, which was burnt during the war by federal troops, having in vain appealed to Congress for aid, it is now proposed to raise a fund to rebuild this ancient institution, of which Jefferson was a graduate. On the 10th of January international boat races were held at Monte Video. Three of the prizes were won by Brazilians, one by Orientals, and one by Americans. The English would not compete, the day being Sunday. George Ridley, aged thirty, a compositor on a London newspaper, suffered acutely from bad health, and on one of the coldest days in March he shut himself up in his room, and was afterwards found quite dead, having starved from cold and hunger. An undertaker's man while driving back a cab from a funeral in London was apprehended by the police for being drunk. In bis cab were found five women, also in a state of intoxication. The burial they had been attending was that of a pauper. Small fines were imposed on the party. M. Rabatau, Mayor of Marseilles, made a tour of inspection in the hospitals of that city, and caught the small-pox. So now he knows the condition of the hospitals. Hospitals are so far barbarous in France that small-pox patients are not separated from the others. The Minister of the Brazilian Empire has approved of the municipal by-law prohibiting within the municipality of Rio gambling and betting of any kind in public houses, under which category will be considered anyplace frequented by the public or any house whose owner, tenant, or lessee receives anything from the players. A London journal, The Tobacco Plant, has a fine caricature, showing the Right Honorable Benjamin Disraeli as the great god Pan charming all the beasts ; Mr. Bright as a lion, Mr. Lowe as a bear, Lord Derby as a watch-dog, and other Whig 3 and Tories as wolves,.foxes, pole-cats, &c. British law believes in "propputy," says the New York Herald. Many houses were rendered uninhabitable by the great explosion in Regent's Park, London, last year, but the Judges decide that the tenants, though thus put out of doors, must pay the rent all the same. The Japanese Government is not only 'imitating the United States way of managing Post Office matters, but, according to photographic views forwarded to the Post Office Department, has erected post-office buildings at Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hiogo and Tokio, according to the Western style. Property owners on that part of Broadway that is too far up for wholesale trade and too far down for retail, have leisure to remember that they themselves drove the retail trade up town by defeating every railway scheme that would have made them in the old place accessible to their customers. Miss Berdan was married at Berlin to Count Le Peletier. The Voiles Zeitung chronicles an incident at the office where the civil marriage was performed, where a workman and his bride, who had the precedence by previous arrival, were not set aside out of deference to the richer party, as these seemed to desire. A sportsman in India writes home by last mail :—" I hit a tigress (Bft. 6in.) the other day in the chest with a spherical ball from my 12-bore double-barrelled 'Dougal' rifle, 4drs. of powder, at about 70 yards off, as it was standing facing me, end on, and the bullet went clean through from end to end. I should not have thought that this was possible." Beeeher, in one of his Friday night addresses, had a word to say about the editors of religious papers. He represented them as very contemptible creatures, and their piety as hypocrisy. Several religious editors appear in the great trial, and their record sustains his opinion. Beeeher, perhaps, regrets that he himself ever wrote for the religious press. What Prince Bismarck complains of wearing him out is not the supreme conduct of the State, not the laying down of broad rules for the government of the Empire, but the mechanical part, the talking and reporting, debating and inquiring, the troubling about little things, the " friction " of office, as a German paper has rightly called it. According to the police returns of Liverpool, for the year ending at Michaelmas, 1874, no fewer than 20,330 persons were in that year proceeded against for being drunk or drunk and disorderly, and all but 1050 of that number were convicted. In the preceding year the number proceeded against was 18,038, and in tho year before that it was 16,927. Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey, or some of their friends, are proposing that the American revivalists should undertake the conversion of the British Legislature. It is proposed that the service shall be held in Her Majesty's Theatre, and a circular requesting the attendance of members of both Houses will be issued by two gentlemen, members of the House of Commons, who are on the committee, It would be rather interesting to see how a converted House of Commons would behave itself. A letter from Schleswig-Holstein, in tho Cologne described Kiel as having becom« one of tho best defended ports in Europe. In 1870 it was so strong that the French fleet prudently gave it a wide berth, and it has' Bince been made considerably stronger. No fleet in the world could force "an entrance, and unless the place should be captured by land, no enemy's flag will certainly ever wave in its harbor. The latter adds that the German navy, which was at first obliged to accept Swedish, Dutch, and English officers, and many from the mercantile marine, has now a staff of officers equal to any other maritimo power.