Page 3 Advertisements Column 2

Patea Mail, 11 March 1882, Page 3

BETTING IN CHURCH. Apropos of the love of Yorkshiremen for betting, a Sheffield paper tells the following story : —A Sheffield minister (noted for his long sermons) was gratified to find two notorious betting-men in church three Sundays in succession. Like the policeman in the chorus, he “ could not understand it at all but he thought it his “duty” to inquire into the changes which had come over one of them, who. was a parishioner. So he called upon him, and found him in high spirits. The preacher expressed his pleasure at seeing him in church, whereat the parishioner laughed heartily, and said “he was glad, for he did a good stroke of business that time !” “ A good stroke of business !” repeated the puzzled preacher, “ what do you mean?” “Mean! Why, I bet Jim five quid to twenty that you would go on for forty minutes every time. And you did !”

Hay is being imported from the United States into Scotland, particularly to the Glasgow market. A firm of Liverpool merchants has shipped 100 tons of potatoes to New York, purchased in Dublin at 7£d a bushel. It is stated that 150 butter and cheese factories have been built in lowa during 1881, making a total of 450 now in that State. There is great dissatisfaction with the management of the London charity of Mr Peabody, the houses having been intended for the extreme poor, but being occupied by superior artisans and clerks. . In Melbourne, trials of a new sparkcatcher are being made, though not as yet with much success. Many a girl with quite a resplendent train has been work* ing away at that experiment in all the colonies for some years with no better result. Upon a Sunday evening, when the soul is lifted on the wings of faith and a holy calm broods’ over all nature, what tender regret comes with the thought that the tubs must be got up from the cellar, so that washing may begin at 5 o’clock oh Monday morning. Every year, on his birthday, the daughters of the Prince of Wales play for him a short dramatic piece to show their progress in foreign languages. Mr Buffet, nephew of the former President of the French Assembly, is about to marry Mile De Bois-Guilbert, who claims to be a lineal descendant of the Templar of “Ivanhoe.” An editor received a letter from a subsciber asking him to publish a cure for apple tree worms. He replied that he could not suggest a cure until he knew what ailed the worms.