A Local Novel Condensed.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 917, 12 February 1881, Page 2

A Local Novel Condensed.

(From the N. Z. Times). Among the goods consigned to order by a vessel which recently arrived in Port Nicholson, was a young lady of two a -d- twenty summers. This young lacy had, through circumstances which need not be inquired into, become betrothed in England to a well-to-do settler in the Timaru district, and had at an appointed time been shipped off by his English friends to join her in* tended husband. Whether it was through ignorance of New Zealand geography, or from the fact that just st hat time no vessel was sailing for a oarer port to Timaru than Wellingto>, is not known, but the fact remains • at the lady was put on board a Wellington-bound vessel and in due coarse arrived here. The relatives of the intended husband had also taken advantage of the opportunity to send on with the bride-elect a number of' packages filled with various articles of domestic use —including drapery—for their colonial friend. The husbandexpectant was exceedingly impatient for the advent of the young lady, and long before the arrival or the vessel here, the agent was telegraphed to several times a week, asking if there was any news and when she might be expected, being always urgently requested to reply at once by “ collect ” telegram. At last the vessel came, and her agent was prepared to forward on the young lady to Timaru, for which he had received £5 from the eager settler, which £5 was duly handed to the bride intended. She, however, declined to travel on without first enjoying a short period of rest here, and during that period the agent learnt that on the voyage out the young lady—who is possessed of great personal attractions—had formed an attachment with the second mate of the vessel, and that they had utilised the £5 in getting married on landing. Here was a pretty go I The days passed on, the anxious agriculturist in the South telegraphing daily to the agent, “ Where is Miss——? ” “ Why don’t you send on Miss ? ” &c., &c., questions which the agent for some lime evaded, until evasion was no longer possible, when he telegraphed the facts of the case. How these were received by the disappointed wai er-for-a-wife is not known, and the imagination is left free to form its own conception. Meanwhile the reviy-made husband got discharged from his post of second mate, the wife being about the ship so much during the honeymoon as to interfere with the performance of his duties, and as neither of them had means, and the £5 was quickly gone, they are now in disiress, and the husband yesterday cons...ied Mr Shaw as to how he should fi i-.l a subsistence—but the Magistiare ' ar unable to advise him. Thus the

n otter stands at present, and it will seen that the prospect of “ all ending happily,” as is the case in the orthodox novel, is somewhat remote, as the husband’s profession precludes his continuing long with his wife, and it is even possible that, unless the husband-that-was-to-have-been should philosophically wash his hands of the whole affair as a bad job, the husband

that-is may find him curiously inquisitive as to what has become of the goods consigned from Home with the fickle young woman. 1

One of Madame Lotti Wilmot’s suggestions, given recently in one of her Sunday night lectures, was, if not original, very diverting. She has arrived at the opinion, after years of study, that no man should remain single over 25 years of age, and no female over 20. In order to carry out this view, she would impose an annual tax of £lO upon all bachelors above the former age. Her modus operandi would be “ a little bit of blue paper,” giving the unhappy single wight a month s notice to either pay or marry. At the end of the month Madame Wilmot thinks there would be a large number of marriage certificates flourished in the tax-gatherer’s face. The proposed way of adding to the revenue is worthy of the consideration of Colonial Treasurers. Ulysses Grant, after jilting Miss Flood, went straight back to New York and married a belle, by whom he had been once discarded. The lady, though not a millionaire like Miss Jennie, has yet got a little hard cash. Her father gave her 400,000 dollars, on her wedding day, and a house worth 100,000 dollars; an entire set of diamonds, a silver dinner service, and several other little necessary adornments for herself and house. Worth, of Paris, made the trousseau—eighteen exquisite dresses—which cost a fortune. The wedding dress was white silk, and the veil, of costly lace, was pinned on by diamond daggers. The wedding ring was a golden hoop with one large diamond and monogram—“the latest fashion.”

Quite a sensation was created in the fashionable world of London by a masquerade dinner, given by a young and beautiful Widow, the possessor of a splendid house, where everything is en regie, and all the appointments’ of the choicest. The company was the creme de la creme of society. All came to dinner with real conceling masks on their faces, and the resulting mistakes and discoveries were not all agreeable. This rather risky, not to say frisky, style of entertainment is, it is said, likely to become fashionable. Alas, that it should be so in erstwhile decorous England, but we need not be astonished at anything now-a-days. Fancy young girls’walking and dancing with elbows akimbo, while the lower part of the arms and hands wave about, propelling* as it were, the rest of the body. This, says a London paper, is the latest fashion in gait. By all accounts the rage for what is termed “art,” is about at its height in London.

That married life in New South Wales has its troubles Occasionally seems pretty evident from the following advertisement, which appeared in a recent number of the Town and Country Journal .-—“Notice.—l, John Kelly* at present living at Budgery (late Block L), Hermitage Plains, Nyngan, give notice to Mary Kelly, my lawful wife,, that, if she marries again, it will be at her own risk, and God help her husband. (Signed), John Kelly.

Dancing was one of the amusements at the soiree to celebrate the opening of the handsome Presbyterian Church at Kaukapakapa. The Bev. Messrs. Bruce, Sommerville, and Smeaton were present. All Presbyterian parsons, therefore, cannot entertain the same scruples on the subject as the pastor of St. James’s.