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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 927, 19 March 1881, Page 5

We learn that the “ practical tube driver ” mentioned in Mr. Flemming’S letter recently published has arrived by the Albion last evening. A farmer, asking “ Old Colonial ” the best way to get rid of weeds, was answered: “ Squeeze the hand of a plump young widow all in black.” When Sydney Smith was out of health, his doctor advised him to take a walk on an empty stomach. The witty patient asked—- “ Whose ?” I take my tex dis morning,” said a colored preacher, “ from dat po’tion ob de Scriptures whar de Postol Paul pints his pistol to de Fesions.” Only six candidates out of seven hundred and seventy-one passed the Melbourne matriculation with credit, and of these exactly onehalf were women. New York City pays (4,000,600 dole, a-year (12,000 per dav) for the 40,000 million quarts of water with which its annual supply of milk is diluted. . ( The South British Forwarding Company has been recently floated at Wellington. Agents are to be appointed in all New Zealand ports, and in the Australian Colonies. It, is generally believed that 140,000 tenants, or one-fifth of the whole number in Ireland, are bankrupt. Many farms, in consequence, are worse cultivated and stocked than formerly. There is a rumor afloat (says the Bay of Plenty Times) that it is the intention of the Hon. Thomas Dick to bring an action against the proprietors of the Sydney Evening Mail for a libellous caricature. The cartoon represents the worthy Colonial Secretary as possessing the head and face of some terrible miscreant. Mr. Dick claims £5OOO damages for this slanderous attack on his personal appearance. Jongh, the man who kidnapped and murdered a boy at the Hague, and who was sentenced to imprisonment for life a few days ago, when asked by the Judge whether want drove him to the crime, replied, “ I had enough, with my wages and assistance from my relations, to maintain my mother, but the reading of novels gave the idea. I had been reading in an illustrated paper a story of two mothers, in which a family kidnaps a child in order to secure an inheritance, and I resolved to imitate that example. The birth, death, and marriage columns of the daily rags offer a cheap and nasty medium for advertising, which some tradespeople are not slow to take advantage of, puffiing their wares and their particular vanity at the same time. One of our local industry men shows off in the N. Z. Herald as follows :—■“ HarBVTT. —On February Bth, at Rosebank, North Shore, the wife of Mr. Thomas J. Harbutt, manufacturer of a daughter.” I presume, Thomas, “ his ’prentice han’ has tried on man, and now ho makes the lasses O.” Go it, Thomas