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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 998, 12 November 1881, Page 3

At a late election meeting in Wellington, a speaker positively stated that, if lie chose, he could place his hands on the two men who raised the fire which resulted in the destruction of the Opera House and a large number of other buildings. Doubtless the Insurance Companies will see their way to endeavour to compel him who made the assertion to either prove or retract his words. This beautiful theatre, it may be remembered, cost some £14,000.

The new English stamp available for use for postage or receipt differs in a notable respect from the ordinary penny stamp. It has not the letters in the four corners so long familiar in the older stamps. These were introduced with the object of preventing fraud on the part of persons disposed to take the trouble to make up a new stamp by cutting off the clean parts of the old ones. In such case detection was certain on reference to the letters. Jn practice, however, it has been found that this device is scarcely worth the trouble entailed, and the new stamp does not bear it.

The Bishop of Melbourne says that the naughty word in the Unrevised Edition beginning with “ H,” only means “ hole.” Of course it must be so, »r how otherwise could we explain its use in polite conversation, and more especially in vigorous soliloquies ? For instance, when afellow’ steps into a mud-hole, it comes natural for him to ask, “ What the hole is that ?” Or when you go home of au evening, armed with your latch key, and find that some larrikin has stolen your key-hole, what else conld you say than, “ Who the hole has done that ? To hole with him,” &c., &c. We feel much indebted to the hole-y man for pointingout this interesting philological fact.

About 5000 shares in the proposed New Zealand Woollen Factory Company have been applied for up to the present date. The Free Lance's Fiji correspondent says that when the news arrived which caused the Governor’s return, his Excellency was at the top of a sixty-foot palm, trying to to find out how the milk got into the cocoanut. Aides-de-camp and messengers were running all over the Island in search of him. He was at last discovered by au Australian black who had been sent on bis track. When the black came running to the foot of the tree, he shouted out, in his peculiar English, “ Missta Guvn’r come down quick, New Zealand white fella go cook Whiti’s bloody goose.” The Governor (say the by-standers) stood straight up, and holding up both hands, said something about a “ Gazelle, ” but. at that moment some leaves gave way and he came down to the ground on his bead. He then rushed down the hill to the beach, and as there was no boat or canoe he began trying, in his hurry, to walk on the water, bnt could’nt all the time shouting, “;Get up steam, get up steam.” The Emerald’s boat soon fetched him, and he ran up the side crying, “ Steam ! bust her ! blow her up !” He then ran and sat down on the safety valve, crying, “ throw on milk; no, I mean water ; no no,- I mean I’ll — bust her ! blow her ! they will have thrashed all the chaff out of the WhiH* before I get there. Cat is away the mice do pi-lay.” Here his Excellency fell into a caty-mouse state until arrival at Port Nick, where he arrived in the nick of time to be too late. *Whiti is the Maori for wheat.

For continuation of news see &th page.