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This young man was evidently not accustomed to being married. The “Thames Advertiser” says :—“We have heard that a very serious mistake was very nearly being made during the performance of the marriage ceremony between a young couple who were (ultimately) made happy yesterday. The minister mistook the gentleman-friend of the bride for the bridegroom-elect, and was proceeding with the questions in the service upon that assumption. When reminded by the lady that the gentleman in question ‘ was not her husband,’ the minister kindly replied, ‘ I know it, my child ; but he soon will be.’ Ultimately the parson saw what was astray, and finished up everything regularly. What must have been the feelings of the lady in the body of the church—the betrothed of the gentleman w'ho was so nearly being married without knowing it—can, as the novels say, *be better imagined than described. ’ ” Had Dickens been acquainted with the procedure of the Government of New Zealand, he would have drawn more strongly his humorous allusions to the red tape ana circumlocution office. Some four or five years ago Messrs George Harcourt and James Goodwin, of the time, fulfilled, to the satisfaction of the Warden, the conditions entitling them to a prospecting reward of £2OO. The Grey Government admitted the obligation, and were about to pay the money, when they were hurried out of office. Then through some papers going astray, their successors in office declined to admit the claim. Messrs Harcourt and Goodwin petitioned Parliament on three successive years, but it is only quite recently that the authorities have taken action, and now, after a period of Micawberism extending over five years, the prospectors have had £25 each remitted to them as payment of their claim in full ? Apropos of the “miraculous cures” now being performed in Wellington by Mr Milner Stephen, the following records of an interesting experiment in that line is worth reading: —“The Baptist pastors of New York discussed, at a recent meeting, the subject of modern miracles, especially the faith cures. Dr. Samson read a paper, in which he stated the case of a woman under treatment by a physician of that city. The woman believed she could be cured by the application of Lourdes water. The doctor told her he would apply Croton, and if that did not help j her he would apply Lourdes. Me applied Lourdes, but she, supposing it to be Croton, refused to be cured. He then tried Croton, and the woman, believing it to be Lourdes, was healed. The general opinion of the doctors of divinity was that the faith cures were delusions.” The Chrristchurch Volunteers are “ rolling up ”in such numbers as proves them to be a most loyal and devoted set of men. There have been 245 sworn into the City Gurads, Christchurch Rifles, Artillery, and Lyttelton Navals. The Sydenham Rifles, to be sworn in on Friday, are expected to reach the maximum ; and the Cavalry, who had two strong troops, are grumbling at being reduced to one by the new regulations. The “ Nautical Gazette ” says that during the year 1881 the vessels lost at sea averaged about one every four hours. A large proportion of these losses occurred from carelessness, and mostly in fogs and other darkness. There were 400 ocean steamer collisions in 1879 and 1880 in the North Atlantic Ocean alone. Each of these might have been avoided if the master of one colliding vessel had been informed in proper time of the course pursued by the approaching one. Th -se losses gave an average of over one steamer a day in which human life was sacrificed and valuable property destroyed. The “ Gazette” believes that if a system of fog-signals had been in use, such as the Barker code, nearly all of these disasters would have been prevented or avoided. The financial affairs of France are in a bad way. The three items of expenditure— the : interest on the debt, the maintenance of the army, and provision for public worksamount to no less than £100,000,000 English money, leaving only £15,000,000 for the general purposes of government. The people of France have no spare cash to invest in rentes. The banks have no money to lend, and the Government is at the end of its tether. There is no more trust money on which hands can be laid, and before the end of the next financial year there will be a floating debt of upwards of £120,000,000. The public works will have to be stopped, and this of course means a diminution of the wages fund upon which the working classes depend. France is becoming poor ; there is no reserve either of cash or power ; and if the Government does not act with circumspection, there will be some warm work. Dr Macdonald, rector of the Dunedin High School, at the Dunedin banquet to Sir J. Vogel, said :—“The kites and vultures of the North would come down with a swoop on the endowment of the Dunedin High School, and all the more readily if they could only find an Otago vulture to lead the way ; but it. becomes a very different matter indeed when Nelson, Cristehurch, Wellington, and Auckland have to stand or fall with their educational endowments at the same time.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBS18830127.2.12

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
877

Untitled Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2

Untitled Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2

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