SEQUEL TO A CHASTISEMENT.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXII, Issue 8954, 21 October 1907, Page 1

SEQUEL TO A CHASTISEMENT.

When Sir W. S. planned in his libretto for Sir Arthur Sullivan's charming opera "Utopia Limited" —never heard, alas! nowadays—an important official having the awesome _title of "Public Exploder" he must have had a provision of tho latest Nihilistic attempt at a "removal." The Nihilist leader in this case padded himself all over with dynamite—in fact, wore a thick great coat full of the deadly explosive so disposed that at the slightest contact with anybody he would "go off" and blow to bits everybody in his neighbourhood. He purposed mingling socially with tho folk lie wished to destroy, and at the crucial moment to let one of them run against him, when he and they would incontinently bo reduced to something resembling minced veal. Happily his design was frustrated by timely discovery, but the averted catastrophe teems with unpleasant suggestions of future possibilities in a crowd. That such possibilities are not wholly imaginary is sufficiently demonstrated by the recent experience of a fond mother in a British mining district. She was in the act of administering doubtless well deserved chastisement to a peccant son, and with this view was applying a cane to his person. I fear lie was not observing" the good old maxim of the prize ring "never hit below the belt!" At any rato if h o did ] not hit her so below the belt she I certainly did hit him below the coat tails with the result that a terrific explosion ensued, the juvenile sinner was blown to smithereens, as also the house itself while the mother received severe injuries though she "just escaped with her life ;amid the general ruin. It is expected that the boy had appropriated and concealed in a pocket adjacent to his coat tails a dynamite cartridge dropped _by some miner. He himself is not in a position to explain, for "his end was pieces I "—Post.