NEWS OF THE DAY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2217, 26 April 1880, Page 2

NEWS OF THE DAY.

Mr P. Warning and Mr John Paterson have been nominated to tbe vacant seat on the Temuka Road Board. A poll will be taken to-morrow aud the result made known n Wednesday.

The Railway Commissioners visited Wttimatc on Thursday and received a deputation the same evening, who urged upon them the necessity for the extension of the Waimate branch railway. At the Geraldine R.M. Court, on Wednesday, two men, named Leahy and O’Brien, were fined 10s each for committing a breach of the peace. Patrick Hayes was fined £5 for a similar offence, and for assaulting a man named Oregon was sentenced to imprisonment for one month. In the civil case, Muudell v. Kennedy, claim, £2O, rent of land, plaintiff was nonsuited. His Worship the Mayor of Timaru remitted home to-day the sum of £6o,.collected in aid of the Irish Famine Relief Fund.

A night school is about to be established by Mr T. Peace at Sanclietown. An institution of this kind is much wanted in the neighborhood, at d wc trust that it will be well supported.

The Auckland “ Star’s” London concspondent writes that a friend of his coming to New Zealand advertised for a gentlemanly lad to share his cabin with him on the voyage to New Zealand, with a promise to lend him a helping hand on his arrival, received 600 applications from gentlemen’s sons offering to pay their own passages on expectation. One gentleman holding a clerk’s situation of £6OO a year, wanted to know whether the advertiser would counsel him to throw it up, as ho had heard that anyone with “an ounce of brains” could make £SOO a year easily out there. Most of the youths wanted to get on farms.

Some surprise has been expressed (says the N.Z. “ Times ”) at the sale of tire furniture of tire Ministerial residence in Hobson-street known as the Native Mini, stcr’s residence, it might be slated that the Fon Mr Bryce, the present Native Minister, docs not intend to occupy the house, as he proposes, while in Wellington, to remain in lodgings, leaving his family at Wanganui. Anyone who was present at the late sale or who pursued the advertisement containing the list of things to be sold must have been struck with wonder how such a stock of furniture —sufficient to stock a warehouse could have been utilised by the late Native Minister, seeing that he was a single man, and cannot but come to the conclusion that it is a great pity that the said property was not disposed of long ago for the benefit of the country’s distressed finances.

A lire broke out in Christchurch shortly after midnight on Saturday evening, at the corner of Durham and Tuam streets, near St. Michael’s Church. It was blowing hard from the south-west at the time, and several small cottages were burnt down before the Brigade could master the lire. The “ Northern Luminary” (an Auckland paper) of Saturdaystates that an encounter took place between Mr John London, M.H.R., and Mr Yardborough, when the former retired with a black eye. Racehorses arc not in great demand at present. At a sale held in Christchurch by J. T. Ford and Co., on Saturday, Mircillc was disposed of for £-10, to Mr Beaumont, of Ueathcote. Satellite was passed in at £9O ; Blazing Star, at £27 10s ; Bore, 3-,year-old, by Totara-Coruna, at £l-5.

An inquest was held on Bakuday, on the body of Thomas Dully, the railway porter, who was killed on the previous day at Addington. The evidence showed that after deceased had uncoupled the wagons he signalled to the engine-driver to come back. Tire driver did so, and deceased jumped on the handle of the brake, and in jumping missed his hold. He was seen to turn round when he fell across the lino before the engine. The gatekeeper, who saw the accident, at once cried out, and the driver immediately reversed the engine, but he knew there was something on the line from the tender jumping. 'When he got down he found the deceased quite dead, lying between the leading and bogie wheels of the engine. Home of the jiuors, before giving the verdict, remarked on the dangerous practice of railway employes riding on the brake handles, and considered that a man of fifty-five years of age was too old to be employed at shunting work.

“ Asmodens ” in the i: Mail” expresses his opinion on the Royal Commissioners thus: —“I am interested in the Civil Service Commission, because I take a warm interest in the Civil Service ; there is so much about it that I can find congenial, for I know all the ins and outs of the departments, and daily chuckle over the procrastination and how-not-to-clo-it that is practised, to say nothing of those who really do not know how to do it, and whose duties arc resolved into efforts to find out someone who does, and who will do it for them. I could supply the Commission with valuable evidence if they would but call me as a witness. I know they won’t, for the muck heap they have undertaken to remove has already alarmed them, and they will, if possible, dispose of the matter by mere surface exploration. Of course I would be an awkward witness, but I will give them a hint, and strongly recommend its acceptance. Examine that dcpai tment to which the others are most prone to refer. Reference is the very essence of the system; what would the overworked officials, poor dears, do without it?” On the 20th bust Sir William Fox presented abron/.c medal of the Royal Humane Society of England, and a Government gift of £n() to Mr William Jenkins, of Otaki, aged 70 years. On the occasion of the wreck of the City of Auckland two years ago, Mr Jenkins, having a crew of five volunteers, who worked for him for eight hours without food, saved the lives of 200 men, women, and children. The £SO is to be divided among those gallant five. Mr Jenkins, who is one of the few survivors of the New Zealand shore whale fisheries, has been instrumental in saving life on six other occasions. He attributes his longevity and activity to his having practised consistent sobriety through life. Sir W. Fox and he have known each other for nearly forty years.

It will be remembered that in January last two men named Riley Robertson were charged with robbing one James McNally of a silver watch, of the value of £7 10s, and the accused were subsequently committed for trial at the next sitting of Supreme Court, the prosecutor being bound over to appear at their trial. This morning McNally was arrested at Dunedin, as it was suspected that he was about to quit the colony.

On Sunday morning the £ Wellington Hotel at Wellington was entered by theives and about £4O in notes and gold was abstracted. Admission was gained by a window twelve feet from the ground.

Jane Angus, aged 00, has been found drowned at Oriental Bay, Wellington. She left a friend’s house to go home at 9 o’clock on Friday night, and being near-sighted, she is supposed to have walked over the breastwork into the water.

This is how the Liberals in the old country work the oracle. As a set-off to 100 faggot voters created by the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Rosebery has, as if by a sudden touch of enchantment, thrown up 160 cottages near Edinburgh, on the Tyne side, to house 100 working men and add 100 to Liberal constituency. The work was pushed on in a most picturesque and energetic manner, four contractors taking each forty tenements, and a force of 500 masons, bricklayers, laborers, and so forth, relieving each other in relays night and day.

The Mount Ida “ Chronicle” mentions that at the Iv.M. Court, Naseby, on Tuesday, a man named John Walsh, a swagger, was brought up, charged with assaulting the wife of the proprietor of the Victoria Hotel, Nazchy. The defendant came into the hotel on. Monday evening, and asked to he supplied with a drink, which was refused as he was tipsy. He ran round the counter and struck the landlady with his list. In his hand he hold’a large sheath knife, and the servant girl, who was present, seeing this, screamed for assistance. Some gentlemen rushed in and secured Walsh, but not till he had struck the landlady several times on the check, causing a scar two inches long. As the man appeared to have been in such a state that he was scarcely able to control his actions ; as he expressed through his agent, Mr Bailey, the greatest contrition for what ho had done ; and as nothing very serious had followed, his Worship thought the case would be met by imprisonment for six weeks in Naschy gaol with hard labor and gave judgment accordingly. The “ N.Z. Times” says:—A witness named Farrell, who yesterday gave evidence in the case of Mulhauc v. O'Malley, was one of the least self-assortative men who ever entered the witness-box. This man was a well known ganger, whose services wore sought by contractors under the Government at fourteen shillings a-day, and Mr Buckley was trying to get him to admit that he was a first class man at his kind of work. He admitted that he had been at the work for twentyfive years, “man and hoy,” and that he had been earning as much as twenty pounds a-month. When pushed very hard as to whether ho was not a good man, he replied ‘ Oh! I daresay I could pass in a crowd.” “ What do you mean by that?” asked Mr Buckley. “ Oh, ihat I should not want much pushing to get along.” As a ganger he admitted that his services were somewhat in request, and defined the work of that functionary to consist of “getting the work out of the other men.” A witness who followed Farrell informed the Court that lie was a man who had any amount of opinion of himself. Another witness, who was examined on the subject of Wasting, admitted he knew “just a little” about it, having been used to that class of work fertile last fifty years. Indeed, it was a matter of comment yesterday that all the witnesses when in the box had an uncommonly small opinion of themselves.