News and Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 46, 10 February 1894, Page 7

News and Notes.

A young man named Charles Blackley has been drowned in the Aparima Elver at O taut an. Setting his house in order. His Holiness the Pope is creating six Italian Cardinals from whom his successor may he elected. Archbishop Carr, of Melbourne, denounces State education, and v ants Eoman Catholic schools made a department of the State system. Vaillant, of Paris bomb outrage fame, has expiated his terrible deed. He died defiant, evidently regarding himself as a martyr. “The beer duty retains compare favourably with those for January, 1893.” But what of January, 1895 P Between then and now come the licensing elections. Native-born New Zealanders, the Ofima.ru Hospital Trustees have discovered, are recipients of hospital le lief in an undue proportion to population. There’s money in matches and alcohol. Italy, is in sore need of coin, and her Government intend to monopolise the production of those articles, and make £3,000,000. The Eev. John McNeil is to visit the colonies. The Eev. John is a notable pulpiteei, and hits straight out from the shoulder —in a word, a “ live ” man, not a mere theological phonograph. “The majority of our farmers are in the grip of the money-lenders, only instead of the Jews it is the great banking institutions of the land which hold the financial sword over the trembling victims,” declares the Star, a Sydney paper. Eiversdale loses a sterling man in Mr W. A. Donald, who has been compelled, owing to ill-healthy to resign the station managership at Waimea for the N.Z. Agricultural Company, a position he had held for nearly twenty years. Invercargill Presbyterianism is aEead of that of Glasgow. At a meeting of the Glasgow Established Church Presbytery recently tramwaycar running on Sundays was condemned by one of the members as a nuisance to the churches. Harvesting has started in the Western District. In spite of the recent rain and wind there is every prospect of a bountiful yield, although we have heard of one case of damage through severe weather in which the crop —wheat —is reputed to be worth “ not half-a-crown an acre.” Magistrate Eawson cleared the Court of the crowd which had come to gloat over the nauseating details of a criminal assault case last week. If he could only deal similiarly with the newspapers, the public mind would have something cleaner to think about.

A miner with £9B in his pockets went to the Tuapeka races last week. They lasted two days. So did the money. All he had in return was the doubtful honour of the acquaintance of some of the “ knowing ones.” He had to borrow enough to pay his hotel bill before leaving. A lurid light was thrown on the destitution existing in Sydney the other day, wdien two men w r ere fined £1 each, or seven days’ imprisonment, for fighting in the Domain. The struggle arose over the right to a vacant sleeping place on the bare ground. The gaol would prove luxurious quarters to the poor wretches. “If local self-government makes a people happy, then Hew Zealanders should be in a state of bliss,” w r as tbe comment of a visitor from the other side lately. “Nearly every other man I run against is connected with a local body of some kind or another, and if no other opening offers they form a cemetery trust.” And yet we are not happy. People commit suicide even in tbe “ Britain of the South.”

Clerical intolerance still lingers in the Highlands. The Eev. J. S. Mackay, of Fort Augustus Free Church Manse, has publicly stated that he could not allow any of the members of his Church to attend a public ball, and he accordingly excommunicated a doctor and his wife, not for private, but for public dancing. The life of a runholder is not always a happy one. In these days of subdivisions and extensions of settlement our wool kings are not to be envied. One of them put the position with beautiful terseness the other day. “In the old times,” said he, “ a run kept a man.” Now, a man has to keep a run. It’s an expensive undertaking, I tell you.” There must be a few men feeling very uncomfortable in London just now. Jabez Balfour, the champion wrecker of homes and happiness through his building society frauds, says his evidence will criminate several notables. No matter, so long as the wretches who batten on the good faith of honest people are punished. “I wish we could get a day like this in Dunedin !” regretfully remarked a visitor from that city on Tuesday last, as he basked in the sunshine and ojnened a few buttons of his vest in order to inhale all the more freely the ozone-laden breeze. We have plenty of that sort of thing here of course, but thought it as well to embalm the admission, especially as it came from aDunedinite. '’Prohibition is doomed —we mean the word, not the principle. It savours too much of coercion and other things repugnant to the Britisher. Hereafter “Are you in favour of Prohibition ?” is to give place to —“Will you vote No License?” Means the same thing, but sounds much nicer. Something in a name after all, pace Shakespeare. A good idea of what is meant by German despotic government in West Africa is afforded by a recent cable message. The German settlement has been the scene of a revolt there lately. Cause —The public flogging of the waves of black soldiers for laziness. Human nature is much the same, black or white, as the German “ colonisers ” will find out to their cost some day.

We welcome another arrival in tbe journalistic arena. The publishers will please accept our thanks for a copy of the first number of The Christian Outlook, Dunedin. It consists of sixteen pages, of crown folio size, and is a reproduction of all the best points in the N.Z. Presbyterian, with some special features of its own. It is edited by the Bev. B. Waddell, who possesses special fitness for the office. While a carpenter was engaged lifting the flooring-boards of a cottage at Parramatta (NT.S.W.) latety he found wrapped up in brown paper underneath the floor and near the wall a silver butter knife, sugar tongs and a dozen dessert spoons, together with some ornaments. The proceeds of a robbery doubtless. A still more valuable “ find ” has been made in timber taken from an old structure in Sydney known as Casey’s hotel— eight £2O notes, which had been let into a beam by means of an auger hole. Invercargill is becoming a favorite hunting - ground for itinerants in O O various lines. The public take to them, too, amazingly, to the infinite disgust of local business people who stay in the place and pay largely in artes and what not. The latest development is in the shape of a bicyclist, who dashes over the town and district and books orders for paintinghouses. Mr W. S. Waterston’s barque Gazelle, bound from Bocky Island to Lyttelton, was wrecked near the French Pass, oft the Nelson Coast, early on Saturday week. Nine lives were lost, two men only being saved. With sorrow for the loss will mingle the feeling that the Gazelle deserved a better fate, her enterprising owner better luck.

Young Invercargill is developing great enthusiasm for ye game of bowls. Passing a group of youngsters the other night, a well-known player was startled by the query — “ I say, mister, are you going to give the Dunedin fellers another licking F” “ I hope so,” was the response. “Three cheers for Invercargill,” cried the leader of the young rascals, and they were given with vim. That singular young man, the Emperor of Germany, is more like a chip of old Bismarck than Count Herbert Bismarck. He doesn’t sugar coat his official pills. He has just told the Reichstag that a tariff war would follow a rejection of the terms of the commercial treaty which has been signed between Russia and Germany, and this in its turn would be followed by a real war. About £l4O is wanted before the erection of the Sailors’ Rest at the Bluff can be undertaken. Our sailormen work hard, take their lives in their hands, and when need arises prove themselves made of sterling stuff. Commerce owes them far more than the wages they get. Shipowners and business men, how much do you sympathise ? To tricks of the trade there is no end. The latest thing the London housekeeper has to guard against is the purchase of soft, spongy English apples made to masquerade as American apples, which bring a high price. The English apples are sprinkled with a preparation of vitriol to spot them into a resemblance to Hew ton pipjDins, and then packed in old Canadian barrels. At a politicial meeting in Invercargill just before the last elections a round of applause greeted the statement by one of the speakers that he hoped an intimation would shortly be made as to the recognition of the services of Mr J. Thomson, formerly major in the volunteer service. Nothing' more has been heard of the matter. Who is to blame ? “ Business is brisk” —in the orchard robbing line. One can excuse a good deal in boys, but some of them are the most heartless little wretches under the sun. For example. In the suburbs live an old couple depending' mainly on their garden for a living'. Some young rascals watched them leave the place the other day, then g'ot a boat, rowed over to the orchard and carried off several bags of apples.

“ With favourable weather the financial results must have been still better.” Culled from a newspaper report of an entertainment. With writers capable of such bold reasoning- as this the colony need never despair. Paley must pale his ineffectual fires before them. Our Wellington contemporary, Fair- I play, has had to pay £1 damages and costs for the jocular remark that a successful candidate was exhilarated by something- other than his victory. If Disraeli lived in Hew Zealand now he would think twice before speaking of an opponent as being “ intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.” Ten to one somebody would scent a libel in it. Melbourne must be a veritable J Gomorrah. Dr Youll, the veteran < coroner, says there are 1,400 women there who have cheated the hangman—or, to put it in other words, that in 90 per cent, of 500 infant corpses j examined by him death has been due 1 to wilful suffocation. What will | Review of Reviews Stead say to this ? He did not spare Chicago lately. A woman who attempted to commit suicide in Wellington, but of whose recovery hopes are entertained, left a letter to the effect that she was too wicked to live. She’s probably astray, poor creature, but there’s a man in South Canterbury to whom her words might well apply. This scoundrel has cut and hacked a number of his neighbours’ cows and horses during the night. A man capable of so treating unoffending brute beasts is only restrained from murder by the fear of being found out and punished.

An action recently brought by twoworkmen in Dunedin has proved that the Contractors’ and Workmen’s Lien Act is practically unworkable. TheFactories Act is also defective in somerespects, and the Law Officers of theCrown are to be consulted re some of' the provisions of the Licensing Act., And yet we pay M.H.R.’s and M.L.C.’s; handsomely to make our laws. A noteworthy step has just been taken in Melbourne. At a large meeting, attended by many ladies* and commercial men a voluntary tribunal of arbitration was formed to settle disputes between merchanta and businessmen without loss of time and money. The step is. necessitated by the present legal methods. Said methods, by the way* will disappear some day —so soon as people awake to the fact that disputes can be settled and justice done for an infinitely smaller outlay in, time and money than is now possible.. As for strikes, the sooner they become impossible the better. Too often, they hurt everybody except those whose greed or meanness has brought them about. “ There’s a skeleton in every cupboard,” says the proverb. Yes, but sometimes it, or part of it, is under thefloor. A human skull was discovered on Monday under the floor of a house built at Gladstone about thirty-five years ago by the late Mr White. The-, discovery has exercised the daily papers somewhat. One set up thetheory that the skull belonged to some poor fellow who crawled underneath for shelter. This was upset by the discovery of another journal that the house was not built on piles, and Mr T. Waugh came to the rescue with a reminiscence of a Maori burying ground, and the suggestion that the skull had been “ planted ” by a provident dog. So the whole thingresolves itself into Bow, wow!