News and Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 47, 17 February 1894, Page 5

News and Notes.

A boy in Christchurch ate some unripe fruit a few days ago. It killed him.

Blondin, who completes his 70th year at the end of this month, is still able to execute great feats on the high rope. The Nelson Educntion Board is progressive. It has voted £7O for teaching shorthand. There is division in the camp, however, and notice to rescind the motion has been given. The late Sir Andrew Clark, Mr Gladstone’s physician, left £200,000. His death was indirectly due to sleeplessness, induced by the loss of £60,000 in a bank failure. Thanks to bribery on the part of his agents, done without his knowledge, Mr Monk, of Waitemata, has lost his seat. It took £SO0 —cost of witnesses —to do it. The efforts of Mr R. McNab, M.H.R., to have a bridge made over the Makarewa in connection with the extension of the Hokonui railway have been successful. The work is to be got under way at once. “ What Ho ! What are yer doin’ of ?” Style of salute in force among some of the youth of Invercargill. No wonder Professor Garner is studying the speech of monkeys. It will be a relief if the foregoing is at all common. Wilson’s River should be a veritable Coolgardie for the enterprising burglar. A witness in a larceny case in Invercargill the other day said he had been in the habit of leaving 70 ozs. of gold on a shelf in his tent when he went to work. The latest yarn about “Jack the Ripper” is that he has been discovered in a lunatic asylum. This is about the twentieth time he has been run to earth, and he will keep on being excavated for some time to come. A man named Gunn, publicly known as “ The Good Samaritan,” from the medicine which he sold at his entertainments, has been fined £25 in Wellington for distributing gifts by lottery. There is a great glut in the wheat markets of Victoria and New South Wales. The lowest price on record—--2s 6d a bushel —was reached in Melbourne lately, and over a million bags of the staff of life are lying at the railway stations. Prom what the Tuapeka Times’ Dunedin correspondent has heard, there is “ an organised gang in Dunedin whose business it is to bluff the Prohibitionists •by fair or foul means at the licensing elections. Journalistic enterprise takes queer forms occasionally. A Wellington paper is publishing the names of all the people who died there during 1893. News must be scarce with these literary resurrectionists. No wonder suicides are common in the North Island. The Dunedin gaol is declared by a local paper to be a crumbling ruin, and it clamors for the erection of a new one. It must be in Dunedin — one in the neighbourhood Avon’t do—“we need a gaol in the town, and need it now.” Didn’t know it was so bad as all that. Talk about honour among thieves ! —there isn’t any. A smart pickpocket started operations in an American town lately, and did so well that he excited the jealousy of his pals, who set upon him and robbed him. He was so disgusted that he left the place. Theatiucal companies are not always happy families. An actress named Van Zandt, who lately arrived in New York, in giving her reasons for leaving a company, explained that the leading lady and gentleman were ahvays wrangling, and that nearly every day the lady was compelled to “ throw things at his head to keep him in subjection,”

The story of how the warship Kearsage fought and sunk the Alabama off the French coast nearly 30 years ago has often been told, and now the victor in the fight hits foundered in the Canibean Sea. All on board were saved. The shareholders of the Southland Frozen Meat Co. adopted the balancesheet submitted at the annual meeting on Saturday last. It appears that the price to be paid for sheep here is to be regulated by the rates ruling in London for frozen mutton.

Two men were lately sentenced at Home to seven years’ penal servitude for conspiring to murder. Their intended victim escaped. It came out in the evidence that a man had offered to “do the job ” for £IOO, and that another was tempted by the offer of a free house and grass for; a, cow for life. “ Money’s, scarce, awfully scarce,’* remarked a business man the other day. “ Bankers say it’s a fallacy to suppose that it is going to the other side, but if not, where is it ? Best plan is either to owe a banker nothing or enough to make it worth his while to carry you on.” San Francisco has got the unemployed trouble very bad. But they don’t worry the Government about it. A committee of citizens lately raised 28,000 dols among the business men and others and set 700 men to work in improving Golden Gate Park.. Many of those now shovelling sand there were a few years ago well-off-one of them was formerly worth 100,000 dols. Tramps stick at nothing in America. One of them lately travelled over 150 miles in a railway cattle car. Most of the way he rode astride one of the animals, and when cold or tired he stood in among them and so got warmed. He would have travelled further, but owing to the lack of milk cows he was compelled to leave in search of food. It was an old lady in the neighbourhood of 90 years who when asked at what age a woman, should abandon all hope of marriage indignantly told her questioner to ask an older person. Mr Gladstone on another subject has answered an interviewer in the same spirit. He is 83, and it has been hinted that age. .is telling on him. For all that he says he has no idea of resigning the Premiership, so Chamberlain, Asquith, Rosebery, and other political “ possibles ” will have to “ bide awee.” At the last meeting of the Southland Land Board the Chief Commissioner stated with reference to the reserve for forest preservation at Forest Hill that there was a large area of land beyond Otapiri very suitable' for settlement, and for which there was a considerable demand. He had instructed the surveyor to visit the locality and begin the work of laying off sections. Some small patches ■were held under grazing rights, and notice would be sent to the occupants that the land would be required for settlement. There was only one laugh at the annual meeting of the . Southland Frozen Meat Company on Saturday* and that was raised by the remark of that sturdy Briton, Mr T. Buxton, of Makarewa, ihat he had £2OO in the concern, and had taken more shares to “ try and warm up you cold-blooded Scotchmen.” If there were more of his stamp among the shareholders the question of amalgamation need never have been raised. Thei’e have been “ ructions ” in the Cromwell town council. The mayor was asked to produce a certain letter Avhich he had, in the interests of the public finance, written to the AuditorGeneral. He refused, and a lively discussion followed. He told one councillor to go home and rock the cradle, and the councillor, with his hand on an ink bottle, threatened to smash his head. The Mayor: “Oh? if you would only try!” Soon after the meeting closed with a vote of thanks to the chairman! Captain William Jackson Barry used to make things lively when mayor of Cromwell, but his laurels are endangered