LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 12, 13 January 1913, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

A special meeting of the Borough Council will be held on Wednesday evening, the business being the appointment of a statutory closing day for the ensuing year. The ordinary meeting of the Council, which will be held the same night, will commence at 8.15 o’clock.

A young man from the Midland Counties of England came to the -Mastenon district twelve months ago. He has been working on a farm and has saved £SO, besides keeping himself in clothes. “That is more than 1 could have saved in live years in the Old Country,” he said smilingly to an Age representative.

(A free grant of 100 to 200 acres oi forest land is made by the Canadian Government, on the simple conditions of residence and cultivation, to any settler over 18 years of age, in the provinces of New Brunswick and Ontario, and 160 acres of land in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon, and some parts of British Columbia. Further contributions collected by Mr Holmes in aid of Mrs E. Smith and family and handed in at this . office, amount to £9 13s. Mr James Rutherford has also collected £3 2s 6i. The total amount collected to date is £33 6s* 6d. As notified in another column, Madame Bernard has kindly consented to give a benefit matinee entertainment on Saturday, January 18th.

“To secure the best, the best must lie given. We are killing our public men by low suspicion, by trivial criticism, and personalities. Parliament is the sum of our accumulated opinion, yet in private life politician!, are libelled.’ Moist excellent words from a speech by the Rev. G. W. Dent in proposing the toast of Hie Parliament of New Zealand at tlie reception to the Hon. W. D. son at Eltham on Friday night, ine Speaker strongly emphasised the necessity for reposing our trust in those we return to Parliament.

The person who sat on a cask ol gunpowder, smoking, and then knocked out the hot ashes on the cask, was a paragon of wisdom compared with a Wellington youth, who was engaged l,y a motor car owner to clean up t.u car and do odd jobs about /the premises. He was accommodated in a room in the garage, and in order to he quite comfortable as he read his “penny shocker,” he dragged in a case of petrol, and set his candle, otherwise unprotected, on the top. Had lie dropped to sleep and allowed the candle-stump to burn right down there would probably have been trouble, as there were several other cases oi petrol quite handy, but he happened lo be discovered at his literary pursuits, and was summarily dismissed.

In connection with the Newry Telegraph, which has just celebrated its centenary, attention has been drawn to the fact that in the issue of April 19th, 1817, there was first pubhsneu the poem, “The Burial of Sir John [Moore, ” simply headed “Poetry. The lines were introduced in these words: “The following lines were written by a student of Trinity College on reading the affecting account of the burial of Sir John Moore in the Edinburg Annual Register.” The pbein was signed with the simple initials, “C.Vv and the editor added the following footnote: “We request a continuance of C.W.’s favours.” So great was the commotion caused by the publication of the linos that their authorship was variously ascribed to Byron and Moore. The truth came out, however, when Wolfe died at the early age of 32, the original copy being found amongst his papers. T hat copy now reposes in the Irish Royal Academy.

Mr Norman McMunn, 8.A., of Stratforcl-in-Avon, who resolved at a moment’s notice to make a trip to Xew Zealand for the benefit of his health, writing to his people in England, says there is a strange eweetnoss in the absence of all class distinction which ho lonnd in Xew Zealand. He adds: “I eat at the same table in one of the leading boardinghouses of Auckland —a refined and charming house it was—with an army officer, a railway guard, a head of a ■Government Department, an Indian officer’s widow, and a telegraph boy. There was no constraint, no contempt, no servile admiration. It was a table of men and women transformed by mutual respect and goodwill into gentlemen and gentlewomen in the only good and noble sense of the word. In New Zealand there is really nothing to correspond with the 60called lower classes in England. The colonial working man is far more nearly the equivalent of the small shopkeeper or the post office clerk in England. Such is Now Zealand, a country where the poor, the eccentric, even the social pariah will have his chance, where side by side with a physical and moral manliness is to be found pity and forgiveness for all. Of course, all such things are relative, but in no country have I found them so finely developed as in Xew Zealand. Tfj the people are a little puritanical, ill is because they are a practical people, and not because they are a race of hypocrites,”

Referring to the rumour that Mr J. G. Wilson is to be called to tne Upper Rouse, the Eltham Argus, with the Hon. W. Carncross, M.L.U., in the editorial chair, says: “We hope that it will soon be more than a whisper. Several years ago this journal openly suggested the calling of Mr Wilson to the Legislative Council; his nomination would give great satisfaction to a very large section of the munity.”

Last year the J. C. Williamson theatrical enterprise had a turnover of no less than £1,300,000 cash, and in order to pay expenses £26,000 a week has to be found. It is the fourth, if not the third, biggest concern of its kind in the world, and as it is steadily growing, it should not be long before it reaches an even higher position. On the above figures the firm made a profit of £48,000 on last year’s operations. A lady and gentleman belonging to the Lower Hutt had a rather rare experience a few days ago. While picnicking at Day’s Bay on Boxing Day they picked up a small dog, which was apparently ownerless, and took it .to their home. A few days later they left to spend a holiday in Gisborne, taking the dog with them. Their surprise may be imagined when on arriving at Gisborne they met some ladies who immediately recognised and claimed the little animal, which they stated they had lost at Day’s Bay the week before.

The local Magistrate's Court has had a record year, the total for thb period ending December 31st received by way of fines, fees, and penalties being £735 0s 6d, showing that the institution certainly pays its way. Something like two-thirds of the money sued for has been recovered, the figures being respectively £6862 0s 3d, and £4768 14s 2d. The total civil and licensing fees amounted to £6OO Is, and the total criminal fees to £2374 19s 6d. Three hundred and twenty-one criminal cases were dealt with, and in the civil records 747 plaints, 108 judgment summonses, 47 distress warrants, and 15 warrant of committments appear.

In.“ Dawn in Darkest Africa,” Mr John H. Harris describes the customs of the people, discussing women '(all feminists will turn to the chapter), and goes into the ethics and products of trade. The insatiable desire for fleshy adornment, carried out with much pain, is extraordinary: “I well remember an orphan child, of about three summers, standing in the roadway, crying .bitterly, and upon my asking the cause she told me that, being an orphan, no one had enough interest in her to out a “coxcomb* on her forehead. Secreting a small bottle of red ink, I told her to sit on the table, and by a series of pinches and finger-nail marks on her forehead, coupled with a smearing of red ink over my white hands, I calmed the little mite into the belief that her heart’s desire was being gratified. After about ten minutes she was supremely happy in the thought that she too possessed a 'coxcomb.’ ”

Although the annual charge in each instance for registration in New South Wales of, motor vehicles is small, the increase in revenue last year amounted to £3090 7s 6d. Motor cars increased by nearly 2000, and motor cycles by over 1000, and are now in excess of the number of similar vehicles in any other State of the Commonwealth. tK'Atiffiating the average value of each car at £350, which is not excessive, nearly three-quarters of a million sterling was expended in the purchase of motor cars in the State during the year. To this may be added the cost of 1000 motor cycles and 40 taxi calls, registered in 1912 in excess of 1911. With a moderate estimate of 200 miles per week for each of the 6000 cars now licensed, and charging Is per mile to cover all charges, the approximate annual expenditure amounts to £60,000. Nearly 9000 drivers are licensed, and about half of this number follow the occupation as a means of livelihood, the remainder driving their own cars. The increase in drivers for the year was 3372, whilst, 2958 persons obtained permits to learn to drive, which indicates that about 400 learned to drive without first obtaining a permit for the purpose, as required by law. During December new cars were registered at the rate of 60 a week.

In an article on the progress of the defence scheme, a writer in the Lyttelton Times makes some very outspoken remarks about the failure of Christchurch to do its duty in this respect. He says: Christchurch has the unenviable distinction of being the least efficient of all the cities in the matter of military training. The West Coast of this island is worse from the Defence Department point of view because there the authorities have been so far able to make no sort of progress. The West Coasters have been defiant, and steps have not yet been taken to bring them into the fold; but Christchurch is the headquarters of an important military distinct. It is a big city, where volunteering used to flourish. It prides itself on its public spirit and its patriotism ; yet it is pretty safe to say that there is not a town in New Zealand where the response to the call of the State in respect to the national training has been less hearty, excepting only on the West Coast. There is not a centre where attendance at parados has been poorer, where less enthusiasm has been shown and where less interest is taken by the public in the progress of the scheme. There is certainly no centre where the antimilitarists have made more noise. This may be a case of effect and cause, or it may not. Whatever the explanation may prove to be, Christchurch has no reason to be proud of its distinction.

The biograph craze has been responsible for many things, and the clever burglary now has to be added to the list. A Parisian suburb was the scene of the comedy ("says a cable in the Sydney Sun). A party of men accosted a constable outside the villa of a well known banker, and produced a letter authorising them t<£Jtake a moving picture, and asking the guardians of the law to prevent the public disturbing the actors. The officers acquiesced, and the photographers, with their cameras, took up their positions. Two men, dressed up as burglars, placed a ladder to one of the windows, clambered up, broke the glass, and got in. Other men, clad as policemen, got ready to apprehend their friends as soon as they came out, and when the two burglars appeared with sacks crammed with spoil a realistic struggle took place in the garden between picture thieves and picture police. Ileal officers who had come up to witness the scene stood by and vigorously applauded, giving the supposed mock policemen hints as to the best way of getting ju-jitsu grips on the miscreants. This sort of thing went on for a while, and then the biogranh men packed up their traps, bade the genuine police farewell, and went away. The following morning the banker complained to the authorities that £6OOO worth of valuables had been stojen from las villa.

The protected cruiser Melbourne, of the new Australian fleet unit, will leave England for Australia on January 27 tb. The Young Men’s Christian Associations on the Panama Canal strip are heavily subsidised by the Unitea States Government. President Taft says they are essential to the efficiency of the men in the zone. The next general election in Australia for members of the Lower Chamber in the Federal Parliament will take place in June. At present the Labour Party has a majority of, ttvelve in the House of Representatives, and of about six in the Senate, i. Yesterday Stratford Wesleyans celebrated the anniversary of the local branch of the Christian Endeavour So 7 ciety, the Rev. Reader delivering ap-| jjropriate addresses at both the morn-j ing and the evening services, when, there were large congregations. On| Wednesday evening a social will lie held.

Mr O. Vaughan secured four very fine fish from the Patea yesterday, the average weight being about 31b. One was a Loch Leven trout, beautifully conditioned and very finely marked, “One of the nicest fish I have seen come out of the Patea river, was the comment passed on it by a fishing enthusiast. Twelve iponths having claused since the date of the last General Election, the ballot papers from all over the Dominion have been burned at the Wellington destructor, in the presence (ds required bv statute) of the Clerk of ; Writs and the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The -weight of the paper exceeded five tons. The export of gold from the Dominion for December totalled 16,18u0z, valued at £64,064. That brings the total output for the year to 343,1650 z, valued at £1,345,115, or, compared, with 1911, a decrease of 112,0610 z,, valued at £471,667. The export of; silver for December totalled 21,3250 z, valued at £2456. The total for the, year was 801,1650 z., valued at £84,k!9, a decrease df 509,8780 z, valued, at £46,848, as compared with 1911. |

Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States are discussing a new name for their connexion, It is felt that the present name is not the right one, and amongst the new one suggested are: “The American Apostolic Church,” “The American Evangelical Catholic Church-,” and “The American Catholic Church.” The latter is more generally favoured. The matter is likely to he decided at the next general convention.

The Parisiennes have adopted a new complexion (says the Gentlewoman). Gofie are the white faces, and the pale faces. The fashionable tint is the brown tint, the tint of the gipsy. Possibly the change is analogous with the new cult of sport in France; but it is not necessary to trace its birth to reasonable and legitimate origins. 'Enough that the Parisiennes have tired of their complexions, and have therefore decided to change them. Since it is usually necessary to powder, the powder, too, has changed its shade; it is now brown instead of white.

When the Hon. \V. D. Johnson ’ ,(Westralian Minister of Public Works) ' and Mrs Johnson visited Mount, Egmont on Friday, it afforded theiy little daughter, who is ten years of age, her first opportunity of seeing snow. of the party climbed to the .snow-line, and them (says the ißlthaia Afgus) Miss Johnson had the exquisite pleasure of snow-hailing her father. She brought down some snow in , a handkerchief to show her Eltham friends that she really reached the .snow-line, and her regret is that she cannot. take some of it to Western Australia.