LATE LOCALS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 30, 4 February 1913, Page 6

LATE LOCALS.

A Manaia resident speculated in the purchase of a hundred-acre farm a week ago. Three days afterwards (says the Witness) he sold at an increase of three pounds an acre on his price. 1

Through an explosion of-gelignite on Sunday, Hafold'l Ricketts* sffn of Mr F. Ricketts; 'Manaia -road, had the misfortune to have his right hand very badly shattered, three of the fingers being destroyed. ! After being at tended i-to by’ Ur. 1 Milroy he was removed to the Hawera hospital, says the Witness. i J , 1 1 no I! One particularly,,,.amusingincident has arisen out of the baselesp outcry about tlie Southland leases, states a Press Association,.message from Wellington. The Southland Daily News recently reported that the owner of the property in question v a Socialist, intended to show his disapproval of the legislative action which threatened to make him, rich. He had sold his property of 173 acres, valued (if minerals are included) at, roughly, between £1.0,000 apd, £15,000, to a syndicate for £SOO. T,he property, the News stated, contained a seam of coal with a 17ft. face. It is to be remembered that the property was. acquired by the Socialist purchaser for £46 16s. In view of the explanation of the position furnished by the Prime Minister, it would seem that the syndicate will be left lamenting, and that the ducky Socialist has made a tolerably good bargain, t

“‘The city of Wellington is, I consider, unworthy of this great dominion,” said Mr H. Willis, Speaker of the New South Wales Assembly, to a Dunedin interviewer. “The position is unattractive. Besides, large business concerns tvho must occupy sites in the city in the future will not have elbow room. The only circumstance about the place that seems to fit in with a large and populous centre is that it is so hilly that when the sky-scraper comes to stay in your midst—it has just arrived in Australia—people will be able to step from the twenty-fourth storey on to vacant land at the’ back, which will be not half the height of the front portion of the building. That undoubtedly will be an advantage, and it seems to me it is the only justincation for making a city in that most unsuitable situation. The problem of further widening streets will be forced upon the civic authorities within the next twenty years, and the hillsides I refer to will militate against streets being .made much wider than they are at present, notably that thoroughfare that bears the euphonious name of Willis street.”