NEWS AND NOTES

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 150, 27 February 1915, Page 2

NEWS AND NOTES

Mr Massey states that the Public Trust Office is winding up the Continental Tyre Company, a German firm, and tWa money is being held until the conclusion of the war.

A family tragedy was recorded recently, in the "Times," the advertisement columns of which paper announced thia death in action on the Vistula cf Johannes Karoli Waldorf, an only son in his 24th year; also the birth of his posthumous child at Cracow on November 3, and the death from low fever of his father, Mr C. A. de Chelle Wood, at Cracow, on tine same day.

M. Henry Sienkiewicz, the famous Polish novelist, author of "Quo Vadis?" has been elected honorary mlember of the Russian Academy cf Sciences, which is almost a unique honour for a Pcle. Poles generally aite greatly grati. tied at this mark of distinction. It will be remembered that .M. Sienkiewicz refused to sign thia anti-British protest at tha time cf the Boer War, and published an open letter en the matter.

Tfae llsgimental dog qf the; v23rd French Foot figures in one of the casualty lists as having died on the field of honour, In a recent engagement the animal was (entrusted with a message from one set of trenches to an other. He had often been on similar errands, arid, although shot at scores of times, had nfever been hit. Fate failed to favour him to the end, and this time he was struck down just as another couple of bounds would have carried him into safety. He died as the message was untied from his collar.

A license for a child of ten to take part in a lion performance entertainment was refused by the magistrate at Clerkenwell, London. It was stated in court that the father of the child —her name was given as Yvonne Marchard de Marcke —enraged a lion and lioness by fighting them .with a chair and a stick. The father fell, and the child rushed in and caressed her father. Then the lions returned to their clan. The child was protected by four adults, who stood in the wings with revolvers.

Probate was recently granted to one of the most remarkable wills on record. It was written in red ink on a cigarette card by William James Valentine, a civil engineer, of Thorp Road.. Melton Mowbray. This unique will is dated April 26, 1907, and runs: "I will give everything I posMss to my fiancee Sarah Ellen Smith, of Somercotes, absolutely, and I appoint her my sole execrutrix, and hereby revolve all other wills and codicils."

At a Kensington iaquset last month the jury found that the death of Mr William Seaward Brice, K.C., aged 68, of Norland Square, Kotting Hill, was dute to heart failure and commencing pneumonia. A barrister who had shar. ed chambers with Mr Brice said that the latter had b:-en in failing health for some time, and he greatly feared that bombs would be dropped on his roof from Zeppelins. Be was found dead in his bedroom.

An enterprising Viigisiia farmer,with thia assistance d parcel post, has got even with the butchers, says a New York paper. He killed a steer, reduced it to small cuts wtilling, the parcel weight limit, and sold it at a profit under prevailing city prices. All this goes to show, says a Pest Office Department announcement, that the be lief the parcel post eventually will reduce the cost of living in populous centres has a substantial basis.

Dr Macnamara, Financial Secretary the Admiralty, addressed at New-

castle recently the first of a series of meetings at which he is to expres& 'he thanks of. the Admiralty to shipard and engineering work employees. Dr Macnamara said that nlsver had ■ rms been stirred in a more righteius cause, and those in overalls just as v.uch as these in khaki and blue -itccj between their country and a s;roup of eavarO, relentless, and ruthless militarists.

A remarkable story of fraud was lokl at Liverpool when Gaston Renier, ngecl nineteen, dressed in ihe uniform f a Dilgian lieutenant, st.od in the deck. I was stated that l-.b had professed to be a wounded Belgian and addressed meetings and deli/ered Kacture3,obtainlii'g money and geeds. His supposed wounds did not exist, and his limp was a pretence. Hi 3 had not been to the front, and was expelled from England as a convicted thief twelve months ago. The Liverpool Court sentenced him to six months' imprisonment.

Mr Loweth, of Castor Mill, Peterborough, vouches for the truth of the following €«2rie story: One night recently he and his wife were sitting by the fireside when a grandfather's clock which had not been working for months, struck twelvle. A few days later he received a wire from the War Office reporting the death of his adopted son, Private Charlies Stevensor Townsend, 3rd Northamptonshire Reel ment, killed in action on the same dote aa the clock struck mysteriously Tcwnsend spent his youth at the mill,