GENERAL ITEMS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 18 September 1917, Page 2

GENERAL ITEMS.

A peculiar occurence took place in tlie storeroom of a local grocer’s shop the other day (reports the Nelson Colonist). A cat had been shut in the room for the purpose of catching rats. On' entering the compartment later the occupier was surprised to find his cat with its head jammed inside a jam bottle, and on closer examination was somewhat startled to notice that there was also in the bottle a young rat. The matter of extricating the cat, a valued one, was accomplished without breaking the bottle. The rat when cut off by his natural enemy from his only means of escape, sought refuge in the empty bottle, the mouth of which was just sufficiently large enough v to allow the cat’s head to enter.

The curtailment of shipping from Australia on account of the strike was responsible for an extraordinary demand for passenger accommodation on a vessel which arrived at Auckland recently (says the Herald). Bunks had been hastily erected in every conceivable space on the ship. Even the holds had been utilised for this purpose, and many saloon passengers had been billeted in these quarters. Notwithstanding the extra accommodation over 200 would-be passengers had been left behind at the port of clearance.

Government versus private enterprise was the subject of some remarks made by the Mayor (Mr. W. H. Winsor), at the meeting of the Spreydon (Christchurch) Borough,Council. He referred to a building which the Government is erecting in Hereford street by day labour. “I don’t know how many months the work has been in hand, and there ar e inspectors galore. A private contractor who started a building in Gloucester street some months after the Hereford street building was put* in hand, has got his job half done, and and he had cellars and water to contend with, the same as the Government had with their building.”

A correspondent from Hastings writes to the H.B. Herald: “Could you tell me where Sansoriginie is? Some friends cabled from there on August 28 that they had arrived there from England en route to New Zealand. They’ can’t tell at the Post Office here where it is or don’t know. I should be much obliged if you could toll me, and also how long it would take a steamer to come from there?” Our contemporary replies: “ Sans origino,” arc two French words, meaning “without origin.” The cable was probably sent from a French port, unnamed on account of the.‘censorship. ” No wonder the Post Office could not find it.

The owner racing under the nom do course of “Mr. Highden” was granted permission by the Auckland Pacing Club to transfer the horses to Mr. Gorging Johnston. The horse Vermillion was also transferred from Mr K. S. Williams to Mr. G. M. Spencer.

Speaking in the House on Friday Premier Massey said New Zealand was possibly on the eve of industrial trouble, but whether it was a fact he was not prepared to say.

“Far bo it from me to make any prophecy, beyond saying this: that in all sincerity I think things are so shaping that the end is not really far off, ’ ’ says Lieut.-General Sir John Maxwell, Northern Command.

Labour is not scarce in Fielding, (says the “Star”). This week a local business firm advertised for men and immediately received offers from three times as many as were required.

The plain-speaking editor of the Berlin daily paper. Tageblatt rebukes Prussian militarists, who belittle American military power: “When wc hear of the flowers with which Pershing and his men were pelted in the boulevards, wo may say, if wo like, that their reception savours of comic opera, But let us remember this—that it is an operatic interval which impels the French to hold out in their terrible tragedy.”