CLIPTOMANIA. Extracts from Society Papers and all the most interesting sources. (Selected by our London Correspondent.,

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 53, 7 June 1884, Page 5

CLIPTOMANIA. Extracts from Society Papers and all the most interesting sources. (Selected by our London Correspondent.,

It is "good business" to be a popular preacher in America. Mr Beecher's stipend for this year is £5,000, and Dr. Talmage ?s to receive £3,000. Mr Parnell has bought his mother's estate in New Jersey called Old Ironsides. It ought, says the " Globe," to be rechristened New Invincibles. " Bell's Life " comes out now twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday, and it ha 3 been reduced from 6d to Id a copy. A new journal, called the " Honeymoon," has just appeared at Brussels. The editor announces that he has secured the co-opera. tion of a doctor of law, and of an experienced genealogist. The business of tnis latter functionary will be to find illustrious ancestors for those who think their prospects of marriage will be thereby improved. It is said that Dr. Russell has had a drop of bitterness in his honeymoon cup, as all his wedding presents have been stolen by a brilliant coup of rascality on the part of on« who called for the boxes of the doctor during his absence. The value of the property is large, but the great treasure of his life, of course, cannot be stolen ; she is attached, and made safe by a ring. A statistician, obviously mad, computes that during his dramatic career Mr Barry Sullivan has committed 17,000 murders and has himself suffered death 9,000 times. Henry Irving has neither sinned nor suffered so much He has only committed 15,000 murders and been killed 7,000 times. In the matter of divorce, Charles Wyndham heads the list, having had the decree nisi pronounced against him 2,800 times. A fashionable tailor suggests that, in order to distinguish between the guests and the waiters at a banquet, the tormer hereafter have their dress suits made of diagonal or basket cloth, leaving broadcloth expressly to the waiters. Instead of this, it would be a good idea if the coloured dress suits should come in fashion as has been proposed. Dark green, very dark red and blue cloth suits would be eminently becoming to the majority of men, and there would then be no difficulty in distinguishing the guests at an entertainment from the waiters. Belgium has hitherto enjoyed the unenviablereputation of drinking more alcoholic liquor per head than any other country in Europe. Denmark, however, is rapidly gaining upon the Flemings. Consul Harris, in a report just made to the Foreign Office, states that the consumption of spirits in Denmark is equal to nearly 14 gallons per adult male of the population. In the United Kingdom the consumption of spirits per head of the whole population was one gallon at proof. In Denmark it is about 3£ at proof. Drunkenness had to do with 31 per cent, of the serious and 69 per cent, of the petty crime in Denmark The "New York Clipper" says:— "Henry Irving likes this country. He loves the dollars our fathers accumulated, and our sons are pulling out, and he pro poses to come back to both, but the latter especially, in 1885." Also that "Ellen Terry is a 'slummist.' While in Chicago she made a practice of visiting the poor, to drop loaves of bread, and dump tons of coal into their laps, they never being altogether out. That when she does run short of a supply of baker's bread she bakes her own. It is sta,ted that she does this wherever she goes." A convict named Richard Thompson was released from Dartmoor in the second Meek of February. Since then he had been trying to find an honest living at Birmingham, writing, time after time, to the authorities at Dartmoor for 10s sd, owing te him, which would have " started him as a fish hawker." At last the P. 0.0. came too late. To try to live he had been forced to steal that very morning, and has, of course, been sent to gaol again. If poetic justice were possible in this practical world, the " authorities " at Dartmoor should join him there. The Princess Louise is looking in perfect health just now, and seems none the worse for having returned home from Canada. In deed, she never liked being away from Eng land. While out at dinner the other evening H.R.H. had a hearty laugh over the story of how, on her return from her honeymoon, she telegraphed to the Queen at Windsor : "The Campbells are coming ;" and how her mother absurdly supposed it was a delicate announcement of an interesting character. "It was too simple of mother. Why, we were hardly a month married, not that time has made any difference in that respect." The starting question seems to be agitating all of the N.Z. Clubs, and Mr P. Campbell, who lately returned from England, was recently interviewed on the matter by "Senex." Mr Campbell, it may be mentioned, is an old Christchurch resident and a successful starter himself, and this is what he says of Mr McGeorge, who is claimed to be the best wielder of the flag the world has ever seen : -" He is always at the post some minutes before the time appointed for starting, and he expects all the horses to be there too, and these are quietly walked about the course behind the post. Mr McGeorge looks at his watch, and when the time arrives he makes a signal for the horses to get into line, generally a hundred yards or so behind the flag, and so they walk toward him, and whenever the opportunity may offer down goes the flag, no matter how far they are behind the post. This is the main secret of effecting these good starts, but he has other assistance. MeGeorge's nephew is behind the horse? witl a hunting whip, and by judiciously flicking it in the rear of any animal that does no like to face the field, keeps them fairly v] in line. It is not at all an unusual thinj for him to start his horses forty yards be hind the post. On one occasion at Kemt ton Park, when he started his field son 1 eighty yards or more from the post, thei was some dissatisfaction expressed, and tr matter was reported to the stewards of tl Jockey Club, on the ground that the sta m was actually a flying one pJ^the starting^f post. But the stewards decided that hhad availed himself of the best opportunity, and that when the flag fell, which constituted the start, the horses were in a walk." "I have," says Mr G. A. Sala, in the "Illustrated London News," "seen a good deal of husbands and wives in my time, and, if I have any faculty of observation, it has generally led to the conclusion that the happiest marriages are those in which the bride, when she comes to the altar rails, has in the way of the world's goods precisely what she stands upright in, and no more." The following notes of a speech recently delivered in Dublin are not without interest as fine specimens of real " bulls." Speaking on the much vexed Irish land question, the speaker said—" The counthry is overrun by absentee landlords," and after a magnificent peroration, delivered from the tub on which he was standing, he said, " I tell you the cup of old Ireland's misery s overflowing j aye, and it's not full yet."