A Villain of the Coldest Kind of Blood.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 93, 14 March 1885, Page 5

A Villain of the Coldest Kind of Blood.

He was coming down the street with a broad grin on his face, when an acquaintance halted him and inquired if he had made a strike. " I just have !"was the reply, followed up by a hearty laugh. "My wife and I haven't lived happily for the last year, and she has made up her mind to apply for a divorce." " Has she ? Why, that's too bad !" " You wouldn't think so if you knew her. She expects me to fight the proceedings, you know. She is going to allege cruelty on my part, and for the last two weeks she has been working up scars to show the jury. She's torn up a bonnet, and will have the ! pieces to show what a bad temper I have. She's cut the buttons off a dress, and will have it in court as evidence of my tyranny. She's going before a jury to swear that I threatened her life on several occasions, and she's got two servants to remember that I once cut her corset strings with a butcher knife. She's calculating on a big sensation and a crowded court room: — ha! ha! ha!" " But where does the laugh come in?" " Why, I skip the town for Denver, and she'll have to pay her own lawyer and get her bill without sensation. The papers won't give it three lines— there'll be no jury to see the scars— no lady spectators to weep — no boom to float her into the market on. If you want to see the maddest woman in the State of Michigan, just drop around tomorrow and ring my front door bell— he! he! he ! - " Detroit Free Press."

I heard that the judges of the Leipsic Supreme Court entirely rejected all the frivolous and absurd grounds on which the Grand Duke of Hesse applied for his divorce, and it was only granted because it appears that in Germany the marriage of an officer in the army is null and void unless he has previously obtained leave from the military authorities to change his condition. It is certainly remarkable that both the Grand Duke and Madame de Kalomine should have overlooked this flaw. He has behaved in a disgracsfully mean and shabby way, , and if he moved in a less exalted sphere he would run serious risks of a horse- whipping. I hope at the lease that the Grand Duke will have the decency to pay Madame de Kalomine's costs, and that he will settle an adequate income on her for life. It has been a scandalous business, altogether. '—"Truth." 1 A smart trick has been played Mr Max O'Rell by a Yankee firm, Before the [sheets of "John Bull's Womankind," sent in advance of publication to America, could be got into type, the work had been translated from an early copy of the French original, and issued by a New York publisher. The author's chance of any i profit from the American sale of his book is, therefore, destroyed. — "Athenamm." M. Emile Zola's new novel, " Germinal," will appear simultaneously in four languages— French, German, Italian, and English. The story, which is concerned mainly with life in the mining district, is written in a new vein, more welcome to readers— English readers in particular — who have not been educated under modern French "masters" of fiction. A number of changes are about to be made in the colonial detective force, but) they do not affect Auckland,