ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43106, 18 June 1907, Page 1

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

At the meeting of the College Street School Committee at Palmerston North it was decided to write to the Education Board with a view of taking Empire Day off the Board’s list of holidays. The chairman said he thought Empire Day should be celebrated in a manner appropriate to the occasion and not by simply closing the school. He thought the flag should be saluted and special lessons taught with special reference to the inauguration of Empire Day celebrations.

MPr WL. . Stead, who was announced to speak before the Harvard Union on a recent evening, learned that the rules of the union forbade the presence of women. Mr Stead rebelled against this dictum, and said he had rules of his own, one of which was not to speak at meetings from which women were excluded. The University authorities accordingly suspended the ancient rule. Mr Stead, raving to a request from Toronto, to speak at a peace meeting, wired. “No ladies, no Stead.”

During the'hearing of a judgment summons ease at the Dunedin Magistrate’s Court the debtor based a pitiful tale of woe on his wifefs mismanagement and drinking habits; whereupon- Mr Widdowson, S.M., remonwith him, and severely censured his conduct'. “It is not for you to come here and put the blame on to your ‘wife, when she ist not here to defend herself,” he said, “and I will not have thiaitl sort' of thing in this court. If your wife is not spending your money as you wish, it is for you to take steps to see that she does so.”

At Adelaide recently Miss Ada Ward (the converted actress) delivered another of her missionary addresses. The subject, was “Mary Magdalene,” and the lady treated it with much earnestness and delicacy. A special appeal wais made to mothers to loot more carefully after daughters, and Miss Ward also attacked the habit of smoking dm a vigorous manner. She mentioned that on® tobacconist in London confessed to having sold 5000 weekly to girls under 15 years of and gave it as the opinion of an jeminent. Hiariey street physician that smoking was responsible for 18 'b'ffe.rent- diseases. No clergyman •sh'”- 11 smoke. “I would never trust, a, minister of the Gospel who smokes,” said Miss Ward; “it is a bad exarnrU ”besides wb’.Hh, it ruins the health, and is a dirty, fi'+.h— t.oik-+ ” At ai football match at. Melbourne [recently, W. Kent suddenly missed his watch and chain, and just then, a man who had been pressing against him bolted. Kent chased and caught him, but the latter wrenched himself free and escaped. The amazing dexterity of the thief was revealed to -Kent- when he subsequently discovered that in the brief st’f'ugg.o the pickIpoekec bad actuary rephoed the htr.bm watch. 7«/ d ohainJjMjine owner’s f vest pocket, but in one Later, a detective , pick-pocket, and be l.v Kent. The he bar 1 taken Kent’s wa'tcl^^^f Bishop Wallis!, been on tour on. the Mann Line, sa.vs: “The things that, me most during the trip were the .big viaduct, at Makatoke. which Ti learned expected fo. finished about February I next, and the sc’end'd spiral at Rauirimu. whore there ave/four lines, one above, another. Riding over the tor von oa.T)l look nrn ri gop. tbre r ' lofker bnes beneath Von. The line is srviral, rig-zno-hv«an«e the train has to BW>t 200 ft iir~a very small area. I onq- one other place like it on. the St. Gothard

Hfr Delpin- Delmas, the “silve-r- ---; Californian” who- is leading defence in the Thaw trial is the H[o of.many striking stories/ Mr Wtnaias. was defending a .husband who K 1 murdered his wife’s ■ betrayer, and Knbluded his address to the jury in Startling fashion. “Now, gentlemen of the jury,’’ he said, “what would, yon do to the -monster who l thus wrecked Por ever the happiness of your hearthstone? Shall I tell you? Shall I show fou? Suppose you saw the foul despoiler of your wife’s chastity this minute w'alk acrose there—there, in front of you—-this is what you would do, For you are men]” Instantly he whipped a revolver from his hip-pocket and,fired six shots into the steps of the judge’s bench. Mr Oliver Burgess, a missionary in China, and formerly of Victoria, writing to a friend in the State, says: “I aip; in the famine centre, commian cling relief I have 3500. men on road and canal work, and spend -about £2OO weekly, besides which each man gets., 21b of flour daily. Thousands must die,, .as wo cannot save more than a fraction of the number starving. The men drink weed-soup for their meals. The dead lie on the road street; hugs feed upon human bodies, and skeletons lie in .groups along the city walks. - Hundreds of Starving men run after us, pleading iter work or food,*