LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 129, 29 June 1909, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Mr. Newton King has received the following cable from his Sydney agent re hides, "Lights unchanged; others! lower." A whale, measuring about 20 feet., was washed up on the ucach at the back of Mr. Kenyon's property, Manaia, a few days ago, and has since attracted many visitors.—Witness. Over. 21,000 boys ana. girls have been sent to Canada from Dr. Barnardo's Homes., Of these 80 per cent, have taken up land. Only 2 per cent of tmitf vast number have brought discredit on themselves or the Homes. In answer to an interjection at last night's meeting tile l!ev. Mayers said that distance prevented them drafting their children to New Zealand, although doubtless some of tile present touring band would be settled here. Christchurch possesses some pub'icspirilcd men. The trustees of the Hvman Marks estate have made a liberal offer to the City Council to assist in the relief of the unemployed for the winter mouths. They propose to give pound for pound on wages expended for twenty men for, say, a couple of months. The relief works suggested include the grading of new streets, etc.,

works which would ultimately have to be (mid for in full out of rates. The oiler will be accepted. London newspapers of liltli May state

that an extraordinary trial was to ',' C held at MohilelT. Forty peasants from the village of Sysoevo are charged with the murder of a two-year-old boy who was proclaimed as Antichrist at a communal meeting. One of the oldest peasant.-; lirsl addressed the gathering, and

ascribed the chronic bud harvests to the presence of Antichrist in their midst. The child was then denounced, and with the coiioent of the father it was decided to kill it. The mother was the only person to protest against, the murder, but her pleading was unheeded, and the child 'ivas trampled to death by the peasants. .Mrs. Anna' Tratford, a handsome and well-educated young widow, who is snid to have squandered a fortune of ,t 15,1100 last year in betting on racehorses, was arraigned in Brooklyn on a charge of Stealing two loaves of. iiread and a bottle of milk. She told the Court that after the death of her husband she became infatuated with horse-racing, 'I went from one racecourse to another," she Raid, "losing heavily. Then 1 realised what f had (!•!•.!" ■•'•!•! took £SO of the £IOO reinainii:. .., .„., and deposited it in a bank. Hut the fever gripped me again and 1 lost it. i have since suffered intense hunger." Mrs. Tratford, who is alleged to have stolen the loaves' I'roin a neighbor's door, was re-

A letter in "the Wailii Telegraph from the visiting sisters of Hie' Auckland .M«i.li»di-.l .Mission a,id Helping lia;>d Mission reads more like an appeal in a joiirn.il published in black Birmingham, muggy Manchester, or scpialid Liverpool, Ihaii sunny Auckland. It is a painful story of distress that the sisters relate of some of the more unfortunate residents of the Q; ecu City, and hunger U just as hideous in a fern gully as it is in a Lancashire "dough.' 1 One house visited was destitute of furniture,' cupboards were empty; a frail mother tended five helpless and hungry babes, and the sober anil straightforward husband was footsore and dejected by his fruitless search for work. Instances could he multiplied. Some of the sufferers' are strangers within the gates, separated from their friends by ship

Xcws luN been received at Xoumca thai tire sailing-.ship Biarritz left Dunkirk on 2/th -May for .Noumea, taking as purl of lier cargo a ijuantil.y of milehinery and material necessary for the installation of blast furnaces.' At preticnt all the nickel ore. which is U\c richest product of the island of Xew Caledonia, is sent to Europe hy sailingships tn he smelted, and, as most of thr> ore contains only from 7'/. to about 0 j ,per cent, mineral, and each vessel car- | rres only about :]l)(io tons, the process I is plainly a costly one. On the other] hand, there is no serviceable coal in j Xew Caledonia, and all fuel for the furnaces will have to bei brought from Xcwcastle (X.S/W.) or elsewhere. Vnriout previous attempts have been made to erect smelting works in Xery Caledonia by Trench and Australian companies. The present venture is bc'm<r conducted by -Mr. Louis Balla-.ide, mem" her of the French Chamber of.. Deputies, who has large commercial interests m the French colony. The teachers all over the cointrv. says the Citizen, are bemoaning the way the public school syllabus loaded .with all sorts of fancy up-to-date subjects, of which young Xew Zealand is supposed to be given a smattering. And the busincs's man who lias to employ the public school' product is as persistently growling about the "slummoclcy" voung animal he is. People are already to be found asking whether it would not be better to go hack to the old system, under which the schoolmaster took a stout bit of sunnlejaclc and fnirlv ihanged the multiplication tallies and lire suelling-liook into his vnfnrtiraate pnnhV head's, I'ossibly Mr. TToisljpn is setting a meal before, the I State school hov that he simply can't digest. However that may be, it is enite certain that the proper handling of the subjects that they are supposed to teach Js quite beyond the powers 'of a vetyjlarge proportion of New' KeaJaiid's • sfflßol teachers. .Very few of I for tlifetaeKs'.

Gevnian Motor' 'Airship Coiiipanf^orT£2s,ooo. Aii Esperanto enthusiast has taken up his residence ill Wellington. He should induce' tlie Government to publish Hansard in that tongue. People do :iot read Hansard now, hut they might do so if it were printed in Esperanto.

We are now in the winter season, when trade naturally shows a measure of slackness apart iroin the special restriction caused by the prevailing financial stringency. The general tone, however, is (remarks the Trade .Review) far from gloomy, and the turnover is in most branches considered fair for the time of year. The soft goods trade is very quiet, the weather having on the whole been comparatively mild. The autumn-winter season is practically over, and the spring-summer season will lie opening in August. Engagements are, as' a rule, fairly well met. That marriage is, indeed, a lotteiy, was well illustrated in the Divorce Court at Sydney recently when a young wife, who but four years ago had promised to love, honor, and obey her husband, asked for a divorce on the grounds of desertion, misconduct, cruelty, and habitual drunkenness. Petitioner told the Court that she had been married at the age of sixteen, and since then had not seen her husband sober two nights' in succession. He gave her no money at all; whatever he earned went to the local publican and the Chinese keeper of a gaming-house. When he left she went into service m order to maintain herself, but was compelled to leave her .pdsition because her husband came along to see her when drunk, and made a. disturbance. The Court decided that she deserved .redress, and granted a decree nisi. "I advise every young_fellow in New South Wales only to follow the vocation ho is in until he contrives to

qualify himself for another higher still," said Mv.'G. 11. lieid, at the top of Ins bent in one of his philosophic addresses, given in Wooloomooloo, Sydney. "I was the son of a poor mail. I had to go to work when 1 was thirteen yearn old. i"iad no High School, Grammar

School, or University. 1 had to go to work lo earn my own living. And 1 think it was the grandest thing ever happened to inc. I learned much more in the first;year iit the ollice than ever 1. had learned at school. But then I still had ambition. I wanted to reach higher than the vocation of a clerk, respectable though it is. I had always the ambition to cuter public affairs. At eight or nine my great ambition -was to become a preacher. (Laughter.) My father was a ministers and, listening to him—lie was one of the most eloquent men who ever entered the pulpit; his name stands in a famous book on elocution, side by eide with the five most eloquent men that ever were—listening to Bira, I got" my inspiration. I got it from that noble father of mine. I only wish I could be half as good as he."