GENERAL NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 298, 11 May 1911, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS

A Yarmouth applicant for an old age pension, who was unable to produce documentary evidence regarding her age, has proved her claim by showing that her daughter was already receiving a pension.

On opening a barrel of apples from Vancouver, British Columbia, recently, an Islington (London) fruiterer discovered the following among the contents: "I am looking for a good-looking young man. Tf the man that gets this box of apples is half-way good looking send me a letter." The girl gives her address and adds: ''He must be at least 30 years old, and must be able to support an automobile. Sec?"

A sensational incident occurred during the progress of a clearing sale at Port Campbell (Victoria) recently. A hive of bees was accidentally overturned by some cattle, and in a few minutes everything moving was attacked by the bees. A stallion, which was tied to a tree, became frantic and had to be cut loose. Tlic progress of the sale was delayed for some time, fires having to be lighted to keep the bees away. As showing the frozen meat trade has provided fanners with a market for their stock, we arc informed on reliable authority that a Wanganui buyer operating for a Wellington meat export company has, during the last six months alone, bought 80,000 .sheep in this district on behalf of his principals, which must he.something like a record for one man. [ When one remembers that, but little over a quarter of a century ago, these sheep would have had to he boiled down j for tallow, the superiority of the present | day over the- "good old times" becomes very apparent.—Wanganui Herald. A Louisville girl mace an. engagement to elope with a young man whom; her father had forbidden to enter the house. The plan was to ride in a close carriage across the line into Indiana, have the marriage ceremony performed, and return to boldly announce themselves as husband and wife. This was carried out; as far as the start in the carriage. Then the man kissed the girl, and she found a strange odour of whisky in his breath. More than that, she judged his vivacity to he the result of slight intoxication. As he would not turn back, she called a policeman to her aid, got in another carriage, and went home unmarried. , "I would throw up my orders and leave the Church to-morrow if I thought that Cod cared for one set of the community and not for the other," said the Bishop of London at the annual meeting of the Medical Aid Society for Necessitous Gentlewomen. Why were there rich and poor? his lordship went on to ask. The answer of the theosophist was no good to-day. He had more respect for the man who said our society was on a wrong basis. On economic grounds he did not agree with the Socialists, who, however, were in many cases full of burning love for the community. His lordship believed Cod had given the minority their riches in trust, in order that they might pass them on to others.

Seattle is the latest of American com-1 munities to make an effort to sweep its house clean of graft. The reformers, have begun vigorously—not so vigorously as in San Francisco, but perhaps with a more solid basis of working. Women, who were very active and influential on the side of reform in San Francisco, are more so in Seattle, dnA there they have the franchise to aid them. With the support of the women, the forces opposed to graft threw out of office Mayor Hiram Gill, who was accused of protecting the city's purveyors of vice. They elected a reform mayor and a reform city council. Now they have succeeded in gaining two indictments against the late mayor's chief of police, C. W. Wappen-1 stein, on charges of receiving bribes for the protection of evil resorts. A splendid exhibition of muscular Christianity was given in Paris early on the morning of March 15 by a French priest, the Abbe Loiseau, who, although over sixty years old, overcame a burglar who attacked him and, in spite of severe wounds, held him until the police came. At one o'clock in the morning the Abbe, who lives alone in a little flat on the fifth floor near the Church of St. Sulpice, was awakened by the breaking open of his desk in the next room. He jumped out of bed, rushed into the sittingroom, and was immediately attacked by a big man, who had a life preserver in his hand. Though bruised and beaten, the priest laid hold of the burglar, and seizing a water bottle, brought it down with a crash on the head of the assailant. Then the two men closed and rolled over on the floor together, both being badly cut by the broken glass. The priest received several other wounds from a knife which the burglar had managed to open, but he never loosed Ins grip, lhe noise 01 the struggle aroused the house, and in a few- minutes the police arrived and arrested the burglar.