LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 90, 2 September 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

A meeting is to be hold in tlic Town Hall to-night for the purpose of discuss ing the formation of a branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The absence of such a society in Xew Plymouth is a reproach upon our public-spiritedness, for no one who walks our hilly streets with open eyes can fail to admit that it is sorely needed. This admission should carry with it some practical resolve to remedy the far too prevalent ill-treatment—be it deliberate or thoughtless—of domestic , animals in our midst. That sympathy can best be shown by a large attendance at the meeting to-night, and the practical and financial support of the community. The meeting will begin at 8 o'clock. Di. and Mrs. Truby King are visitin<* New Plymouth. ° Mr. J. Mackenzie, Surveyor-General is in New Plymouth. ' A sharp shock of earthquake wa# perienced at New Plymouth at 8.25 a.m. on Saturday. The Arbitration Court will sit at New Plymouth on Thursday, October 3, to hear all cases set down for hearing. Several applications will be made for Hew awards. Tt is understood that the Public Works Officials will leave Stratford early this week for North Taranaki, to make a flying survey of the railway line which it is proposed to build towards Awakino.

The s.s. Ngapuhi leaves Onehunga today and will continue in the New Ply-. mouth-Oneliunga service for about three weeks, in lieu of the s.s. Karawa, the latter steamer having to go on the slip for her periodical overhaul. The number (42) of births registered in New Plymouth during the month ended last Saturday constituted a record for the town. For the corresponding month of last year there were 30 births. Deaths last month numbered 14, one more than in August, 1011. There were eight marriages, as against six during the corresponding month of last year. While engaged in culinary operations last week, .Mrs. Gardiner, of Devon street, had the misfortune to burn her hands and face rather severely. Some fat catching lire in a frying-pan was the cause of the accident. Mrs. Gardiner was attended to at Eraser's Pharmacy, and subsequently by Dr. Fookes. She is now sufficient}''recovered to get about again. The ceremony of opening the King George V. Seamen's Institute at Lyttelton took place on Saturday. A large numbers of visitors were present, including Commander P. J. Stopford, of thrt Pioneer. Bluejackets from the warship and seamen from the vessels in port attended in goodly numbers. The ceremony was performed by the Hon. F. M. B. Fisher, Minister of Marine. It is not generally known that young gorse is an extremely nutritious animal food. When speaking to a well-known scientific agriculturalist, a reporter had this fact impressed upon him, the authority stating that, were farmers fully aware of the food value of the gorse, they would perhaps make more use of it and at the same time exterminate the "noxious weed," for sheep or cattle would devour it with avidity when it was beginning to grow. Once gorse had grown, however, it became a costly pest, for it had been calculated—on careful examination —that in a hundred-acre paddock a very moderate growth of gorse would occupy three acres. An elderly woman appeared on remand at the Magistrate's Court on Saturday morning, charged with helpless drunkenness. According to Constable Flannigan, of Hawera, the woman had been drinking around Hawera for a Week or more prior to ber arrest on the railway station there, and had been sleeping out under fences and trees. She was a cook by trade. Mr, C. M. Lepper, secretary of the Taranaki Charitable Aid Board, explained in court that it was the business of the Hawera Board to look after the woman if she was destitute. He understood that the Hawera Board was willing to take charge of her When she arrived in Ilawera. The Magistrate (Mr. A. Crooke, S.M.) remanded the woman back to Ilawera. At the examinations held in connection with the. Trinity College of Music, by Mr. Charles Schilsky, of London, last Saturday, the following pupils of the local Convent were successful:—Teachers' Diplomas: Miss Elsie Bennett (Associated Pianist), A.T.C.L.; Miss Annie Hopkins (Associated Vocalist), A.T.C.L.; Miss Ha Henderson (Certificated Pianist), C.P.T.C.L.; Miss Sylvia Hodgson (Higher Local), 70 marks; Miss Clara Old (senior honors), 81; Miss Kathleen Connell (intermediate), 69; Miss May MacMastcr (junior), 72; George Clinch' (junior). (i!) ; Miss Grace Warner (junior), 08; As'hton Warner (preparatory honors'), 83 (violin); Miss Nellie Carrington (preparatory), 00 (piano). The last-named pupil was taught by Mrs. W. Hood, Inglewood. Onorato Roux, the well-known writer (states the llome correspondent of a London journal) maintains that the majority of famous Italians are sprung from humble parentage, and he illustrates this theory in a collection of biographical sketches which has just appeared. It i.s undoubtedly a fact that many of Italy's greatest men are of absolutely obscure lineage. The father of Pope Pius X. was a county postman, and his family to this day keeps a village inn. Verdi was also connected in his youth with a public-house. Admiral Aubry is the son of a barber, Mascagni of a bilker, the Neapolitan scientist and philosopher.. Bovio, of a potter, the astronomer Schiaparelli of a bricklayer. The father of the great painter Angelo ■.vas a wheelwright. Lenbach had been a swineherd, as were also Pope Sixtus V. and Biovanni Segantini. The philathropist Mgr. Bonomelli was a country laborer; the founder of the modern Italian navy, Benedetto Brin, was the son of a porter. Obscure theatrical circles have produced such famous artists as La Duse, Mine. Kistori and Tommaso Salvini.

The Rot. George Jackson, of Toronto, is now in England, and he gave some striking sidelight* on Canadian life to the .Methodist recorder. Mr. Jackson spoke of a grosn peril to which the Canadian Church member i« exposed, namely, the fascination of material wealth; and from this, as lie showed, even the ministry itself is not immune. The man with brains and a small capital has so many opportunities of making money, that the temptation to give up less remunerative callings, having higher ideals, for those of fower aims, wherein men may rapidly grow rich, is almost irresistible. In one city alone, he said, seven ministers had abandoned their calling to go into "real estate" or thi' buying and selling of Jand and -town lots. lhe lure of the dollar was equally perilous to the teacher, who saw on every hand men with only half 'bis brains making thrice his income. Canada, said Mr. Jackson, would have to inaugurate a great patriotic campaign among the leaders of thought to remind men that, after all, their best service to their country was not the accumulation of wealth, but the maintenance of spiritual ideals, even though that maintenance involved sacrifice and comparative poverty." The explanation of the origin of the term "Buckley's chance," the use of which is as common in New Zealand as in Australian, was given in the reading of a paper entitled "Early Port Phillip and Victoria in the Sixties, ,v at a meeting of the Australian Historical Society in Sydney recently. Captain J. 11. Watson, who read the paper, said that when Batman s party landed in Victoria, in 18S5. they were surprised to find amoii" the natives a man whose features showed him to 'be of European extraction, but his kin was as black as the natives. "Tien, however, the letters "W. 8." were found tatoocd on his a r rm, enquiries w*:re made, lesulting in the following discovery: About 32 years previously Captain Collins had attempted to found a colony in the south-eastern portion of Australia, and had. failed. A number of convicts escaped, but all except William Buckley had died or been shot. He and a companion had travelled along the coast for nearly a, year. ITis companion at last decided to return, and was never heard of again. Buckley soon afterwards fell in with a party of natives, and for over 30 years he had lived with the tribe, not raising them to his .level, but descending to theirs, and Urns 'he alow of all the escapees had survived. Ilence the term.

Sambur or Ceylon deer (stags or bucks only), according to a notice in the Ouzel, te, may be taken or killed within the counties of Manawatu, Oroua and Kairanga, between .September 2 am! 30. Licenses to kill such ileer may be issued by the Chief Postmaster at Wellington and the postmasters at Palmerston North. Hulls, Fox ton ami Marton, on payment of a license fee of 20s. 'No licensee shall be allowed to take or kill more than three .stags or bucks; and not more than one license shall he issued to the same person. No hind or fawn may be killed on any pretext whatever; and no dogs will be allowed to accompany either the licensee or any attendant he may have with him. A ''if/ dignitary of Nottingham says; '"There is a mighty horde of idlers in this city. Ido not think there is any city of its kind where there are so many men who do not work, and depend entirely on the work of their wives and daughters. They "retire' soon after marriage. From my position lam able to judge. Hundreds upon hundreds of wives leave for work early in the morning—their husbands in lied. These admirable women—and it is a common thing in Nottingham—leave their lords and masters a sixpence under the candlestick on the mantelpiece for the morning drink, and are really the husbands and the breadwinners. These street loafers are kept in idleness. They *<ire the reservoirs of unrest and danger in times of industrial disputes." New York's "Upper Ten," or, as it is called there, "The 40(1," for the most part spends the summer months at fashionable Newport, Rhode Island, with the idea that it will enjoy a complete rest from the exertions necessary to keep up with the social functions of the winter season. Newport, however, has hitherto simply meant, to most people of social prominence, that the scene of activity is changed, while the activity itself is in no wise lessened. It has been reported many times that the leaders of society are so exhausted at the end of the Newport summer season that they are obliged to take a complete rest, in order to lit themselves for the coming winter. Tf the leading women now at Newport have their own way, however, all this will be stopped. Owing to the heat-wave, even the seaside resorts are unpleasantly hot, and the millionaire residents at Newport are beginning to feel the sti ;■ in. Therefore, a movement, headed by Mrs. Sturtevant Fish, has been started' to "ring the curfew" at midnight, that hour to mark the closing of even the most formal entertainments, and there has been a hearty response to her proposal. This is only one of several symptoms of the spirit that pervades Xewport this summer, and the residents are making it clear that they are at the seaside for rest and recreation, and to enjoy fully the open-air grandeur, rsnd not to give a small imitation of New York's winter season. Under the title of "Intimacies of Court and .Society," "the widow of an American diplomatist" has published (says the London Daily Telegraph), some interesting impressions gathered in the chief capitals of Europe. In Paris her astonishment was aroused by the severely quiet life of Madame Fallieres, who has never been outside her own country. "The President's wife," slie states, "is descended from a long line of mothers of the South, quiet, upright women, whose whole existence revolves round one centre, the home. Here she keeps everything in order, supervises the work of the servants, and monopolises tlie training of the children. This type of mother is no more affected than the ■Sphinx by external events. Their feeling for their home has a religious tincture in it. Their life is almost conventional. All this does not prevent Madame Fallieres from being supremely happy, and when I chanted the praises of her husband she was as pleased as if she had been a young girl just engaged." To this picture the author presents a striking contrast by her account of the American colony in Paris. "There are heaps of them," she declares, "who would swamp their rooms with orchids when a duchess came to tea with them, however 'declasse' that duchess might be. They take the greatest pains to try to forget that they are Americans. To this class belong those women who get titles /rom the Pope for their husbands, who are meanwhile conducting with pariseworthv industry a linen draper's or grocer's business in some United States town. French people talk of raising a monument to this unknown god, the American husband, whom they only know from his photographs, and who sends his wife out to sea in a golden boat in order that she may amuse herself in a foreign land. They know very well that they would not give such liberty to their own wires."