FROM OUR EXCHANGES

Temuka Leader, Issue 176, 17 September 1879, Page 3

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

The land question is the " burning" it-stion of the day in all the Australian ■■;!■-.!lies, but somehow or other, notrbstanding the attractive and popular ~ " the laud for the people and the <.ple for the laud," the same old round obbery and chicanery goes on. In ;ieensland the ".homestead area" ■dge is the latest swindle, and the v.'.teenslander" illustrates in the i iwing extract how in that colony they ■■'land for the girls, and girls for the -.,;'- : —" The late Sir John Sinclair ....,! to boast that he had six-nnd-thirty <>'• '.laughters. Those six charming i.i.g unites, each of them, stood 6ft in ■■]■• • stocking feet.' There is a gentle- .. however—a denizen of our great •it interior —a citizen of the City Plains—to whom Sir John and •-aad-thirty feet of daughters is a sicken, scarcely fit to be plucked. •i.ail we say of the modern Colossus, . .n'ous son of Erin, who has six

daughters, each of them good for 640 acres of the best black soil ? Imagine the pride of the man—the father of that united family ! The mother cannot account for it—the father cannot account • for it. They have- Iron married sixteen yeats' come t'hri-imas, and yet a beneficent Providence has blessed them with six beautiful daughters, all of them exactly eighteen yeu*s old. It is littl.* less than miraculous ! Have they not made their declarations ? Have not those declarations been duely attested ? Have they not selected their 640 acres each in a homestead area ? Think of 8840 acres of daughters, with the potentiality of each of those daughters in due time developing a capacity, by Iter daughters, for the absorption of 3840 acres more ! The thought is overpowering." Two coloured children living on Col. Led better's plantation, near Wadesboro, ! N. C, died soon sftereating snake eggs, | which they found in the woods and cooked, supposing them to do partridge eggs. ' A man at Chfipmanvillc, Ya., had a chance to find out how long he could stand on his toes. Bobbers took his money, hanged him to a tree, and left him. Impressing his toes on the ground he could relieve the choking of the noose around his neck, and in that way he stood for thirteen hours, but was on the point of giving up.when help came. It is estimated that American shoppers spend nearly 10,000,000: dollars every season over the counters in London. Some time ago it was announced that a daily Protestant newspaper would be published in Paris. The experiment has been tried and it has failed. The business management and the editorial conduct seem to have been alike unfortunate. The patronage was at first small, and it soon fell oil' altogether. There is no probability of an immediate renewal of the experiment. The Boston bicycle club went out on Sunday for a ride on their two-wheeled vehicles. Ten of them were arrested on a charge of violating the Sunday law, and a justice fined them ten dollars each on the ground that they had been " playing or sporting on the Lord's day." They appealed, and the legal question will be brought before a higher court. An American exchange writes: — It is ail wrong to let our church choir go off in the opera of "Pinafore" between Sundays. A dreadful thing recently happened on this account at a Californiau fnneral. The pastor, a tall, .white-haired man much resembling an admiral, rose : in his pulpit, and no sooner finished in a sing-song tone the remark, "we miss his piesence iii his usual haunts," than j the choir sprang to (heir feet and shouted in return, "and so do his sisters his cousins, and his aunts." This is one of the popular refrains in "H.M.S. Pinafore." " What shall we do with our rats ?" is a question more easily asked than answered. < hie gentleman, not a hundred miles from Queen street, being of an Epicurean turn of mind, is endeavouring to find out a solution by eating them! Grocers' rats are most affected, because of their plumpness and tenderness—the taste of the flesh being pronounced " peculiar," with a strong dash of rabbit thrown in, but otherwise good eating, when constitutional prejudices have been successfully overcome. There are one or two Garde Mobiles in Auckland, who endured all the hardships of the siege of Paris, and they state that a Parisian sewer rat, after being duly prodded by a bayonet through a street grating, was not bad after all. But, unlike our friend, they had seen better, and their confession resembled that of the Western trapper touching crow: " I kin eat crow, but darn me if I hanker after it." The above is a tough yarn, but the toughest part of it is its truthfulness. A local footballer, after his exertions in a Saturday's match, repaired like a good Christian on the following day to church, where, in an unlucky moment, he yielded to the seductions of Morpheus, and fell fast asleep. Further on in the service those sitting near the sleeper were startled by his making a wild grasp at an imaginary foeman, at the same time calling in no gentle tones, 'Keep it in bounds,' followed up by a quick ' mark.' He failed to catch his opponent, but went remarkably near a young lady in the next seat. A judicious shake from a fellow-worshipper had by this time stopped our footballer's little game, and brought him to a sense of the situation. Afterwards he, of course, had to undergo considerable chaffing regarding his freak, but 'Youug Australia' is not easily disconcerted, and his reply was that instead of being obliged to the member of the congregation who had awakened him, he would rather than a good deal have been left for another few minutes, j 'for,' said he, 'I never had such a splendid ' opportunity to kick a goal, and, after allowing me to play the game so long, they might have least have let me had the try for goal.'