WHAT THE WORLD SAYS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2116, 25 October 1890, Page 3

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS.

Surprising aa it may seem, Mr Gladstone is now addressing large audiences every evening in the Atheseum, Melbourne, on the other side of the globe. The phonograph into which the G.O. M, spoke the message to Lord Carrington that was lately re-produced in our columns is exhibited there every night, and repeats the Liberal leader’s words with fidelity and finish. “Mr Gladstone’s voice,” says one of the reporters, “ was sonorous, and carried an oratorical swing and force that was highly impressive.” During the same entertainment the phonograph sings J. L. Toole’s “ ’Orrible Tale,” with an amusing pendant. It seems that Toole wound up the ditty with the query “ How will that do ?” addressed to a friend standing by and not intended for the phonograph at all. But the instrument recorded his spoken words, and now rolls them off quite naturally at the end of his song. A young lady of Paris has invented a new method ef robbery, which she has carried on with a good deal of success for several weeks past. Wearing a travelling-dress, with a travellingbag in her hand, she waited about the stations, as if she were quite new to Paris, and did not know where to go. It constantly happened that gentlemen took pity on her, and proposed to t»ke hertoanhotel. Onarrivingatthe hotel, the gentleman, of course, demanded to he shown rooms. The young lady invariably stopped downstairs, and before he returned, had jumped into the cab with the gentleman’s luggage and driven away. Mr Swinburne must not suppose that the Speaker's intervention on his behalf when Mr O’Brien tried to bring him to book for inciting to assassination arose from any sympathy on Mr Peel’s part. On the contrary, the Speaker is said to have remarked to Mr O’Brien that it was absurd to treat seriously so feather-brained ” a writer as “ Poet Swinburne.” But even that was not the worst, Mr O’Brien retorted that the Home Rulers, as well as the Unionists, had their “feather brained” ally. If the Unionists had Mr Swinburne, the Home Eulers had Scrab Nally, and for Scrab they had to answer before the Parnell Commission. But the Speaker was inexorable. He would mot allow that “ Poet Swinburne ” counted for as much as even Serab Nally. Verily a poet js of no honor in his own party! In an interesting “Character Skbtch ” of the late Lord Carnarvon in the new number of the Eeview of Reviews, Mr Stead refers as follows to the famous interview with Mr Parnell: The interview was suggested by me to Lord Carnarvon in a conversation which took place immediately after his acceptance of *•' Vice-royalty. The inters * i. J r J - -mw was not sought from any ami(jter p or I^_? ursl lt.iice of any deep-laid elee--Cral strategy. Lord Carnarvon was a profoundly conscientious man, who undertook the duties ot the Irish Vice-royalty with a sense of the difficulty of the post, and the imperative need of doing everything that could possibly be done to enable him to govern justly and to govern well That is the simple

explanation of an episode which has been absurdly magnified into proportions which were quite out of harmony with the character of Lord

Carnarvon, Mr Stead had intended to enter into the matter more fully, but “it was deemed inconsistent with Lord Carnarvon’s wish that the ashes of controversy should be stirred again. , , . When Lord Carnarvon died he was at peace with ail men, and his last wish was that no discordant note of controversy should be sounded over his grave.”

Is beer a good thing to sing on? Obviously the Ghermans think so. According, to some calculations by the Times correspondent at Yienna, the consumption of beer by the Herman singers at the festival in that city amounted to 24,000 gallons. There were 20,000 singers, and the consumption was spread over a day and a half. It would thus appear that each singer drank between six and seven pints a day. Tet the singing was, we are told, magnificent throughout. The Pope was much shocked when he received the news of Cardinal Newman’s death. He celebrated a funeral mass for the late Cardinal in his private Chapel. Professor E. W, Newman, the brother of the Cardinal, is now 85 years of age. He says that he was a practical abstainer from intoxicating liquors from boyhood, when he dined alone. At 62 he turned vegetarian, and since then he has needed no physician. He is as well now, he says, as anyone of his age can expect to be, and he laments because vegetarianism makes no greater progress with the world. “The first electrical execution,” says one of the doctors who was present when Kemmler was shocked to death, “ will also be the last,” Certainly the experiment was terribly painful—far;more so than first telegrams showed —if not to the victim himself, at any rate to the spectators. But the fact is that the application of electricity—to life as to death—is as yet only in the tentative stage, and to declare off-hand that effective and painless execution by electricity is an impossibility because the first experiment has failed is the height of scientific absurdity. The Times suggests that Dr Richardson’s lethal chamber filled with carbonic oxide might well be extended to the case of criminals. It would certainly be strange if in one way or another the resources, of science could not in time provide a painless and certain substitute for the barbarity and bungling of the hangman’s rope. Here, in the form of a balance-sheet, is the account rendered by Mr Burns in Hyde Park of what the Dockers’ Strike of a year ago has won for labour

Increase ef wages to London Dockers ... ... £300,000 Goodwill of Australia—

manifested by gift of £37,272 178 strikes in the country, leading to increased wages of £400,000 Numbers of Unionists in

London increased by... 300,000 The “ New Trade-Unionism,” as it is called—though for the life of us we cannot see how it really differs from the old—is ridiculed by Mr Shipton as ineffective; but this is net a bad balance-sheet, surely (even with liberal deduction), for the first year’s work. Mr and Mrs Stanley, having left Melchet Court, are now in Paris, on their way to Lucerne. Some French geograpahers called upon, him. The explorer told them that whatever might be thought of the Anglo-French Agreement it was better for France to have England for a neighbour in Africa than Germany. Mr and Mrs Stanley also received calls from the gentlemen of the British Embassy. Mr Charles Tennant, the brother of Mrs H. M. Stanley, has landed at New York, and been pounced upon by the interviewers. In speaking of the controversy which was carried on in the newspapers as to whether Mrs Stanley was the model for Millais’s picture of Yes or No, ”Mr Tennant said she was not, but that she sat for the companion piece, “ No,” by Millais. When asked why she preferred that name, she said “ that no sometimes meant yes, but yes never meant no.”