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Thames Star, Volume III, Issue 1674, 15 May 1874, Page 2

A BAZAiB in aid of the funds of the Wei* leyan Church will bo hold in the Academy of Music on Thursday next and following days. There will be music each evening, and it ia so long since anything of the kind has been attempted that very favorable results may be. expected from this effort to raise funds. Thk Melbourne correspondent of the Q-ee-' long Advertiser tells a story of the Grenville Advocate having g*ine to Melbourne, Derby, England, instead of to the "Victorian Melbourne. 25,000 miles or thereabouts for a halfpenny, for the paper was duly sent back on the "try Melbourne, Victoria " principle. The Printing Times asserts that" In May an international congress of paper-makers is to be held, to determine on the sizes and names of papers to be used in the approaching adoption of the metric system, and to decide on the number of sheets to the quire and ream, under tho decimal system. It is pro-po-ed to have 100 sheets to the quire, and 1000 to the ream. Mbs Webb, of Melbourne, has published, says the Herald, a pamphlet, entitled th>»-: Woman's Advocate, in wtaeh she recomnvoiicls that a bill should be introduced into Parliament for establishing a widows' fund, oo&tnbu'ed to by everxJ*« sbSnd» thafc no Wldow xnay-be-lrfMestitute. Also a maidens' fund, t G w-lricii all bachelors must contribute, thafc -no maiden be left destitute after forty. We have received frotu Mr. Jefferson, Pollen-3trcet,-Australasian, Town and Country Journal, and Illustrated Sydney News. With the latter is presented a colored supplement, illustrating one of the customs of the New South Wales aboriginals, entitled "Punishment." The wood engavings are of the usual interesting eh;iracter. A portrait of Dr. Livingstone appears. Spibitism has been attracting considerable attention in Melbourne recently, a Mr. Foster having been the medium of such attraction. The Melbourno correspondent of the Ballarat Star gives his experience of Mr Foster's manifestations in the following terras : —From day to day announcements appear in the public papers of the extraordinary manifestations of come secret power possessed by Foster, the medium. I hay studiously avoided making any parade in public print of my own experience, but I am free to say that in thn interview I had with this" remarkable man, and in the tests I submitted* £*ra satisfied that he is no impostor. It is usual to write the names, including that one in which you are most immediately interested, in his presence. I did not do this/ I wiote the names in my own office, and made them into pellets there, placed them in an envelope and took them to him. I put them on the table before me, and without touching them he wrote me the name of the spirit I desired to converse with. More wonderful than this, he, without being moved by me in the matter, wrote me a message from a long deceased relative signing it with her name, and the handwriting compares exactly with that of the dead womas—-my own mother. I must confess that this startled me, for I was prepared to consider that by some mysterious affinity the medium might be able to read the workings of my mind, but I am at a loss to explain the matter of the handwriting. That there were some weaknesses manifested in Foster's power of divination I am not prepared to deny, but they were trifling compared with the general results.