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Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3235, 2 July 1879, Page 2

A diffbeencb of opinion would be ;• mild way to put it, in spoaking of tho views held by the several Jurymen, on the late inquest. In our advertising columus will be found a declaration, signed by seven of the Jury, in opposition to one in last night's paper signed by Mr Plant and five others of the Jury. It is, however, apparent that the Jury were altogether unacquainted with their duties, and evidently misunderstood the directions of the Coroner. ! The only hotels for which licenses were not paid yesterday were the Theatre Koyal, Fountain, Willoughby, and Hape Creek. ■ Otjjb funny man's reason for thinking the present Government cannot stand through the next session—Because 4hey have lost their Ballance. The split in the Cabinet caused considerable excitement in Dunedin. The Daily Times declares it will not support the Government unless Ofcago, or at least Otago and Canterbury, have fair representation in the Ministry. In compliance with a request from the Great Powers, the ex-Khedive Ismail Pasha, Prince Hassim, and. Prince Hassan, his second and third sons, left Egypt yesterday for Naples. iV Thebe was a clean sheet at the E.M. Court this morning. It is probable that a conference of the Borough and County Councils will be held *on Friday next to consider the pumping question. ■ A marriage was celebrated in Christchurch a few days ago at which the bride, it is said, wore £800 worth of dress and jewellery, and had in additionJ£2O,OCO settled upon her as pin! money. ■! That the Thames people are essentially a carnivorous race of animals*? may be guMKedfrom the following extract of the quaWerly report of the Inspector of Slaughterhouses of the number of animals kiHed at the lopaL, slaughterhouses during the quarter ended 30th June, 1879:— Oxen, 396; calves, 17; sheep, 2047; lambs, 134; pigs, 293 ; total, 2885. Octt reporter clipped this out of a southern exchange, and as he handed it to us laconically remarked "You bet":— Whatever pride Thackeray, Dickens, Shakespeare, Byron, Addison, or J. D. Wickham may have taken in the best portion of their best works, poptry or prose, it cannot be compared to the intense delight with which the nineteenth century New Zealand reporter writes the following delicious sentence :— " The meeting then adjourned." The properly acclimatised Thames larrikin is, perhaps, as bad a specimen of the social disease of modern times as you could find anywhere. In most of .them the salient features of the genus hoodlum is fully, developed. They can swear, iv-: suit passers-by, chew, smoke and play, penny ante. The pit of the theatre at a crowded performance is, however, their heaven. There they can smoke to the annoyance of the occupants of the gallery, and hoot at those entering the stalls door, and, in fact, seem to obtain supreme enjoymeat from causing annoyance to their betters. They mustered in good force at the Diorama last evening, and their conduct—though we have seen it worsewas simply-, disgraceful. What with the hooting, yelling, and whistling, the noise made by these fag ends of humanity was what might have been expected from an army of lunatics. The Chronicle says the claftn of Mrs Meurant, of Auckland, which has been before Parliament since 1850, and before innumerabltdcominittees and commissions, has at length been settled, £2,000 having been:paid over (in full of all demands) to the trustees, Messrs Swanson, M.H.E., and the Hon. the Native Minister. An" influential meeting of the Catholics of Wellington was held on' Monday night at the Bishop's residence, and a.resolution to the following effect was carried unanimously :—" This meeting expresses the sense of injustice the Roman Catholics are laboring under by the operation of the present Education Act, they being onesixth of the population of the colony. By the operation of that Act they are deprived of all benefits from the state endowments for educational purposes." The meeting also expressed deep symthy with their co-religionists now about to meet in Dunedin to discuss what remedial measures should be takenjtp do away with the disadvantages under^rhich they are laboring, and to appoiut delegates to represent them in Dunedin. The delegates have have not been chosen. : A gentleman residing in Wellington was astonished to find on the pat of butter placed on his breakfast table one morning a neatly executed plan of some town sections. Aware of the ingenious devices adopted by land speculators for advertising ■" eligible properties," the gentleman in question at first thought this was the latest development of their advertising proclivities. A closer examina-, tion, however, revealed the fact that the butter had been wrapped up in a plan of a property to be sold, and the colours in which the plan was printed not being "warranted fast," left their impression on the butter. The Christchurch Globe says :—Some speculative individual in Wellington is determined to make money out of the present excitement arising from native aggression, and is giving Maori entertainments at the Theatre iioyal. The New Zealandor says, in a local—" Tho performances were gone through as succesfully as before. It was announced at the close that to-night would be under the patronage of Sir George Grey, and that an entire change of programme, new war dances, &c,, would take place, and, in addition, would be represented the massacre at Poverty Bay. Just at the present time, when it is likely there will be war dances in earnest, these representations should have an extra interest, and we have no doubt there will be a good attendance tonight." The Wellington people must be without a particle of feeling if they go to witness such horrors as were enacted by Te Kooti at Poverty Bay, and which to this day remains unpunished.

It look 3 bad to see a dog preceding his master down the street and calmly turn into the first publichouse he approaches. It shows there is something wrong, something lacking, a deplorable tendency on tho part of the dog. TnERE aro always two sides to a question, and tho advocates of Good •Templarism will probably be astonished ou learning the awful consequences attendant on the adoption of their principles. The defendant in a petty debt case heard in the Eesident Magistrate's Court, having expressed a strong dosire to inform the Bench how ho came to occupy his unpleasant position, ho obtained permission to speak. Ho then in an agitated manner said that three months ago he joiued tho teetotal cause, and had been uuable to obtain a day's work since. His Worship, amidst shouts of laughter from the daily, liabiiucs of the Court, said it was tho first time he had ever hoard such an argument from the mouth of a debtor, and there is no doubt he spoke from experience.— Globe. j Hey. Joseph Cook is going to lecture on " The Inner Life of a Newspaper." But did the reverend gentleman ever " jefF" for beer, play seven-up on the bed of a hand press or hear tho forty-horse power remarks when a form is " pied P " Wo don't believe he knows enough about the inner life of a newspaper to truthfully portray the feelings of an editor who accepts a £40 bos of patent medicine for £100 worth of advertising, and is compelled to either dispose of it for £4 or jtake it himself. , Many an editor has preferred taking the " Bitters" himself to parting with it, for so paltry a sum, but when it comes to gulphing down forty pounds worth of "Smith's Parabolic Liver Searcher," even Mr Cook would fail to describe the " inner life of a newspaper." "Are there no cabinetmakers at Wellington, Pa ? " asked a young idea the other evening, after reading about the Ministerial fracas. " I suppose so, my j dear." ; " Well, why! do they make such a fus%« about a cabinet being broken there ? " Papa only guffawed. A correspondent writing to mo from j San Francisco (Bays " Loafer in the Street" in the Christchurch Globe) sends jne the following ■'■ peculiar placard which was posted on a cask in a lager beer saloon in that city :— "To Trust is to Bustj To Bust is Hadei— : Therefore, •1 # Nb Trust, no Bust, no Hades." Johnny, Hy^des, Lizzie Morgan, and Jennie Nye are playing burlesque to good houses hrDunedin. The, Empress of .Austria's turn-opt for hunting has (says " Vanity Fair ") justly excited great admiration. It is not produced without some trouble. The Empress never dresses for riding till she arrives at the meet. She then retiresto the nearest house, and commences her toilette, which occupies exactly ant hour from the time she arrives,,till she is ready to start. Her beautifully fitting habit is "buttoned only after she is actually on her horse. Her saddle is so small as to be almost invisible when she is mounted, so that the appearanceis of a lady sitting on the horse itself. Everything to the smallest detail is studied, and. the result —as enthusiastic Irish beholders declare —is perfection. The whole family of the Empress are devoted horses and horsemanship. The ex-Queen of Nanles, her fister, is a beautiful rider, and tueir father used to wish he had been born a poor man, that he might havg been manager of a circus. ' Ex-Khedive Ismail I. will now be reduced by the inexorable fiat of the European Powers to 4 the dire-extremity of existing on £50,000 a-year. Such a trifle will probably birely suffice to pay the pin-money of his multudino|is wives, not to mention the host of other ladies who are sealed unto him. Nothing but pinching economy will enable the old profligate to make both ends, meet on £50,000 a year. He succeeded his father in 1863, and in 15 years had contrived to contract a personal debt of £8,815,430, besides spending the revenue of his estates amounting to £425,000 a year. He thus contrived to squander upwards of. a million a year, and now his estates are mortgaged.—S tar. The writer, of Specialities in" the Queenslander sam:—The speeches at a recent sederunt^s they call it) of the. General Assembly of the; Presbyterian Church of Queensland revealed to us the, existence of a cWs of sufferers whosW agonies, we are certain, have never before been brought into public notice. We refer to the class of--diffident young ministers. Seasoning from our own experience, we shodjn have been disposed to deny that the class existed at all; such young ministers agre have ourselves as met having _ beea generally characterised by a soaring assumption and airy spryness quite incompatible with the conventional notion of diffidence. But it seems there are occasions rwhen even • the boldest fledglibgs of divinity woiild be glad to be back with their mothers. They are well up in exigedis, hermeneutics, apologetics, and a dozen other secrets of the trade; but when they are put face to face with a man and a woman (especially a woman) for the purpose of uniting them in holy wedlock, their natural modesty gets tlie beMjir of them, thej are put to confusion, and are at their wit's end for what to say. Faint as they are, they have no form to fall back upon, and they cannot rise to the.occasion. They are without form, and void. Their only rubrics is in their blushing cheeks. Supposed to stand' on ceremony, they are, in reality, sitting on thorns. As quoted by a member of the Assembly, the confession of ono of them is that "he never passed through such an ordeal before." And no wonder, poor, poor lad. You see, these reverend striplings are left by their church to evolve a marriage service out of their own unconsciousness—or perhaps from their reading. Good heavens ! Fancy a beardless youth, of 21 or so, being called upon to extemporise instruction, it might be to a re-contracted widow, on the nature of an ordinance in which, with nothing but his boyish reminiscences to guide him, ho blushingly discerns only a culminated flirtation ! And yet a large majority of the General Assembly of his church has voted for leaving the matter of a marriage ritual " an open question." " An open question ! " Anopen sore. We cry shame on a church that thus abandons her younger sons in their hour of need. Even granting the objection of the Presbyterian church to the introduction of ritual of any sort, we are surprised that, among so many sagacious men, the obvious remedy did not suggest itself. Why not teach tßeir divinity students to marry? Why not regularly

put then through their marriage drill at Ihe Divinity-hall? Nothing coult3 be simpler than for, say, Messrs M'Cullooh und M'Svvaino to stand up in the classroom as bridegroom and bride (thoir incompatibility of temper would not necessarily detract from tho realistic character of the impersonation), while some other old soldier put tho would-be celebrant through his facings. It might do them good, too, to hear the youngster exhorting them to love one another, and to take each other as they are, for better for worse ; and when they had retired to the hat-room, and M'Swaine had signed his maiden name in the marriage class book, they, would then bo free to criticise tho performance and pronounce whether they were properly united or not. The kissing of the bride might, of course, be omitted, as there is no text which actually enforces that part of the ceremony. We are not sanguine that our recommendation will be acted upon, but we are, at all events, certain that, if such a system were adopted, never more would the agonised confession be wrung from a young minister's soul, that "he had never passed through such an ordeal before." The other day a German farmer (says the Ashburton Mail) who upheld his marital rights by kissing his servant girl and boxing his wife's ears because she remonstrated, was fined 508 and bound over to keep the peace. Winking indignantly at the Bench, he exclaimed:— " Beace, vat you call beace ? How can I geep der beace if mem vife is to be der boss ?" He was ordered to find two sureties or go to gaol, and departed after giving another wink of portentious i solemnity. A telegram from Wellington says that the Government hive decided that all Maori trespassers committed shall be tried in Wellington. The New Plymouth authorities hare applied for increased gaol accommodation in view of the large number of Maoris already and to be arrested; but the Government instructed the Crown Prosecutor to send on here each batch of Maoris as committed. Once here they will remain to atfaifc treatment before the Supreme Court, Of the first batch of seventeen Maori ploughmen arrested, two were mere school boys, who were set at liberty, an arrangement having been made for the arrest of all ploughing parties so soon as they attempt to commence ! operations. This is tlie sharpest thing, we have heard for, some time :—lmmediately after the fall of L'Fstrange from his balloon, a couple of sharpers took off their hats, and made a collection for him among the crowd, when a ready and liberal response was at once made. The scoundrels then male off with their plunder. : '"■