OMNIUM GATHERUM.

Observer, Volume 5, Issue 124, 27 January 1883, Page 312

OMNIUM GATHERUM.

Patea must be in a flourishing condition. A local commission agent who went out the other day to collect £1,500 of accounts, declares that he considered he had done a good day's work by getting in enough to pay for " boozes."

Sir W. J. Clarke, Bart, is the happy possessor of an income of about £180,000 a year, or, say £500 a day ; and his brother Joe is just as rich. Yet, fifty years ago, their father, " Big " Clarke, who made nearly all the money, was a butcher in Hobart Town.

She was standing at the top of the stairs, with one of those 41b sandstone match-holders in her hand ; evidently waiting for her lord and master. One of the lodgers in the house was going up stairs when whiz past his ear went the match-striker. He overcame his astonishment, and reached the top of the stairs, when she coolly said, " I beg your pardon, Mr , I thought it was my husband." Our friend was sorry it was'nt.

There is high carnival at Cambridge. There is corn and oil and whisky in abundance, publichouse hakas, domestic broils, uproar, and a general odour of dried shark in the atmosphere. The Land Court is sitting. The publicans and storekeepers have laid in extra stocks of firewater, slops, big-bowled pipes, sheepwash tobacco, shoddy, and jewsharps, and the sound of rejoicing is heard in the land.

The following touching lines, from the pen of the poet laureate of Auckland, should for ever set at rest the vexed que^lS&n of Miss Pharoah's occupation on the occffaionl of that historical visit to the Mle : — J / In a green valley, convaynipdt to the Nile, King Pharoah's daughter'wint bathing for a while, And, running on the bank to dhry her skin, She twigged the bulrushes the babe lay in • Then, turning to her maids, she said, and smiled, " O, milly muvdther, which o' yez owns the child f"

" Capting "Jackson Barry, having distinguished himself as a sailor, explorer, gold-digger, mayor, pig-breeder, jockey, author, — in fact having been "everything by turns and nothing long," — is said to be going in for training as an athlete. There's life in the old boy yet. We may hear some ' day of his being a candidate for the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, the post of Astronomer Royal, or a sandwich man. On second thoughts we think the Captain would be most likely to be a success in the last mentioned capacity.

We were told some time ago that a Dunedin citizen had remitted £200 to England to cover freight and charges on the imoortation of a detachment of a Salvation Army for service in ISew Zealand. This enthusiast will some day be ranked with the misguided patriots who introduced the rabbits, the London sparrow, and the Scotch thistle ._ Fancy a mob of Salvationist larrikins profaning Queen-street on Sunday evenings with strains like this : —

For He's a jolly good Saviour, For He's a jolly good Saviour, For He's a jolly good Saviour, Which, nobody can deny. This may be on a level with, the taste and in* telligence of London roughs, but it will hardly do h.ere.

It has been decided by a judge in Idaho that the refusal of a boarder to eat codfish-balls does not justify the keeper of the restaurant in shooting him. A case occurred in Wyoming Territory, during the period of building the Union Pacific Railroad, where a person was acquitted of the crime of murder for killing a passenger who refused to eat sausages in the ball. We presume these cases nrust have rested upon the usage and custom of the country, rather than upon the fish -balls or the sausages. In our judgment the presumptions of law should favour the accused i~\o refuses to eat, either in self-defence. Now mes Nevada with another crime unknown to i 3 code of common law. Sullivan shoots Miller Iwearing his hat in a ball-room. This has not ■reached a hearing. We cannot anticipate Rt the theory of the defence will be, but the

rdict will be, no doubt, justifiable homicide. Wyoming, Idaho, and Nevada would send to the chain-gang every cowardly blackguard who carriea a pistol, decent citizens might be permitted to refuse codfish-balls or sausages, and wear hats with impunity.

As an illustration of the beauty and looseness of the divorce laws in America, it has lately transpired that a resident of a neighbouring city obtained an absolute divorce from a second wife on a Thursday of one Aveek, and on Tuesday of the next week attended the funeral of his first wife, from whom he had also been divorced, and on the Wednesday following married a third wife — and all these events occurred within seven days and i within the past month. According to the Suffolk 'County records, there is a lady residing in a town not over five miles from Boston, who is now seeking a divorce from her fifth husband. She is a handsome milliner, and not over thirty years of age. The ministers in the State are going to move on the next Legislature and see if they cannot have something done in the direction of modifying the divorce laws of the State. People here used to say some hard things about the divorce laws of Indiana, but there is no need of that now.

The authorities of the town of Sainte Marie aux Mines, in Alsace, have settled the drink question by a great coup. They have published a list of the drunkards of the place to the number of thirty-one, and for the future innkeepers are forbidden to sell intoxicating liquors to those who are thus advertised. It follows, therefore, that those who in drunken earnestness have been accustomed to troll out the words of the Q-erman drinking song— Aud when, at last, ■within my own, Grim Death his arm is linking 1 , With glass in hand I'll gaily die, While drinking, drinking, drinking — will have to migrate elsewhere if their astonishing pledge is to be fulfilled.

. "Even the editorial mind, supposed to be omniscient in a superficial way, cannot safely speculate as to what motives may rule in the breasts of

•young women." Vide N. Z. Herald. Just so ! But how can oniniscienee be superficial ? The phrase seems to our humble mind a contradiction in terms. But -why does the editor want to speculate about the breasts of young women at all ? — the hoary-headed old sinner ! Hasn't he got a missus of Ms own. Our regular poet has

set the mangle in motion and turned out th« following: — What's in the breasts of womankind ? T will not speculate upon it, A bustle, a pull-back behind, A dolman, or a lovely bonnet ; Some hij'h-heeled shoes, A pair of gloves Or any other thing 1 you choose, That vain, eonoeited woman loves. The last gay ball, who was the belle, Some rather rough insinuations, And many things that she could tell, About the belle and her relations ; Some sad reflections on the ways Of stuck-up prudes and would-be saints. How Mary Ja.no wears tight-laced stays, And Angelina dyes and paints. What's in the breasts of womankind P Give us a rest, the theme's too tryin _, We're far too modest and refined " ' v Into such myst'ries to be prying, *to There's mischief, flirting, much deceit, * Some scandal, envy, love of gadding, Let these conjectures end — I'm beat, Oh ! yes, there's often lots of padding.