MIXED MARRIAGE.

Observer, Volume 5, Issue 124, 27 January 1883, Page 307

MIXED MARRIAGE.

One of the most marked characteristics of our marriage statistics is the growing tendency to celebi'ate such unions at the Registry Office. This is more especially the case where unions o£ Catholics and Protestants are concerned. They resent, and justly so, the arrogant interference of clerical dignitaries with their domestic ai'rangenients, and their usurpation of tjie-dearest right which can belong to the parent, ,j(fchat of bringing up the children according to tln^r'ennt^onvictions and desires. It is a poor ccfcnmenc^ment (of married life, when at the very %lLar am attempt is made by priest or parson to %tablum an impermm in inqjerio in the new mrrrte. Rather than submit to it, those matrimonially inclined are driven to the ever open portals of the Registry Office, and in Auckland especially the transition is made unusually easy for scrupulous suitors, inasmuch as the Lord (Mr Wayland's successor and Acting Registrar) being a willing participator in these " little affairs," the happy young couples can well afford to dispense with the priestly blessing or parsonic benediction.

ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN. JN THE BEST REGULATED FAjfILIES. The other day a singular %?ci<teint occurred at the Police guard-room. The%tt>pJ| half of one of the huge* windows came down like a piledriver, and made a case for a wholesale glazier. The first instinctive apprehension , of the acting

watchhouse-keeper when lie heard the row, was that Captain Hume, or Honest John, the Defence Minister, had "dropped on hion" The second constable in the guard-room thought that the side of the station had " caved in," while a third thought it had caved out. A fourth, who was suffering from a stiff neck and»a<, ripe boil, gave a hop, skip and jump, whiebJput' him outside the room in the twinkling of a/B. eye (overturning a "drunk" who was/ bJang "run through" at the time in the gutod/house), the outcome being that he took the crick out of his neck and burst his boil — not his boiler. Mis impression of the trouble was that the hoodlums were on the warpath again, so he howled upstairs for that able and intelligent officer and son of Anak, Sergeant G-amble, to come down and. read the Riot Act. An exhaustive and detective investigation of the accident elicited the fact that the cause of the catastrophe was threefold — a parsimonious Government, rotten sash-cord, and a superannuated window-pulley.

Constable O'Toole : " Arrah, now, ye spalpeen, what's up wid ye at all, at all?"

Happy Old Party : " P-p-p — hie — ympla !" 3frs Brown : " Pore gentleman ! He says it's pimples, Mr Pleeceman, and most likely struck innards too — all along o' that dratted comic a-bi'inging this hot weather, as Brown says."