DTJNEDIN.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 271, 10 April 1873, Page 5

DTJNEDIN.

(From our own Correspondent.) It is sometimes the case that the doing of a " good turn " by some one to a fellow creature turns out the veiy reverse in its effects from what was intended, and such was the case in a buggy accident which happened a few days since on the Port Chalmers road, between the Junction Hotel and the North-East Valley. Mr. James Milner, while driving home from Waikouaiti, overtook a poor fellow who was tramping it, footsore and weary, and with a heavy swag. Being asked for a lift by the traveller, Mr. Milner kindly acceded to his request, and took him into the buggy. After continuing their journey for some time, and while proceeding down a steep pinch near the Valley road, the breeching broke, and the horse began to kick fuiiously, The result was that the buggy capsized, the occupants were thrown out, and the unfortunate recipient of Mr. Milner's kindness got his thigh bone fractured. Mr. Milner, who stuck to the horse, escaped uninjured beyond a severe shaking. It is singular that a similar accident should have occurred on the same spot to Mr. George Fenwick (once connected with the press in your district) only a few days previously. In the latter cisc, however, the occupants of the buggy (Mr. Fenwick and his father) escaped without sustaining any injury. The announcement by Mr. Webb's Dunedin agents on Saturday, that the Nebraska would not return to San Fran- ■ cisco, at once places at rest the question as to the continuance of our communication with America by this means. Unquestionably bad as the performance by Mr. Webb of his contract with the New Zealand Government has been, the announcement that the service is at end, will not be received without 1 egret. No doubt, before very long, communication with England via San Francisco will be re-established in conjunction with some of the Australian colonies ; yet even granting this, it is cause for regret that the subsidy from the American Congress was not obtained by Mr. Webb, for with the v'aid of this, far better boats would have been placed upon the line, and our independent and advantageous communication with America direct would have been firmly established, without the trammels, which will be imposed upon us by any future union with other colonies to obtain a re-opening up of the communication we have lost. Among the imports byth? Alhambra, which arrived from Melbourne on Saturday, are six donkeys, consigned I believe to Mr. W. J. M. Larnach, of this city. What the importer intends to do with these four-footed combinations of patience and obstinacy, I am not in a position to say. I suppose, however, they will be conveyed to his property on the Peninsula, where their melodious braying will no doubt be duly appreciated by the residents in the neighborhood. Our old friend James Smith— not the Chancellor, but he of Spiritualistic notority — has turned up again, this time by letter from Melbourne, published in one of the Dunedin papers. And, wonder of wonders, he has entirely renounced Spiritualism, which he now declares to be that " strong delusion audlie" spoken of by the^apostle Paul in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. Mr. Smith's mission, it sippears from his letter, is in connection with the Second Advent, with the gathering in of the remnant which has to be saved, and with the approaching purification of the earth by fire. lam afraid that Mr Smith's prophesy of the approaching destruction of the earth by a wave of magnetic fire will be but little regarded, and his claim to be regarded as being in direct communication with Heaven will doubtless be considered as the vain imagination of distempered brain. Since the discovery of the fact that the lectures which he delivered while in Dunedin were all taken without acknowledgment from books in une of the Melbourne libraries and his unblushing denial of ever having read those works, the public opinion of Mr. James Smith has become anything but pleasant to his feelings. That he is a fit subject for the Yarra Bend appears only too evident.