TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7947, 24 January 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The Rev. Herbert Han.lley, vicar | of St. Thomas's, Camden Town, and Mr George E. Gladstone, warden of | the Passmore Edwards settlement, I Tavistock place, endeavoured to \ pass a resolution at the St. Paucras Town Hall recently to the effect that the King should be petitioned to induce the rich to live simpler lives in order that they might give more to the poor, and thus alleviate the social woes of England. After a , long discussion, the voting resulted in six to six. The Mayor thought it w>uld bo unfair to give a casting vote, and the motion was droDDed. • Scientists at Rouvo have obtained some remarkable results while carrying out experiments m psychic phenomena, says a correspondent. The experiments were made on two boys named Pansini. One of these, aged fourteen years, while in a trance state was ab'.e to understand questions addressed to him in Latin, Greek, French. English, German, and Arabic, and to reply to his questioners in these tongues. His voice was that of a grown man and as long as he remained in the trance his muscular strength was proved to bo that of an athlete rather than of- a chiid. The Registrar General give 9 in the Government Gazette some interesting particulars relative to immigration and emigration so far as New Zealand is concerned during the last year. He says the arrivals in the I colony last year (232.685), exceeded the number recorded in 1904 (32,632), and the departures during 1905, which numbered 23,383, were also greater than those in the previous year—viz., 22,277. The excess of arrivals over departures last year was 9.302, against 10,355 in 1904. The colony has drawn to itself in each of the ten years, 1896 to 1905, more population than it has parted with. The arrivals from the United Kingdom for 1905 show an excess of 3,699 over the departures, and from Australian States there is an excess of 5,765, but for other countries a loss of 162. Much commotion has been created by recent events in the Principality of Sohwarzburg Kudolstadt. The Prince of that territory, who enjoys a civil list of £13,400,' complains that' times are dear, that meat increases in price, and that salaries to bis servants are higher than when be ascended the throue some years ago. So he sent dowD his Minister of State to the Diet with the request to induce it to iuurease the civil list by £1,600. The Minister explained how matters stood, that the Prinoe bad heavy expenses, including the keeping up of his Court and private musicians. The eight Social Democrats in the Diet uttered an emphatic "No." The Prince reulied to their refusal by dissolving the Diet and opening up a grave constitutional crisis, which is being watched by modern Germany with considerable amuae r nent. For the first time in the history of New South Wales the Sydney Observatory ia now m receipt of a daily set of meteorological observations from Norfolk Island, which it is intended shall be reoeived henceforth; "These observations," Mr H. A. Hunt, the Acting Government Meteorologist, says "will be of particular value at the present time to the Meteorological Office, for since the data from New Zealand have been discontinued they will constitute the only instrumental readings available direotly east of New South Wales, and we shall thereby be enlightened in some measure as to the atmospheric changes transpiring over the Tasman Sea. This concession and advance in our meteorological history," JMr Hunt adds, "has been granted to us by the j kind offioes of the Deputy Administrator of the island, and with tbe Premier's approval." Material for a good melodrama (says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) could be found in tbe romance of a Roman Catfaolio missionary priest's daughter at Chalons-sur-Marne. A beautiful girl, adopted by a wealthy magnate of. the town, stood at her window. Below passed two young men, who gazed at her, started back wonderstruck, then vanished. The beautiful girl, on going out, was followed by a venerable priest in cassocks. His peculiarly-shaped bat and bis long grey beard showed bim to be a missionary. He spoke to her, but she sent bim about bis business, horrified. For days after that he dogged her footsteps. At first she did not like to mention that she was being persecuted by a missionary, of all men, but at last she told her adopted parents, and after that she never stirred out without a servant. The mysterious missionary still followed, and one day aotually rang at the house. Tbe girl's parents were about to have him turned out, when he exclaimed, "You wrong me; she is my long-lost daughter." Then he told his romantic story. Tbe South African war, oost tbe British Government £250,000,000, and an ingenious gentleman with a turn for figures—Mr F. W. Hirst, of London—gives some telling illustrations of what that amount of money might have accomplished if spent in other directions. "If it had been invested at 3% por cent., and the proceeds applied in discharge of local rates, it would have freed fur ever from all rates the whole of the inhabitants of Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Paisley, Greenock, Perth, and many small towns of Scotland, assuming the rateable value and populations to remain as they are, and the rates to be 6s 8d in the pound. With less than half tbe money spent on the war, 200 English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish towns mignt have been endowed each with a technical and commercial university as perfect and complete as that which has been established in Birmingham. . At a oost of £250,000,000 a million families (one tenth of tbe whole population of Engand, Scotland, Ireland and Wales) might have been made happy by having a comfortable home, with an acre of land presented to them by the State."