GENERAL NEWS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10714, 20 September 1912, Page 6

GENERAL NEWS

AN EXPENSIVE NUISANCE. The growing custom of snicliny; tele- j grams to the ami Queen, and to Queen Alexandra, on special occasions, threatens to heroine an expensive nuisance. Karh time the King has won a rare this year. I'or instance, it has cost him something approaching CIOU to reply to his numerous but unknown admirers, who send him a ongratulatnry wire, with their lull name and address. Courtesy directs that these messages must he answered. One proud liotelkeeper in the West End of London has a dozen of these telegrams.

ADVICE TO HOSPITAL VISITOR-. < "IF vou visit a hospital." qr.oth the , Rev ■). V. Chappie, of St. Barnabas' Oorge Street West, Sydney, "don't ,ro in" with a Bible in one hand and a l.undle of tracts in the other. If you do you'll have all the patumls asleep in five, minutes, though doctors have been giving them opiates in van. lor weeks past." Mr Chappie was addressing an audioneo at the V.M.C.A. Hall (says the Telegraph), assembled to hear something ,>f the work done in the slums of Sydney by the members of the Mission Zone Fund. "You're not a Christian." burst out one patient a.s Mr Chappie approached. "If you were, you'd have, knelt down beside that man | you've been talking to, and prayed for | :i quarter of aJi hour." "Yes," replied the clergymen, "and he'd have been asleep for the last 10 minutes." WHO OWNS THK METEORITE? If a meteor falls on a man's land, is it his, or does it belong to tho man who finds it: j An Irish tenant found •a meteorite one day, and, said Miss i Proctor in a lecture in Sydney last I week, the owner of the land claimed 1 it, on the ground that it had been agreed that all the minerals on the farm were his. To this the tenant re- | plied that the meteorite was not there I when that agreement was made. Then the owner of the land claimed it as being flying game, but while he j and the tenant were arguing, the CusI toins authorities seized the meteorite ' as an article from a foreign count iv [ on which no duty hr.d been paid. 'As a ' matter of fact, the courts in America ! had held that the largest meteorite in the world, weighing lo tons, heI longed to the man on whose, hind .'•. • was found.

.LAKGK FAMILIES. That mothers of modern days have small families is an assertion refuted to a large extent by the investigation now being carried out by the Commonwealth statistician (says the Sydney Morning Herald). Mr Knibbs is making an analysis of the phenomena of fecundity in Australia, and, though !he has only recently begun his work. Jie has revealed some extraordinary faot-s. For the year I!KXS a record was achieved by a mother who, in her 23rd.. year of marriage, gave 'birth to her 2Gth child. In the. same year one woman had her 10th child in h'.'r 17t': year of marriage. Another her J7t-ii child in her 21st year of marriage, and a third her 17th child in her 24th year of marriage, and a third her 17th child in her 24th year of marriage. Four mothers "had each a 17th child in their 26th year of marriage, and ono mother her 18th child in her 28th year of marriage. In 191.1 another i-ema.rkable record -was achieved by a mother who, in her 2(jth year of marriage, bore twins, though she had 22 children previously.

SOCIALISM IN RRACTICIO. Remarkable disclosures as to tho extraordinary manner in which tlio liooks of tho American city of Milwaukee, in the State of Wisconsin, were kept under its socialist municipality, have (says the New York correspondent of tho Daily Mail) been made in a report that has just been presented to the new mayor. The Socialists were defeated at the polls last April and dislodged from power. Fifty thousand errors have already boon detected in the books, involving almost every contract entered into by the Socialist administration. Records of purchases and contracts vrero hopelessly mixed, and, in a largo number of cases, there wore, no receipts foi payments that had been made. According to tho chief clerk of Milwaukee, "Wo came across cases where contracts to tho amount of £IOOO were involved, and a year later no record showed whether or ' not the money had been paid. In one ease £SO «■•< i appropriated for a horse. Wo ]■■■-■ • V.-en'able to find out that the !■; '• was purchased, but from whom i f when is a mystery." The expenditure was prodigal. To provide public works for the poor the rates were raised by £90,000 in 1010,, and by £IBO,OOO in 1911, and a further increase must have occurred this year if the city had not risen against tho Socialists and driven them-out.