MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 369, 19 November 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Miss Josephine Kipling the eldest child of Mr Jtudyard Kipling, was whipped for telling a fib, and wont to bed sobbing rebelliously. '• I think its real mean, so there ? My papa writes great big whoppers, and they're lovely ; while 1 told just a tiny little story and gets whipped and sent to bed."

A public official at a meeting lately speaking of the possible length of time it would take to dispose of a hotel lease, said that under the prohibition law of Maine holders of spirituous stocks were permitted to get rid of them before the law should operate and it has trauspired that there was one holder of twenty casks of whiskey who proudly boasted that they never diminished.

During the revolution a little American privateer, once stole up on a British line-of-battle ship in a fog, mistaking her for an East Indian merehint, and ordered her to striko When the saventy-four ran out her guns and threatened to blow her puuy assailant out of the water, the Yankee skipper stepped to the gangway, and taking off his hat, said politely. "Oh, very well; if you won't surrender, I will." A Welsh minister was endeavouring to make a hardened sinner see the error of his ways. The sinner could not see that be had done anything very wrong. " But even if you have not done anything wrong yourself, remember there is origLt.il sin," said the minister. "What's that?" innocently queried the hardened one. " Original sin," gravely replied the minister, " is the sin of Adam our first father. Adam sinnod, and hia guilt has fallen on all of us!" "0, woll," remarked the yet impenitent, with a sigh of relief, " that's not much between all of us!" And the minister was left meditating on this new view of an old theological problem.

The operations of what is known as "Coupon Company " are causing much stir amongst the retailers in Melbourne and Sydney. The Coupon Company does business on these lines'. It makes arrangements with retailers in all lines of trade. Take a grocer, for instaace. The company issues coupons to him at 2s 6d per 100 for re-issue to hia cash customers—one coupon being given to the customer for each 9i worth of goods paid for in cash. Each coupon is worth the twentieth part of sixpence, and when a customer has amassed a sufficient number of them, he goes to the Coupon Company's"shop in the city and selects some article of fancy goods up to their value. The cost to the grocer is 5 per cent of his trade. He pays the Coupon Company at this rate, and is supposed to reap the benefit in increased cash custom. The larger retailers are making a great outcry. Such firms as Foy and Gibson already do an entirely cash trade. Consequently they do not patronise any coupon company. But they are threatened with loss of business for the customer goes where he (or she) gets the coupon. Practically the coupon is a discount for cash. Hundreds of suburban shops have the attractive card in the window—" Coupon Shop." At least 1000 such shops exist in Melbourne already. Presuming each does an average weekly trade of only £2O, the Coupon Company has thus a weekly income of £IOOO. For this they expend the cost of the fancy goods they give away. And it may well be imagined that a large proportion of tho income is profit. Id Sydney they are being prosecuted for disposiug of their goods by a ' device,' but it is doubtful if the prosecution will be a success. Meanwhile, there is a good deal of excitement over the new system. All the small retailers are forced into it. Their customers clamour for the discount coupon. But the larger men arc making a stand against it, though there are at their wit's end to know how to do it effectively, In the course of a short notice of the new Divorce Bill, the Dunedin correspondent of the Tuapeka Times says : " At first glauce every cause for divorce permitted uuder this Bill seems just, and in many individual cases would be a gratifying relief; but upon broad and national lines every attempt to make divorce easy should be fought to the uttermost. If a couple make a bad bargain, relief to the extent of a legal separation might with benefit be permitted, but beyond that I should hesitate to go. I have reached this conclusion from observing the shameful and shameless operation of the divorce-made-easy laws of the various States in North America. There the best men and women are appalled at the outcome, and are clamoring for reform, some even suggesting the sweeping away of any and all divorce laws. In the Pacific States and the two Dakotas, in Okolohaina and the Indian Territories, marriage is entered into by many merely as a cloak to a dishonourable intercourse and with no serious thought of its permanency or that marriage is a sacred and solemn act. Would your readers be surprised to hear that one family in seven in the Pacific States winds up in the Divorce Court ; that lawyers advertisa " cheap, secret and speedy dissolutions obtained here " ; that collusions of the glaring kind are passed over by the judges; that couples meet to-day, are married tomorrow and divorced in less than a mouth, both being free to marry again within five minutes of the decree if they, as they often do, so desire ; that men become engaged to women whilst their wives -ire still their wives, and then coolly arrange for a divorce with the full knowledge and consent of the wife that is and the wife that is to be ; that men and women are divorced, married elsewhere, and then re-married to their original partners amid the approval and good wishes of a wretched Press and admiring relatives ; that deliberate arrangements for divorce are made between man and wife and then each in turn is present at the marriage of the other to someouc else ? I ask, Do your readers know of these tilings, and, if not, would it not be better to enquire further ere they support so disastrous a measure as one which tends to eularge the facilities for the ultimate destruction of morals, home, and national honour ? THE ANSWER. " The Whelps of the Lion answer him." —Recent anoDymous poem in an English paper. The old lion stands in his lonely lair ; The noise of tho hunting has broken his rest; He scowls to the Eastward; tiger aud bear Arc harrying his jungle ; lie turns to the West; And sends through tho murk and mist of the night, A thunder that rumbles and rolls down the trail; And tiger and bear, the quarry m sight, Crouch low in the covert, aud cower aud quail ; For deep through tho uight-gloom, like surf

on a shore, Peals ihundor in answer, surrounding

with ire; The hunters turn stricken—they know the

dread roar— The whelp of the lion is joining his sire —Harper's Weekly.