ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Waikato Argus, Volume VI, Issue 414, 25 March 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

Hkue is a peculiar security. In

the current number of the Mercantile and I Barkruptoy Gazette appears the following :—Sam Koy, of Otaki, gardener, to E. C. Uacbemaile, £'22o, security 150 tons of potatoes, 70 tous of onions, 70 tons of hay, and 40,000 cauliflowers ! The Lyttelton Times says that the scarcity of fat pigs in Canterbury, which has been so apparent of late, appears to be somewhat relieved by shipments from the North Island. The Ilotomahana, f om Wellington, brought down 144 pirjs from the Wairarapa district, and it is understood that they are the forerunners of regular shipments. The pigs are a well-finished lot, about 100 of them being baconers and the balance porkers. They were submitted to auction at the Addingtou market.

The petition to Mr D. L. Moody, requesting a visit to the colonies, lias been forwarded to that gentleman. It bears 15,831 signatures, and these have been arranged in the order of the colonies from which they have been received. Th°y form a large volume, suitably bound, and the petition and the names vv 11 perhaps be treasured hereafter in Mr Moody's family as an expression of the esteem in which he is held in this distant land. Mr Moody has been informed that they are chiefly the signatures of Christaio. workers, and that they come from all evangelical denominations.

A good joke is told of a man who positively made a fine art of meanness. When travelling, as he often did, he would keep railway porters busily attending to his luggage, and then purposely defer the much-desei ved tip till the starting of the train made its piymeut impossible. One morning, however, when about to journey up to London, he executed this little -manoeuvre once too often on the same man. " Dear ! dear !

I am so sorry," he said, as the train gavo a lurch forward, " I quite forgot to get change." " And lam rale sorry, too, sir," was the porter's dry retort ; "I quite forgot about that broon portmautay of yours ; it's lying ou the platform yet."

On old Carlisle Bridge, in Dublin, there was a fruit-stall, the keeper of which, "Biddy, the Apple-woman," was a better known figure than even the Lord Mayor. She had a ready and glib tongue, and never allowed a verbal assailant to letire with all the honours. An American visitor, thinking to take a " rise ,: out of the old woman, took up one of the watermelons she was displaying for salej and said : " These are small apples you grow over here. In America we have them twico the size. Biddy slowly removed her " dudheen," or clay pipe, from her lips, and, coolly surveying the joker from head to heel, said, in a tone of pity : " Yerra, what a fool yez must be whin yez take our gooseberries for apples." In the course of his address at the Wesleyan Conference, as retiring president, the Rev. W. G. Parsousou said that the passing century was one of the most remarkable in the history of mankind. The materialism of the middle of the century had giveu way to agnosticism, and now they were witneasirg a remarkable spiritual development. So far from religion dying out, it would,

he thought, occupy more attention in the coming century than any other subject. Religion was an essential factor iu the modern development. There Was now a tardy acknowledgment of tho fact that things unseen were as important as things seen, and the work of psychology could not be ignored. It must strike anyone that Christchurch is rapidly increasing her hold on the meat trade. Addingtou is largely supplied with mutton from the North Island, as well aB from Otago aud Southland. Cattle and pigs also gravitate there from the North Island. Now, it is quite evident that the local supply of Christchurch has nothing to do with this, as the local requirements of Dunedin and Wellington are larger, and of course Canterbury has at all times far more than could be needed for home cousumution iu any of these liues. The fact is that the Canterbury meat works and Canterbury men have got iuto a better position to deal with the export trade, and it re mains for the rest of us to, if possible, follow on the same lines, because an export trade can and should be done from Otago or Wellington just as well as from Lyttelton, and the longer this matter is kept in abeyance the worse for Otago and Southlaud and Wellington also.

The civil engineer of San Francisco has created no small amount of

consternation by his report that the city is sinking. The average sinking of those districts which insist on moving into nether regions is 2in a year. There is a tendency to settle less as the years pass, though the settling does not stop, and the ratioof the decrease is so insi<,'iuficatiou in comparison with the time to be barely worth considering. Two inches may therefore be taken as the basis of calculation. Iu 100 years the waters of the bay would be flowing through the first storeys of buildings, and the second floors would be what seamen call awash. Barge vessels would find sufficient water to sail up some of the principal streets. But energetic steps are being taken to cope with this curious state of affairs, for the gaps are being filled up as they occur. Tin cause of this peculiar condition is ascribed to the nature of the soil, which engineers describe as a mixture of alluvium washed down from the hillsides, ooze from the bay, aud decayed vegetable matter, the formation of ages, upon the original bedrock. Formerly, before San Francisco encroached upon the bay, this area was partially covered with water, or consisted of swamp land bordering the bay.

Unparalleled scenes of excitement have been lately witnessed on the New Vork Stock Exchange. The public have fairly caught the speculative fever, and brokers were unable to handle half their orders. The public galleries of the Exchange have been packed with excited spectators watching the sccno ou the floor, where crowds of frenzied traders shouted themselves hoarse iu the great speculative contest. During the five hours of oue day's session a million and a-hulf shares changed hands, breaking all previous record.--. All the leading sharebrokerb' offices have been besieged by customers, including large number of women eager to try their luck. Country peop'e who have never speculated in their lives before have crowded into the city, all bound for Wall street. The craze for speculation has_ apprarently seized everybody, and is daily intensified by the stories of enormous profits made. The newspapers continue to publish sensational articles about the boom with such headiugs as " Klondyke Outdone," "Golden Days Return," "A Maelstrom of Gold," "Millions Make Money," "Enormous Fortunes Pilling Up," " Cash For All," " Money Goes Begging." More money is being spent in New York than was ever known before. All the theatres and places of amusement the fashionable hotels and restaurants, and all lines of business, iu fact, are reaping the benefit of the great boom.

A mischievous young girl found a package if love-letters that had been \v itten to her mother by her father before they were married. The daughter saw tint ahe could have a little .sport, and read them to her mother, substituting her own name for that of her mother and a young man for that of her fathpr. 'I he mother jumped up and down in her chair, .shifted her feet, seemed terribly disgusted, and forbade her daughter having anything to do with a young man who would write such sickening and absurb stuff to a girl. When the young lady handed the letter to her mother io read, the house became so still that you could hear the grass grow outside.

A famous blunder was made in the last century by the trustees of the Yalo University when they leased a faun belonging to the collage for an annual rental of about £IOO per year for a term of 099 years. They ci n -ulercd. the land of littlo value, and chuckled when they thought of the good bargain they had made in sticking the lessee and his heirs for a few months loss than ten centuries. But it so Imppencd that the rich and fashionabe city of Newport rosp upon the site of this farm, and the descendants of the original tenant have cut the farm up into lots and are living in pampered luxury upon the rentals. They practically own the laud, and the expiration of the lease abaut nine centuries in the future dees not give them the slighest concern. It aggravates the trustees whenever tho modett little payment for rent cornes in to think if tho lease had been made out far 99 years instead of 999, the univerity would now bj in command of a princely rcvonue from this one property alone.

A story is being told, which is probably true, and which illustrates the implict confidence of the Continent in British fairness. Some merchants of Havre recently satisfied themselves that France and Eogland would come to blows over Fashoda, and believed that in this case Havre would be the first place exposed to bombardment. They cast their goods, and finally decided to insure them at Lloyd's, feeling assured that whatever the law, British underwriters would pay for goods upon which they had accepted risks. That is as good a testimony to British probity as the conduct of the Afridis, who, when ready to revolt against white rule, seat their women i ito Feshawur, to be taken care of, is to British humanity. It is said that whenever war is probable on the Continent masses of money are invested in lon den, and that many of che great bankers could tell strange stories of the reckless confidence placed by cnemie3 in British firms. Yet the very sane men are not certain th.it the British Treasury is not spending secret service money in promotiug the Dreyfu3 agitation.

Everyone—that is, everyone who reads the cables—has heird cf Henniker —Hcaton, the ex-Australian, who now represents Canterbury in the House of Cimmons, and who is the apostlc-iu-chief of Imperial penny postage. But what everyone does not know is that less thin fifteen years ago Hcaton M.P., was a canvasser for a Sydney weekly paper. An irreverent Adelaide journal, the Critic, has dug up the following chapters of Heatoniau early history :—Heaton, on his old white horse jogging around New South "Wales backblocks, gathering iu subscribers and advertisers for Sam Bennett's newly-started Town and Country Journal, was for years a humourously pathetic figure. He, more than any other man on-the staff, made the paper in the days of its liekety infancy. If in the lone bush ho heard of a cockey's wedding, he drew his dress suit from the swag on the saddle, negotiated an invite to the ceremony, and before the party left church had every man jack of them booked for a year's subscription to to the T. and C. So marvellous was his success that after one trip old Sam invited the energetic youngster to tea at his private house. Henniker there met Sam's eldest daughter, and before tea wis over as guod as won her. A little later the marriage is-tine oil', and, Sam Bennett dying, made his daughter a third shareholder iu all his possessions—meaning something like 1*15,000 a year. So Henniker sailed for England, became M.F. for Canterbury, the apostle of cheap postage, and the recipient of Queen Victoria's personal regards.