A VENERABLE CONSOLER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 113, 20 March 1879, Page 2

A VENERABLE CONSOLER.

Take an aged mother seventy years qf age, and she is almost omnipotent in cqmfort. Why'! She has been through it ..all. At' 7 o'clock hi the morning she goes ovor to comfort a young mother who lias lost her babe. Grandmother knows all about that trouble. Fifty Years ago she felt.it: At 12 o'clock that day. she -goes over to .comfort a widowed soul." She knows all about that: She has been, walking in that dark valley twenty, years. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon some .one knocks at the door wanting bread, She knows all about that. Two or three times in her life she came to her last loaf. At 10 o'clock that night she goss over to sit .up jvjtli some severely sick -She'knows ■allflbout it. She knowsijt)! about fevprs .and pleurisies and 'broken- bones.''-She' has been doctoring all her life—%sprcf}ding plasters, and pouring-ontJiiUe drops,.and. shaking up hot ; pillows, and contriving things to tempt a poor appetite. Dr« -Aber'nethy.and Rush and -Hosack and Harvey were grea't" doctors; but the greatest doctor the world ever saw is an r aged woman. Dear me! do we not remember her about the room when we were sick in our boyhood! Was there anyone who could ever sb'touch a sore without hurting it! And when she lifted her spectacles against her wrinkled , forehead, so she could look close at the wound, it was three-fourths healed,-Rev Dr Talmage. ■

MAJOR-GENERAL CHELMSFORD AND THE ZULU WAR.

llie English Press and public opinion, according to a cable despatch,. is greatly incensed against Lord Chelmsford, the General commanding the Zulu forces'. .The.cause of this feeling may be inferred from the lucid account of the disaster given in the special despatch from the' Press Agency's correspondent at Capo Town. When the news, of the defeat first reached us many people, including some experienced in military matters, believed it would turn out that the disaster was caused by the indiscretion of some subordinate officer anxious to distinguish himself and careless of the risk. But details of the aftair show that the Commander-in-Chief is personally responsible for it, having pushed on prematurely with the main body of his force, leaving the Zulu army on his flank, and exposing a handful of men, left to guard the ford, to be cut to pieces by overwhelming .numbers of the enemy. The disaster was occasioned by a want of judgment in pressing forward too fast, and not taking sufficient •precautions to discover the whereabouts of the enemy. Upon hearing of it, Lord Chelmsford immediately fell back with the main body of his force, and occupied the field of carnage. Wo have learned by wire that the Queen has telegraphed her special sympathy for the Commander-in-Chief, but this will hardly save him his command of the ■expedition, and Lord Napier, of Magdala, the most experienced officer in the service of the country, has already been mentioned as his successor. Major-General Lord Chelmsford - the Hon. F. Thesiger of the Kafl'rarian war, his title in the peerage having recently come to him through the death of his father—has seen a good deal of service. He is a brave officer, and much sympathy will be felt for him in this misfortune,