WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2879, 21 April 1888, Page 2

WELLINGTON.

(From our own correspondent.)

Young New Zeal\nd. Those Bishops and other excellent persons who are ever lamenting tho larrikinism and profligacy of Young New Zealand and our "godless system' of secular education," will now, it is to be feared, have a text tc preach from. It is rumored that most horrible charges have been formulated against at least two young girls attending one of our Public Schools. By the admission of one of them, it appears that they were nightly in the habit of frequenting the Basin Reserve, and while there committing acts of a grossly immoral nature. They solicited two other girls of years to accompany them, last confided the. whole affair to their mother, who declined to permit her daughters to attend again at the : school until a thorough investigation had been.instituted. An -Anglican ■ Clergyman lias, it is determined to exhaustively sifffile matter. -

Wellington Opeka House. The meeting of shareholders of the Wellington Opera House Company; which took place on Wednesday night was vivacious, but, as is only too usual on such occasions, little real business was transacted, certain shareholders seizing the opportunity to demonstrate the utter incapacity of tho present directors, and, by inference, their own superior qualifications i for the directorate. Public companies y ; certainly do not seem to healthily acclimatise themselves upon New Zealand soil, shareholders, as a rule, ; seeming to prefer bullyiug directors, 1 to obtaining dividends. It is bonder- ,J ful that men can be found. 4 offer t themselves for office in companies, ' knowing by experience the treatment - they will most certainly, sooner or : later, receive from shareholders. The ' pettifogging tempest the other night, at the meeting in question, was 'a ■ veritable storm in a tea-Jtfp, some-/ v thing under £2O only But our local Oiceros would orate jf but twenty farthings were in question. The only public companies in this country that are profitably managed ' are those with a directorate of three persons, and a quorum of one. . It semns very doubtful whether 'the present Company will re-establish the Opera House. It may possibly fall into other hands which will make it . it pay.- A lady was heard 'the other V night, prior to the meeting, laying the most straight commands on her liege not to take any more shares in the. venture. " You old fool, you might know it will-be burned down again," was her mellifluously emphatic jpnner of putting it. ' »

. gold mining. There is nothing at present to add to my last letter touching the gold find in Tiuakori road, save that an enterprising new-chum iorter is said to have gone out 1 oi® voyage of discovery in the direction of the Botanical Gardens, and to have found, en route a man pickaxing granite for the I purpose of making a garden path, to have mistakeii this individual for a veritable gold miner, aud to have ' 1 written from information (?) obtained from the person 111 question a very : glowing, a too glowing, descriptive paragraph of the new Eldorado, which para, was fortunately ruthlessly nipped in the bud by an unimaginative editor.

A' GOLD STORY. The foregone incident reminds me of a pleasing anecdote of the manner i» which a Wellington jeweller is said to have played it low down upon a very deadly boro of bis acquaintance, Said bore was in the habit of buf%lioleing the jeweller in big shop, in season out of season, until the jeweller's life became a burden unto him._ One day it so happened thafe certain excavations for £as or drainage purposes were taking in the cellar under the shop, chance a vast quantity of brass filings reposed on the jeweller's counter, when-enter tlio boro.

"Hello!" lie said, glancing at the brass, " Gold, eh ?" The jeweller smiled acquiescence. "Where did you find it, eh? Not—not in the cellar, surely?" Still the jeweller smiled blandly. Then the bore became frantic with excitement, and wanted to know what his friend would take to let liirn in. The jeweller took him into the back parlor, and swore him to deadliest secrecy on a dictionary, Then he sold the bore a half share for £IOO, subject to further calls for expenses, and on condition that the new partner would keep away from the shop " for fear of exciting suspicion," At the end of tlio week the jev/olloi- paid the. bore £lO of his (the'bore's) own money as his share of the weekly diddetid, Next week £2O. call was made, and ev<sMy the . bore by a long and weary process received his own again, but, of course, iio more. Then the jeweller declared the lead had petred out. Of course numbers were in the joke which cullijinated when the greenhorn, despite his oath, let another man into the secret and begged him to help him break into the cellar of,a night and dig for gold. The "burglwous" attempt, with the jeweller's connivance, was duly made. Tl}e burglars were arrested, and the victim was led to believe that he had only escaped prosecution by standing the handsomest thing in the way of suppers perhaps ever furnished by a Wellington hostelry,

WE SKATIj, Everyone says things are very dull just now in Wellington but there are • no outward and visible giffis of stagnation. The biggest oomnMHfcl boom at the present momentis the Columbia Skating Biuk,, which is always filled v with a gay and festive throng. Indeed, there are few better ways of putting m a stray hour or two, if only as a spec- : tator. To the impressionable awLy. susceptible male insect there are drawWW

backs however. The sober, steady, family man of uncertain age and rodundant weight had better far stay away from that Elysium. 'Ho is liable to be too much mashed, Our Wellington kraris, always lovely, are never quite so fair and graceful as when with winged feet, poetic motion, and sparkling eyes they glido a middle aged man's soul out of him. You sit there, a happy but a longing gazer, and they waft by you in ones and twos, in regiments, in battalions, and just as you nro hopelessly gone on the nymph with the glinting black eyes and locks, a sweet girl statist in golden hair beams upon your horizon, and you lose your soul in tlio sparkle of her cerulean orbs. Now the dear girl of full and rounded contour plunges you into ecstatic bliss, and just as you are thinking how you could dream life away by her side, a slim sylph gives you visions of paradise. Round they go, the girl in blue, the girl in pink, the angel in white, the fairy in— Whoop 1 Hoop la! Down for a ducat! Madam, I fear you liavo dropped your gar—koni soit qui ml y pem,