SPOOKS I

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5094, 3 August 1895, Page 3

SPOOKS I

On Thursday evening next, residents in Jlasterton and neighbourhood will have the opportunity of seeing a performance by one of the cleverest illusionists of his day. Everyone will remember the, excitemont created by Mrs Mellon, of Sydney, who claimed to "raise" genuine spirits, ami under sevcro test conditions, vouched tor by an influential committee amongst whom was Chief Justice Windoyor, produced three forms, which announced themselves as " Cissie," " Gcorgie," and " Josephine." Mr A. Davis, who was in Melbourne at the lime, undertook to raise Mrs Mellon's " spirits" under similar or oven more stringent tests than she was subjeetod to. lie was accordingly searched, sewn up in a bag, and tied to a chair in a Cabinet, and almost immediately the little figure of Cissie appeared, then Georgie, who offered to shake hands with one of the committee who watched the proceedings, ami finally Josephine, who posed, and went through llio movements of a skirt dancer. The lights were turned up, and the professor was discovered in the cabinet exactly as he had been left by the committee. Everyono was mystified,but .Mr Davis declared that there was no spiritualism attached fo it, but that it was simply a clever trick, Mr Davis produces these spirits of Mrs Mellon's at the Theatro Royal,Jlasterton, on Thursday evening. The Melbourne, Adelaide, and Napier papers speak in most enthusiastic terms of him, as a spook raiser and ventriloquist, and of .Mrs Davis as a marvellous clairvoyant, trance medium, and thought reader. The entertainment is described as the most marvellous and complete of its kiud at present before the Colonial public,

THE ANTI-GAMBLING BILL. f'i'O THE KIMTOK.] Slit, —In your real to show that Mr W, Hutchison's Bill is a "ridiculous" measure, you say "if a pressman publishes the returns from one of these machines [i.e., the totalisator,] he is to ho liablo to prosecution a Itt Hutchison, M.H.R." You thus represent the Bill as making the reporting nf pun! events a punishable offence. You characterise such a proposal as " ridiculous," and I agree with you. lam not at all sure, however, that the Bill proposes anythingof the sort, This "ridiculous" proposal exists, 1 fear, only in your own imagination and not in the Bill. 1 enclose tho Bill ami will thank you to quote the clause which proposes prosecuting an editor for merely reporting past events.—l am, etc., Roiieiit Wnon. Manse, August 2, 1895. [Clause 3 offers a poor pressman a month's linvd labour, for publishing hotting information upon an;/ coutimjcnaj whatever. If pressmen deserve this, what ought not politicians (who as a rule are less scrupulous) to receive, and should even parsons escape ! J -Ei>. W.D.T.]