MISCELLANEOUS.

Waikato Times, Volume VII, Issue 369, 24 September 1874, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Clyde correspondent of the Dunedin Guardian furnishes the following :—": — " It is pretty clearly acknowledged by this time that, in our contact with the " Heathen Chinee," we have little improved him in morality- An incident, so amusing as to be worth plucking from oblivion, came lately under my notice in niy raniblings. A Chinaman employed a shoemaker to repair one of his boots, and went the other evening to claim and pay for it. He tendered a note, and the shoemaker, in extracting his hand from his trousers pocket, in search for change, accidentally di'ew forth a £1 note, which dropped on the floor, to all appearances unobserved by the sho?maker. ' John ' thought this a chance too good to be lost, and quietly clapped his foot on the recumbant note, all the while slyly watched by the shoemaker. Jchn's next move was to let fall the boot, which he had held in his hand, on the floor, close to the note, when lie at once stooped, and with one adroit sweep of his hand recovered the boot and the note at the same instant, and then " mado tracks." The bootmaker allowed him to get just beyond the threshold when he called him back, and said to him calmly, " John, I want that vote," to which John replied with the utmost naivet6 and without betraying the least symptom of excitement while l'eturning the money, ' You see me? — all — a — right! So long," and departed, feeling only, if he felt at all, that to his clumsiness must be attributed the failuro of his laudable effort to make an honest penny. A correspondent, writing from Northern Minnesota, on the 20th of February, says that, notwithstanding the severity of the weather and depth of snow in that region, he saw a cowslip in the open air the day before. The cow was on tho ice. Cheques for the purchase-money of Northumberland House and the legal expenses connected with tho transfer were passed at the weekly meeting of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy receive £497,000 for the mansion itself; a further £2,000 is payable to his Grace for Nos 2 and 3, Northumberland Court ; the stamps nmount to £2,500, and the solicitors accept £1,000 in full satisfaction of their costs. A clergyman of the name of Friend, who had got possession of a living in a way that rendered it doubtful whether it might not be regarded as a Siinoniacal contract, was imprudent enough to ask a neighboring clergyman to preach for him on the day lie was to read himself in, as it is called. This clergyman, who remonstrated with him in the course of tiie negociation, being humorously inclined, to the gieat consternation of tho new incumbent, sitting in the desk below him, chose for his text, " Friend, how earnest thou in hither V

On T.it^d.iy, Pri.\vte Atkinson, lbt Durham, a cupcnter of Stockton-on-Tecs, won the Queen's Piiza <it Wimbledon. He and Sergeant Kae, 31st Lanark, tied with sixty-four points each, and agreed to divido the nionoy premium. They then competed for the gold medal, and Atkinson won it with fourteen points against live made by his rival. liaUier a good joke is passing (says the Melbourne Herald) among the lawyers- It is said that last week, during tho dry-as dust argumonts of a well-looling young barrister, who was pleading before his father on the bench, another member ol the bar, recently admitted, and who bad cultivated a naturally lino voice until he had attained a considcrublo vcntroquil power, succeeded in throw ing his voice into tho four corners of the court, and calling out the Christian name of the young advocate, much to Ins astonishment. Tho court was convulsed, when the same unknown voice in tho pause of dead silence caused by this undignified iuterruptiou added the words, " keep your'cyo on your father, , aud bo will pull you through ! " Mr H. M. Stanley has addressed o letter to a gentleman at Nottingham in answer to the question whether he is of the same opinion as the late Dr Livingstone respecting tho use of spirituous liquors by travellers. Mr Stanley replies to the effect that a man nvho needs the support of such liquors i$ unfit to travel in Africa, and that a diunkard cannot stand a tropical climate.