RUDYARD KIPLING.

« HIS IMPRESSIONS OP THE COLONIES. On his arrival in Melbourne Mr Eudyard Kipling was interviewed by a representative of the Age, to whom the AngloIndian author appears to have been very communicative. Tho interviewer says of Mr Kipling :— While he has been in Australia hJB sense of humour has been excited by the • steep ' yarns the boys have been telling him, mistaking him for an Englishman instead of & colonial, for as an Anglo-In-^---dian he belongs to a race as un-English as the Australians themselves, and he has now and then smiled inwardly at the ' preciptious ' tales.of alligators, mosquitoes, fish and snakes that have been poured into him by the deluded yarnspinners. He will not be astonished at anything he may hear in this way < from the Australians, as he puts New Zealand a long way up on the scale of yarn power. It was Mr Kipling's intention to break his trip from San Francisco at New Zealand, and go up to Samoa on a visit to Mr Robert Louis Stevenson, who is settled just now there, but the steamer did not connect, and hehad to come on here after a run through the islands. This evokes the observation that in New' Zealand " everything seems to be intended to * jockey ' everything else ; the steamboats to run against the railways and the railways to run against the oauh ; but it is a lovely land all the same. Everybody was as good as could be, and I could believe anything you told me about it. If you said the Garden of Fden was somewhere in the middle of it I could believe it. But what does the country want with so much, politics, and so much of the labour question ? A little country with five hundred thousand people playing at representative Government, and paying their members too. Why, they ought to make every man turn out into the country and grub land for himsolf, whether he liked it or not. But no, they must have their Parliaments and their politics.. Tor can't build a country that way, What does it want with an • Upper House ' and Lower House ? Why doesn't it go ahead and make the country ? Why, there is more machinery for running their little handful of people than we have for the whole of tho 300,000,000 of India, And they are proud of it ; indecently proud of it ! Yon could lay out New Zealand round twoaides of our province of Lahore, and yet there would be any amouut of room. That is a country where they have five hundred people to the squaro mile. That is a councry with a population. But down in New Zealand you would think that you couldn't go threo hundred yards from the beach without running into an elector or a member of Parliament, and on the other side of that you meet the bush. This is all right in a country that has been made j thoso new countries of yours have yet to be made. But >t is a lovely place, and what it will be in the future is too much to say,"

Messrs Arthur and Sons, of Patea and Hawera, announce the arrival of a direct importation of a large assortment of linoleums, floorcloth, and picture and room mouldings. Messr3 Arthur and Sons have also on hand at present "a lot of .' carefully-selected carpets and general furniture to be disposed of at low rates. . F. A fire occurred at 5 o'clock yesterday morning in Lower Queen-street, Auck- .•= land, in the premises about to be opened by Messrs Wingate, Wigg, Annsenne, fe'McAllnm, and Co., ironmongers. The building was, gutted. The insurance on the Company's stock are .£IOOO in the Union, £500 in the South British, and £600 in the Sun oftlces. The value of the stock is between £4000 and £5000. Repairs were being effected to the shop by Mr Grandison, the contractor, who had an insurance risk -with the firm of £500 in the Royal on his toils, &c, the value of which was 'about £150. The Controller-General has pulled up to the' Wellington Corporation sharp for omitting to apply the usual proportion of income to sinking fund. He has called the attention of the City Council to the fact that the Binking fund on the city improvements loan is in arrear to : the extent of £6700. The amount usually applied to this purpose was £700 a year ; that sum, says the Controller-General, with accretions at five per cent, would have amounted to nearly £11,500 but the amount, in the hands of the Sinking Fund Commisionere is little over £4300, hence he seems to say [' pay up." Mr Sullivan (cays the Otago Times), fish dealer, of Stafford-street, has received a cablegram from his principal in Sydney, instructing him to countermand all orders for fish from New Zealand, as it was the intention of the New South Wales Government to impose prohibitive duties on fish in December next. Should this eventuate a trade which gave promise of considerable development will be nipped in the bud. Considerable quantities of frozen fish were already being sent there, and bring entered as "fresh," were admitted duty free, but there is a small impost on smoked fish.