GLEANINGS.

Colonist, Volume XXVI, Issue 3709, 10 September 1883, Page 4

GLEANINGS.

Last year the New Zealand Parliament eoßt £38,089, and this year, r.o doubt, the cost will be equally as great. Seventy-seven Acts were passed by the tyro Houses, compared with the cost this makes £494 18s each Act. Truly legislation is costly work ( Two thousand pounds have beeu subscribed (one lady giving half the amount) towards establishing a Pallen Women's Home at Auckland. It ia a ■ad fact that suoh an institution should be required in any New Zealand town # It is stated that 680,908 Blue ribbon pledgee have besn taken in England. Dr Mttkeo, in his 4t Eeminiseences of the 98rd Sutherland Highlanders," tells a good story. There was a cer* tain John ML- in the regiment - who was being perpetually victimised by another uf the sergeants, Isaac I—,—; Isaac was in the habit of making John drunk, that he might ainupe himself with the marvellous stories the other told in bis cups. John, who loved liquor, always fell into the snare; but, all the satte, he had a hoiror and hatred for the tempter. At last he drank himself into a bad fever; and when he recovered from his delirium in the gloomy hospital tent, dimly lighted by a pair of primitive earthenware lamps, after staring at the two black nurses, be snatched at the doctor's hand. " Where am I, sir ?"—" Comfortably in your cot, and I think better."— " Weel," said John,, again staring round the tent, "am no' in h—, anyway, for ye're here, and i diuna see I*aac I—-." De Barnaedo, of London, who has established homes for the destitute children of the great city, now hss twelve hundred and fifty little ones under bis charge. The daily cost is very great j arid the good man is very often depressed for want of funds. The more fortubate children of this Colony might.unita.tp.send an annual donation lo the Doctor" to help his grand missionary labors, which now cost fully one hundred pounds a day. DBtrNEESWESS has largely decreased in London. One large brewery that a short lime since supplied that city daily with four hundred and eighty barrels of beer, now finds that two Hundred and fifty barrels are. quite sufficient.