NEWS ITEMS.

Colonist, Volume L, Issue 12140, 15 January 1908, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS.

King Victor Emmanuel has had a very narow escape from a terrible accident while motoring iif the Homan Campagne. The royal car was descending a steep hill!on the road to Viterbo, when the-brake 'refused to act, and the vehicle gained a ter- - rific speed. It seemed impossible to prevent it dashing into aiwall, when the chauffeur steered through an open gate into a private garden. He pulled up the car while circling round a fountain. According to Count Morner, Chief Swedish Consul in Australasia, Sweden is not a happy hunting ground for members of the legal profession. He stated to an interviewer recently that the whole of the Swedish laws are contained in one little book, and can be readily looked up, whilst here one needed a library on legislation. The Ccunt, remarked upon a divorce case that had come under his notice in Sydney. .It lasted /or many days, and was freely reported in the press. "In Sydney, " he said, "the whole businesswould have been fixed up in a couple of hours, and there would only have been a line in the papers, no publication of private letters and so on. We have no need of barristers there," he added, _," and all justice is free." One of the great new public buildings that have been built in New York in the past 10 years was completed recently. The New York Customhouse, which has been six years in building, is one of the finest monmental structures in America. It cost 7,250,000 dollars. A million picture post-oards went through the Manchester Post Office in one week. Many of them were mailed by Lancashire folk ,oa holiday. The Auckland Star is responsible for the following:— When the wind was in its most capricious mood at Ellerside, a woman at that mysterious age when her friends speak of her as ' "weir preserved, " made a dash around the corner of the grandstand. Her gown was of the lighest of summer muslins, and on her head she wore a marvellous creation of gauze and flowers. Every vagabond wind in that fviciuity instantly" began to do tricks with the muslin gown; Sooner than it takes to tell that summer gown was describing alarming aerial Oflghts. But its* owner, a hand on either side of her hat, kept on as stubbornly as if such a display of open-work hoisery and lingerie were an every-day affair. "Madame," cried, another woman, rushing up to her, "you are prodably nor aware of it, but your skirts are' above your knees." "I don't care," retorted the other, never moving a fiuger from *the flowery bonnet; "I've had those legs for forty-five years and can't lose them, butl've just paid three pounds for this hat, and I don't mean to let it get away."-