The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1881.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 384, 1 July 1881, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. FRIDAY, JULY 1, 1881.

TOWN EDITION.

Vital Statistics. —The vital statistics of the town of Ashburton are showing up well. For the last month (June) they were as follows :—Births, 33 ; deaths, 4 ; marriages, 4. Burglary. —At the Resident Magistrate’s Court, Christchurch, this morning, George Gustave Schmidt was committed for trial for committing a burglary at the Riccarton Hotel. Resident Magistrate’s Court. —This morning nearly an hour was taken up in the Resident Magistrate’s Court over a case of disputed identity of a dog, which appears (if it was indeed one and the same dog) to have passed through the hands of seven or eight owners in a short time. The dog was not produced in Court, though it would have been more satisfactory, under the circumstances, i£ he had been brought there.

The Bible in Schools. —The result of the plebiscite taken by the South Canterbury Bible in Schools Association shows that 903 parents, representing 2314 children. were in favour of, and 87 parents, representing 239 children, against. All but seven small schools sent in returns. Mammoth Gift Show Company at Rakaia. —Yesterday evening the Mammoth Company gave a performance to a good house at the Rakaia Town Hall. Some clever tricks of legerdemain were shown, and Messrs Manning and Leyoi astonished the spectators by describing concealed articles and reading concealed statements whilst they were in the mesmeric state. At the end of the performance there was a distribution of gifts to those who had drawn prizes. During the evenin?, Mr Hosea Easton, of the Georgia Minstrels, played some good music on the harmonium.

Ball. —Mr Thomas Quill, the proprietor of the Commercial Hotel, gives a ball-to a large number of his friends this evening, on the occasion of opening his new and capacious billiard room, adjoining the hotel. Fire Brigade. —We have to acknowledge the receipt from the Secretary of the local Fire Brigade of a copy of all the correspondence which has recently taken place respecting the sump. We propose to publish tho last letter, which has not yet appeared elsewhere, to-mornw.

N ew Railway Station. —Some _ men are now at work by the side of the railway line, about half-way between Quill’s hotel and the gas works, in beginning the erection of a new engine-shed for the railway authorities. It is said that before long the station will also be removed to about the same spot. Chess. —There has been some talk lately among the local Chess Club players about getting up a little excitement in the winter evenings by a chess tournament, to be followed by a challenge to the county of Ashburton to play a match, or every, a reckless defiance of the Christchurch Clubs. The latter, we fear, would be premature for some time yet to coins. Mr Savage’s Concert. —The complimentary concert to Mr J. S. Savage, bandmaster of the Ashburton Brass Band, on his leaving the district, was given last night in the Town Hall, and proved in every respect a great success. The Hall was well filled in every part, and the number of musicians who took part in the performance, as well as the excellence of their rendering the music allotted to them, not merely pleased the audience but must have been most gratifying to Mr Savage, as showing the estimation in which he is held' by those competent to appreciate music. The only drawback was one unfortunately too common in some parts of the British colonial world, namely, the noise and disturbance created by a small lot of ill-bred boys at the back of the Hall—larrikins, apparently, who could not even refrain from their idiotic exclamations at the time when ladies, who had given their services gratuitously, were singing. We trust that in future any such juvenile offenders will be promptly ejected and sent home to their parents for suitable correction. The concert consisted of choruses, glees, solos, duetts, and instrumental music, Mr Savage wielding the baton as conductor with excellent effect, ,arid Miss Gates playing the accompaniments with her usual good taste and correctness. The gems of the evening, in our opinion, were “ Now the day is slowly waning,” sung with much expression by Mrs Gray, a lady possessing a fine smooth contralto voice of considerable compass, and the duett given by the same lady and Miss Kent, with flute obligato accompaniment, very well executed, by Mr Kerr. The latter of these pieces was enthusiastically encored. Two little ladies, Miss E. Savage and Miss A. Permain, gave the “ Convent Bells ” as a duett in a very pleasing manner, and there were several other pieces which evidently took well with the audinnee, and the rather dirge-like music of Hogg’s “ Bird of the Wilderness,” one of tho brightest and cheerfullest pieces of lyric poetry we have, was rendered by the ladies and gentlemen of the chorus. We understand that the gross proceeds of the concert will be about L 26.

The Timaru Breakwater Wharf.— We ledrn from Tuesday’s Timaru Herald that a gang of men were busily employed on Monday in laying the railway siding on to the wharf, and it is expected the work will be completed to-day. Messrs Jones and Peters, contractors for the extension of the wharf, have only ten more piles to drive, and in a very short time over 600 feet of Wharfage will be available. Local Government. —The North Otago Times, in commenting on Local Government as it is, adduces the following illustrations of the way in which harbor board appointments are sometime made ; “We know one harbor board that had a secretary who was so disgustingly diligent in the performance of his duties that no fault could be found with him. He had, however, one unpardonable fault—he had nd friends in the place. But the board’s own chairman had, and so a brotherly majority of the board’s members got rid of their obnoxious officer, and, after all due formalities had been gone through, elected their whilom chairman to his place. Then we know another harbor board where the same religion is practised, only in a different way. In this case, the board’s officer has plenty of friends, so an assistant is well paid for discharging the duties of the secretary, the secretary is handsomely remunerated for doing the work of the engineer, and the engineer receives a large salary, for—the honor he dots the board by accepting it.”

The Licensing Bill. —The Wellington correspondent of the Timaru Herald writes as follows respecting the progress of the Licensing Bill in Parliament:—“Everybody is heartily sick of the Bill, too, and for sheer weariness, the contending factions may be expected to be reasonably quiet over what yet remains to be done in it. The discussion as a whole has been one of the mosc tedious and irritating that it has ever been my fate to listen to. The publicans’ advocates, the temperance advocates, and the bottle license advocates, practically monopolised the debates, to the exclusion of the representatives of the public, and fought for their separate interests with a violence and pertinacity that sometimes altogether overstepped the limits of decency. Of the three factions, I am bound to say the publicans’ friends behaved by far the best. They did not pretend to defend drunkenness, or to deny the evil consequences of the liquor traffic, but went on the common-sense ground that since tjiere must be public houses it was wiser to make them as good as possible, by making it to the interest of the owners to keep them respectably, than to harrass and damage the owners till no respectable man would keep a public house. Where they showed the cloven hoof was in trying to stamp out all other sorts of licenses, shut up clubs, and generally throw the whole trade entirely into the hands of the licensed victuallers. Tho “ teetotal bench,” as Sir William Fox and his disciples came to be called, were in tremendous form, and the stuff they talked was enough to give one dropsy. Sir William himself, though very excitable and of course riding his hobby at full gallop, was on the whole clear, reasonable, and fairly courteous. If he is a fanatic, he is also a gentleman, and that makes all the difference in the world. ” Jews Coming to the Front. —lt is a significant fact that out of hundred lads who were picked out of the public schools of New York as the best scholars of the year, thirty were the sons of German Jews. In the New York Colleges, one prize in three is carried off by Jewish students, who only form numerically two per cant, ol tha students.