TABLE TALK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 225, 23 September 1898, Page 1

TABLE TALK.

Soudan news expected. 'Frisco mail due next Tuesday. Steamer Taviuni left for the South Se^ Islands. Old Age Pensions Bill again debated it Parliament. Auckland-Taranaki railway meeting next Monday. ! Steamer Ovalaa arrived from the Eastern Pacific. | Auckland Christian Endeavour Convention opens this evening. Cervera and Toral have returned to Spain. Toral was hooted by a mob. The late Captain Steele was accorded a military funeral at Hamilton te-day. The Sydwey yacht Irex, belonging to Mr Mark Foy, has again been beaten in English waters. Mr F. J. Mass, ex-British Resident afc Rarotonga, will arrive here next week by the H.M.S. Tauranga. Mr, Arthur H. Nathan has been reelected Chairman of the Auckland Anniversary Regatta Committee. Mr T, H. Bosworth, music master, announces that he is prepared to copy or arrange piano music, band parts, etc. A child of Mr Lewis, solicitor, was badly scalded in a boiling spring near the Utuhina Creek, Rotorua, yesterday. Miss Williams, second assistant in the Auckland Free Library, has been promoted to the post of senior assistant. Preparations are to be started immediately for the work of financing the Auckland Anniversary Regatta of next January. The New Zealand mails which left Auckland on the 3rd inst. by the R.M.s. Alameda for San Francisco arrived there on Wednesday, due date. The Rotorua people want a subsidy of about £60 from the Government in order to enable Rotorna to be represented in the Auckland Industrial Exhibition. No regatta is to be held at Ponsonby this season, and the Ponsonby Regatta Committee will combine with the Auckland Regatta Committee to make the anniversary aquatic holiday a thorough success. The well-known Arctic explorer, Siewert Brakmoe, who for some years past has wintered at Spitsbergen, has left on board his cutter Nora for the Kara Sea. He proposes, if the ice conditions are favourable, to search for Andree at Baron Toll's various provision depots. Although there are only eighteen flags used in the International Code of Signals, which are used by warships and merchant ships all over the world, they can be made to represent no fewer than 20,000 distinct signals, and by its use something like 50,000 ships can be designated. The distance indicator known as the " taxanaeter," which has been used on public vehicles in Paris for some time, is about to be introduced to Great Britain. Applied to a cab it will indicate the distance travelled and the fare to be paid, and it is stated that the indicator cannot be tampered with. The Mayor of Colombia (Ceylon) has been trying to exterminate the rats there, with a view to preventing the spread of plague should it break out in the city. No Pied Piper, however, arrived in Colombo, and the offer of 2 cents a head has not induced the native population to bestir themselves in the matter. During the four weeks ended August 20tlr, the Government railways in" New Zealand yielded £92,840 14s of revenue, the expenditure being £73,253 14s lid, giving a percentage of revenue of 67.73. The Auckland line yielded a revenue of £10,058 13s 3d, the expenditure on this section being £7,997 13s sd. ~s, Much interest was,centred fh the recent trial trips at Grantham of what is asserted to be the heaviest railway engine in the British Isles. It has been made for the Great Northern Company at their Doncaster works. It has ten wheels, four being coupled with driving wheels of six feet seven inches, and weighs 100 tons. With its tender it has a total length of nineteen yards. The youthful king of Spain, bow twelve years old, is tall for his age, ef slender build, and has the same thoughtful, distingue look as his mother. His education has been chiefly conducted under the supervision of General Sanchis, by pro fessors in the artillery and engineer academies, thus keeping up the tradition that the King of Spain must be a soldier and a good Catholic. Yesterday afternoon an inquest was held at the King's Arms Hotel, Upper Pittstreet, on the body of George Smith, who died suddenly in Jervois Road on Wednesday evening. Dr. Hood stated that he had made a post mortem examination of the body, when he discovered evidence of chronic' pericarditis. Death was due to syncope, resulting from fatty degeneration of the heart. A verdict was returned in accordance with the medical evidence that death was due to natural causes.