TABLE TALK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 209, 4 September 1899, Page 1

TABLE TALK.

'Frisco mail gone. Mariposa left for America. Steamer Upolu arrived from Fiji. Supreme Court criminal sessions proceeding.

To-morrow will be the Jewish New; Year (5660).

Queensland has declared in favour; of federation.

Board of Conciliation met again this afternoon.

French army corps manoeuvres have! been abandoned. Seven hundred volunteers have been enrolled in Natal.

Preparations have been made for pursuit of the Khalifa. Auckland footballers defeated Otago by 13 points to 3. Sensational stabbing affray on the s.s. Tolosa at Wellington. Six hundred Japanese miners have* perished in a flooded copper mine, Four miners have been killed by nri explosion at Zalgoo, New South Wales.

Barbarous atrocities in the Soudan, on the part of French officers are reported.

Auckland footballers defeated Tauranga on Saturday afternoon by 13 points to nil. Twenty-five thousand British soldiers are ready at Aldershot for mobilisation.

The "Georgia Magnet" has closed her Auckland season and visits thef Thames districts.

He: Do you really believe ignorance is bliss? She: I don't know. You seem to be happy.

The great exodus from Johannesbiirg and other towns in the Transvaal still continues.

A handsome sum has been raised at Dunedin for the benefit of Armit, the injured footballer. Two newspaper editors in the Tansvaal are being prosecuted by the Boers for high treason. 11.M.5. Mariposa made a fafst pas« sage of 3 days 18 hours 36 minutes across from Sydney to Auckland.

The cricket match Australia v. nn English eleven was abandoned on Saturday in consequence of rain. Colonel George Bell, consul for the United States at Sydney, is a passenger to San Francisco by the E.M.S. Mariposa. Judge: What is your age? (Female witness hesitates.) Judge: Don't hesitate in answering the question. The longer you hesitate the older you'll be.

Boy: Please gitte me twppennyworth of castor oil, an4l -give me short measure, too. Chemist: Short measure? Why? Boy: 'Cob I've got to take it myself.

Good Man: Do you know what be* comes of little boys tfrat use bad words when they are playing marbles? Bad Boy: Yep! Dey grows up an* plays golf. In her strong room the mail steamer Mariposa has a very large amount of gold—no less than £180,----000 in sovereigns—consigned front Sydney to San Francisco; ■ We publish to-day the views, of Mading New South Wales politicians- on. the probable effect of New Zealand joining the Australian federation, and joining at a later stage. It is now 35 days since the disabled s.s. Waikato was spoken in the South- : crn Ocean. She, is now out 132 days and must have been drifting about disabled for close on three months.

Teacher: Who can tell me what useful article we get from the whale? Scholar: Whalebone. Teacher; Eight! Now, what little boy or girl knows what we got from the seal? Scholar: Sealing wax. ;

It is feared that further deaths will result from'- sickness now prevalent among the natives at Mfiketu (Bay. of Plenty) and they have requested Government to send a doctor imnie* diately to attend to the sufferers. Messrs Robert Scott, Cyril Colson, and Wm Hobbs, surgeon dentists, left Auckland to-day by the E.M.s. Mariposa for San Francisco en route to the Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia, where they intend to study" various branches of dentistry. At a public meeting held at Otahuhu on Friday night to discuss the question of the forthcoming local option poll, it was resolved to form an association, to be called the North, Franklin No-License Association. The following office bearers were elected: —President, Eev. D. J. Steele;] vice-president, Eev. G. Fussell, Messrs Allen, Douglas, C. Bailey, E. Allen, J. Johnstone; secretary, Mr McLeod;j treasurer, Mr John Andrews.

A Vienna correspondent reports a horrible domestic tragedy atPodwoloczyska, a village in Galicia. A pea- i sant, on returning home after selling ; his cow for 50f1., incautiously placed ■ the bank note close to his little child, aged five, who began playing with. it, and tore it to pieces. The father, in his rage, split the child's head open with his hatchet. The mother, seeing her child dead, was seized with a fit and died. The peasant then hanged himself in a garret. . A writer in a London paper says:— "The British navy is an anachronism of the first water. It has a code of punishments which is as old in spirit as Eodney and Nelson. Terribly harsh as it is, it is but an echo of the old time civil code under which women were hanged for stealing sixpenny worth ; of calico. ,The old civil code with its barbarities has gone. The seaman has become a skilled mechanician, a man of text-books and examinations. Yet still he works under disabilities which his brother on land has long shaken off." Another death has taken place at Maketu (Bay of Plenty) among the natives, making the third in a. week. The latest victim was a woman named Te Aka Teputa and she was said to have been in a trance for 7 days before her death. Tangis are in consequence the order of the day and some 600 natives are assembled at the village. At one of the cer©»monies there was stacked in front of: the wharepuni the following heterogeneous pile of offerings:—l7oo loaves, two thirty-sixes of ale, 1 torn of flour, £25 in cash, potatoes,: pigs, kumaras, etc.