TABLE TALK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1901, Page 1

TABLE TALK.

Municipal elections. Archdeacon Dudley is dead. Severe fighting- in Manchuria. There are 20,000 Boer refugees. The Boer war costs £1,500,000 5» week. i Very heavy floods arc reported id Victoria. Another Boer commando has sur« rendered. The Duke of York has left Singapore! for Albany. A large ship is ashore on the Victorian coastThe Government is purchasing 503 more horses for South Africa. The Britannic and the Imperial troops have arrived at London. Colonial scullers have put up a long distance record on the Kiver Thames A general meeting of St. Mark's Chib will be held to-night in the Parish Hall. At the West-street Church to-night Mr Aldridge commences a series of illustrated addresses upon "The Life and Journeys of Paul." Thomas Howell, the man who was seriously injured at the fire in Upper Queen-street on Saturday. ir> progress-ing-favourably at the hospital. Mr 3. H. Witheford, M.H.R., advocates the establishment of a public library for the Birkenhead district. He offers to give £10 towards it. ■> It has been finally decided that Major N. L. D. Smith, who commanded the llotchkiss battery in South Africa, will command the Federal Contingent. Mr ,Cha» R. Bailey, Mr Seagar's successor as local manager for* Mx P. K. Di.v, arrived yesterday from the South, and took up his duties at the City Hall to-day. At a meeting of the Wanganui Chamber of Commerce yesterday a. rer solution was passed .strongly protest- • ing against the increase, in fire insurance ratesFitzgerald Bros.' new circus will open in Auckland on Monday evening next for a season of six nights only, on the ground in Freeman's Bay lately occupied by the Wirths. The first trip by a four-horse coach' to the summit of Ngongotaha Moun» tain (Rotorua) was made on Sunday week. This- will become one of the favourite outings around Rotorua. A Hawera paper says this occurred in the street the other evening:—Coloured gent (log.): "My golly That ; man hit my face! He say he take my missus! All right. My golly! he take my missus, I take his horse!" Then a man in uniform interrupted! . Rangihoro Koto, a noted chief and assessor of the Native Land;Qourt, died recently at Makctu, The deceasedi ■ was 55 years of age and greatly; esteemed 'by natives throughout-.thW-Bay of Plenty and Rotorua. district, a, very large number attending the tangi at Maketu. \ ■ \ '.'•-" ;.. .On Friday evening last the pump house at the Okere Falls, Lake. Rotoiti, was lit up_with thY electric light for the first time, and the pumping machinery was started, and everything was foun& to work smoothly. Rotorua township will therefore soon be lit with electricity. Mr W. Baker's farm of one hundred! acres at Tama-here (Waikato) was^recently disposed of to Mr Geo. Grant, au Oizgo t farmer.- at a satisfactory figure. Mr Grant is pleased with his purchase, and speaks highly of the Waikato and its future prospects. Ai number of Mr Grant's friends, on th«strength. of his representations, are. likely to pay Waikato a visit in search, of suitable holdings. A curious order has just been issued by the British Admiralty. It appears that many sailors have been in the habit of wearing steel stretchers in! their caps, and that instances hay» been reported of these stretchers becoming strongly magnetised, and * when worn * close to the ship's compasses, deflecting the needle to a dangerous extent. The wearing of such stretchers is therefore forbidden in future. When the organist of St. Andrew'a Church. Cambridge, was about to commence playing on Sunday morning the blo>ver informed him that the bellows would not act. Upon investigating; the matter he found that a rat had gotf into the organ and had eaten a largos, hole in the bellows. Fortunately, t£e» wind chest was intact, and the bellows being double action ones, by going afe : double /Speed the blower managed to , raise sufficient wind to get through^ the service- f An Oklahama farmer wrote to a friend in the east of the U.S.A. trying, to give h^m some idea of the soil out there. He says they have to mow ths grass of the sod floor to find the baby* *" One family near him had twin babies, with one cradle, and the child who had ito sleep on the floor grew twice as fast as the other. While the soil is the richest a'man dare not stand on one foot any length of time lest one leg! become longer than the othei* and bother him in walking.