TABLE TALK.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 95, 21 April 1904, Page 1

TABLE TALK.

Imperial Budget speech. Liedertafel concert to-night. Talune arrived from South. Arbitration Court proceeding. Papanui arrived from Wanganui. Farmers' Conference Qpened to-day. Four Japanese submarines building. City Hall is to be converted into office buildings. New Fire Prevention Council elected at Paeroa. Believed great Nihilist plot in St. Petersburg. The Budget is. not believed to be a dissolution one. "Green Lanes of England" at Opera House to-night. Captain of the Mandjur was drowned on the Petropavlovsk; Mr. J. R. Lundon speaks at St. George's Hall to-night. . Mr ¥. Holworthy's Shakesperian recital was very entertaining. Grand Duke Cyril described his experiences to an interviewer.. The Otago Art Society has at present a cret?it balance of £171 4/. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a deficit of £5,415,000. Poll will be taken in Grey, Lynn on Greater Auckland question. Consols rose on it becoming known that" the Sinking Fund was untouched. A motion against the tea-tax was defeated, and the tobacco-tax was approved. ( ( Grey Lynn meeting last night unanimously approved Greater Auckland scheme. "C.8." congratulated Austen' Chamberlain on his "lucid and masterly statement." Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahama and Indian Territory have been constituted States of America. Twenty-six cases of frozen eels were in the cargo taken by the Athenic from Napier for London. - The Manawatu Railway Company'n headquarters have teen removed from Christchureh to Wellington. Marlborough has definitely chosen September 17th as the date for the opening of its Industrial Exhibition. Wellington police are hustling the street musicians out of the main thoroughfares traversed by the trams. Gisborne was for a time <cut off from the rest of the world by the sudden failure of the telegraph line on the 16th. Mr Arnold, M.H.R., says he will not be surprised to see a dissolution next session over the freehold v. leasehold question. A movement is on foot to connect Otahuhu with the "gas service. A public meeting has been called for Friday next to consider the matter. Mr. Austen Chamberlain, in his Budget speech, held that the new condition of financial depression was due to what he termed "gilt-edged securities."- - > Mr. Austen Chamberlain, in bis Budget speech, said that the great wave of prosperity bad spent itself, and a cycle of less prosperous year 3 had begun. The £400,000 worth of Treasury bonds being issued by 1 the New Zealand" (government are for the-purpcse^ of Tenewal i of bonds falling due in April and May* "You don't live on beer, 'do-you?" asked the Crown : prosecutor of a defendant in a sty-grog case at Ashburton. "Very nearly," replied the man. The Otago Council is about to extend the University: buildings' for the purpose of establishing a chair of physiology. The cost is estimated at £4000. The New Zealand Portland Cement Company have received an order for 2000 tons of cement the reclamation works being 'carried out in connect!en with the Wellington Harbour. It is probable that owing to the uncertain weather the Acting Minister for Public Works vitil abandon his intention to inspect the North Island Main Trunk railway works before the session begins. Tenders are being invited in London, to close before April 21, for 514,000 sleepers of jarrah, karri, and other Australian hard wood, or djatti timber, for the Central South African railways. "He is one of the Low Church, and I am glad of it," said a parishioner, referring to the Rev. W. S. Bean at Christchureh. "As soon as you get a . High Churchman I am going." The congested state of Wellington's narrow main streets has made it necessary for the police to begin a campaign of removal of itinerants to the side streets against the coming of the electric cars. ; i The railway traffic in JSew South Wales oh Easter Monday, when the weather was fine, broke all previous records. Nearly 600,000 fares were collected, the earnings for the day amounting to £4100. The Hawera "Star" reports that a certain well-known private factory owner in Taranaki has been, offered £30,000 for his factory and five creameries by a company that proposes converting rr : lk into powder. Seventy-five men are at present employed on -the Seddonville State colliery. The output for the week ending Saturday last was 1154 tons, and there are dt present more orders on hand than can be executed. On Saturday afternoon the ceiling of the Maketu post office caught fire, and had it not been for the timely efforts of the local residents in extinguishing it, a serious conflagration would have resulted and rendered a dislocation of all southern telegraph wires. According to a decision of Mr. Barton, S.M., at Gi«sborne last week, a school playground is not a public place within the meaning of the law, and a man . charged with using filthy language in a schoolground, with a crowd of children round him,, got off on this ruling. The Ngaire Dairy Company has received an order to make' a scwt cheese for the New Plymouth -Poultry- Association for its next show at the end of July. The company has also been asked for a quotation for a half-ton cheese for the Palmertson North winter show. During the hearing of a case in Wellington recently, in which a second-hanci dealer was charged with buying bottles from a lad under the age of 16 years, the point was raised as to whether a bottle is a second - hand article. Dr_ MeArthur, S.M., reserved his decision *v the point, and on the 12th inst. he decided in the affirmative, on the ground that, though the bottle may not have deteriorated in value or in utility when it was cleaned and fit for further use, still it wne not a new bottle, already been in use.