NEWS TIT-BITS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 305, 21 December 1912, Page 15

NEWS TIT-BITS.

Hie first run on the majority of new motor care is said to be into debt. Change of occupation, is recommended for people who put on flesh too rapidly. They should become lightermen. "You know -what -women are — talk, talk, talk, all the time," eaid the Highgate magistrate recently. "Leave them alone, and they soon get tired." A Surrey octogenarian has just celebrated his second silver wedding. Stranger still, ho has been assisted in the ceremony by all the nine children of hie first marriage. The amount of the death duties which the Rothschild family had to pay at Vienna after the death of Baron de Rothschild last year was over one million sterling. Of an old man charged at Tottenham with being drunk and disorderly a policeman said that he wae making a terrible noise like a dog's bark. The Defendant: "1 was singing." "Never mind," said a woman at Bow Street, London, when she was told she would be sent to an inebriates' home for three years, I'll have a good drink on November 1, 1-915." Dodge City, Kansas, once - one of the most notorious of the "bad Wild Weet cities," has now become co good tha-t a penalty of £2 is inflicted on every person attending a dance. Baldness, save a writer in "Men's Wear," is particularly rife among the angling fraternity. We can't anewer for their heads, but we've often noticed baldness about their tales. The women's revolt is eliiU spreading. "Wait until we get women judgce; we will show you men," said a cook who was fined 10/ at West Ham, London, for being drunk and disorderly. It has been stated as a remarkable Tact that Dr. Woodrow Witeon attends to his own wardrobe. But several of our own politicians, judging by the last election, know how to turn their own coats. Mr. Masterman stated in the House of Commons that the deaths from consumption in the United Kingdom in 1910 numbered: England and Wales, 51,317; Scotland, 5,517; Ireland, 10,016. Total, 69,850. The Court of Appeal at Rome has confirmed the decision prohibiting women from practising in the law courts. The case originated through Miss Labriola the first woman lawyer in Italy, who has already successfully pleaded in court. Mme. Mathilde David, a Paris shop keeper, who set herself on fire aftei saturating her clothes with petrol, stated in a letter that she had chosen the moat painful death she could think of to pun ieh herself for having vexed her deac husband during his life. Rubber boots laced high up the leg ear-proteetora of felt, gold-rimmed gog gles to shield the eyes from the cold anc mud, and a fur-lined overcoat with a poc ket from which a gold-embroidered hand kerchief flutters in the breeze are anion; the latest canine fashions in Paris. Ifrom the- "Times" advertisemen' columns: "Widowed lady asks for advici and help to restrain her two daughter, from militant suffrage work. Living ii little country village, she has no friend: who can bring arguments to bear againsi her daughters' headstrong intentions." M. Louis Gay, a merchant, of St. Eti enne. France, was digging in his garder when he found £400 in gold which hac been buried there in 1870. Last year h< found £400 in a box hidden under the tiles of his house. There is danger °] this finding habit becoming a gay habit Dog-catching is now one of the chiel sports of American city life. A new motor wagon, which has been put Oβ the Pittsburg streets by the Animal Rescue League, has separate compartments foi 34 animals, and is provided -with special nets and other appliances for the capture of (stray dogs. A party of Malay boatmen who hooked a man-eating crocodile, dragged it bj ropes along the river bank for two houTs keeping ito mouth open to solicit altni fro,m the villagers. A sum of nearly £i in small coin, thrown into the crocodile's mouth, was shared after it had beer killed and cut open. A witness at Hackney Coroner's Court London, was asked by the coroner: — "How long have you been married?" "Tc the best of my knowledge, eighteer years," he replied. "Any children?" ' - On< sixteen years ago, to the best of mj knowledge." "None since?" "To the best of my knowledge, no." While on a shooting expedition in Alas ka, Mr ¥. K. Burnham is eaid to hav< killed five grizzly bears in two minute; with seven rifle shote. He had juei killed one grizzly when another eharge< him from one eide, and three more ap peared from the opposite direction. Mi Burnham. it may be noted, comes fron New York. At Brentwood (England) a womai complained that her husband staye< away from home for several daye. Sh< was talking volubly -when the magia trate remarked that he i*n not surpriee( that her husband went away. "If yoi talk as glibly to him as you do to me,' he added, "he would want a week's resi occasionally." Robert Robertson, an engine driver o Prtteburg, Pennslyvania, put an un wanted cat into a sack, and when aixtj miles from home threw it into a river The bag buret, and the cat, ewinmiinp ashore, was rescued by a watchman, whe put it in a truck on a train going tc Pittsburg. When Robertson rctchec hxyne the cat was sitting by the fire and his wife was sarcastic. There is something amnsingly incongruous in the description of the recent homecoming of a well-known Scottish laird and his bride, who arrived by motor at their ancestral halls. Regardless of the fact that there were no horses to unharness, the enthusiastic retainers would not be denied the time-honoured demonstration, and towed the car containing the bridal pair np the avenue to the house. We are accustomed to think of postage stamps as penny or halfpenny things they became old, but stamps of the face value of £5 have been issued in Great Britain, and are still common in other countries. The United States has a 60 dollar postage-stamp, and British South Africa until recently had one for £10. The highest-priced stamp ever issued was the rectangular pink £100' stamp of Victoria, Australia. The largest electric sign in the world depicts a baby's face that alternately smiles and sheds tears on the crowds that throng Broadway, New York. The smile is some 12ft. wide when it reaches I its fullest development, and each individual tear is 2ft. long by lOin. wide. The sign itself is 85ft. high by 106 ft. wide, and contains a total of 9,010 square feet of space. The child's lread is 40ft. high. The sign weighs eighty tons, and contains 4,050 electric lights.