NEWS OF THE DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 178, 29 July 1932, Page 6

NEWS OF THE DAY.

A Fine Reduced. "Grand jurors cannot be allowed to make mistakes," said Mr. Justice Reed in the Supreme Court, at Wellington, to Godfrey William Magnus. In the morning Mr. Magnus had been fined five guineas for not being present to answer, to his name when he was called to sit on the grand jury. On hearing the explanation of the juror for his non-attendance in the morning Mr. Justice Reed, when the Court resumed in the afternoon, 5 reduced the fine to two guineas. Five Shilling Piece Reappears. 5 What is nowadays a fairly rare coin, since it was officially recalled a number of years ago, was presented at a Dunedin businees place last week in the shape of a crown, or five-shilling piece. The coin is about twice as thick as a halfi crown, and about ljin wide, and bears the profile ' of Queen Victoria on one side and St. George and e the dragon, with the date, on the other. Instead b of the customary milling round the edge is a Latin inscription: "Decus et Tutamen Anno Kegni a LX." * Still Looking for a Boy. A fanner not far from Auckland recently s advertised locally for a youth to do" farm work. e A young man applied for the job, and was i>i- ,. formed that his daily duties would be to milk five cows, separate the milk, feed 800 fowls, wash * arid pack six crates of eggs, and before long 3 attend to 1000 chickens, and in hie spare time t clear three acres of scrub, and later dig the land, j The wage offered wae 5/ weekly, with a meal in the middle of the day. The farmer is still 1 looking for a boy. a, Episcopal "Old Gold" Sold. The Anglican Bishop of New Guinea, Dr. Henry Newton, has given his pastoral staff and episcopal ring to an "eld gold" appeal, the object 1 of which is the liquidation of his diocese's E accumulated debt of £7300. Gifts of old gold and 3 jewellery have been invited by the Australian j Board of Missions, which controls the missionary diocese of New Guinea. As the pastoral staff ' and the episcopal ring have an assigned place in f Anglican worship, it is probable that Dr. Newton r will have these articlee made from brass or some 3 other cheap material. Dr. Newton is an Australian. i An Ingenious Ruse. ' In the City Police Court at Dunedin on j Saturday morning a youth pleaded guilty to the f theft of 10/. Chief Detective Young explained that the accused, with two other boys, had conceived a rather ingenious method of obtaining 3 money. The complainant was a milkman, and r they had left a note in the billy of one of his f customers, asking that he should leave 10/ change in it, ae the customer had nothing lees than a £1 note, and required some silver for another pur- , pose. The note further stated that the customer's 7 bill would be paid later in the day, and that the , loan would then be refunded. Unsuspectingly. ' the milkman left the money, and the youths col- ' lected it and spent it. • "Satisfied With Ourselves." > "I do not think T can say anything com- . plimentary about the youth of New Zealand at the present," remarked Mr. D. C. Davie, in the 1 pourse of an addrese to Canterbury College '■■ students (states the Christchurch "Press"). He , said he felt that this country wae lacking in the • youth movements that were affecting the reet of the world. The obvious lack of ability to manage ' the country should have brought eome protest '■ from the youth of the universities. They had : lapsed into a state of dull respectability and con- , tentment. "I think myself that the wont thing I that ever happened to this Dominion was the success of the All Black football teams," he ■ etated. "It made us satisfied with ourselves." ) [ Old Cathedral Goes. I Nelson's old Cathedral, which has done ser- , vice in its present form eince 1880, as mother ' church of the diocese, and church of the Parish of Christ Church, was need for the last time on ' Sunday last, when the accommodation was fully , taxed by the large congregations which took part j in the final appropriate services in the building— ' a building steeped in tradition, of many hallowed memories, and close associations with the city and with the livee of so many Nelsonians. Among those, present at the services were several who attended the first service in the reconstructed cathedral 40 years ago. The demolition of the old structure was commenced on Monday in order to expedite as much as pweible the removal of the chancel on to the northern end of the nave of the new cathedral, which will be used for the first time next Sunday. Heavy Infantry. Ingenuity on the part of an erring employee, and a sense of humour possessed by his chief, ' combined to tide over an "awkward moment" in 1 the' premises of one of Auckland's biggest business concerns the other day. The employee wae a motor lorry driver, and he had brought back his vehicle with a damaged mudguard. His explanation, that he had bumped into a Maori who ran across the road unexpectedly, was received with derision by his mates, one of whom said, 'Muet tell that tale to the boffi and see what happens." The chief arrived a minute later, and the driver repeated his explanation, but added: "You see, it was a 'hard-case' Maori, sir." The chief agreed that it must have been, and probably thought a similar description might apply to the driver. "Being Dead, Yet Speakoth." A letter by a settler, alleging that the Opotiki County Council roll includes the Panics of Maoris long dead, has- been forwarded to the Valuer-General, Wellington, with a view to having the roll purged. The letter states: "A considerable number of deceased Maori names are printed and published on the Opotiki County roll, and shown thereon every election. From a rough calculation there are about 150. Tn some cat-cri Maori names arc wrongly shown; in one case a" old pensioner's name is shown in two ridings; he turned up on election day to exercise two votes, as important as a tin dog. .-». . I suggest that the whole Maori roll be scrapped, also that the Maori names mixed into the European roll be removed. ... In the Otara Riding there are 101 Maori names on the roll, 41 of the number are dead, five are under double names, and two of the latter are under a third name in another riding. The following are instances of the length of time some of these people have been dead: Eight years, 12 years, 15, years, died in France, 20 years, 27 years, 28 years. They arc not much further use on a comity roll. . . . One of , those dead votes was counted against me at thy recent election, also I was put out of the council at the 1929 election by the vote of a Maori woman who had been dead 24 years." Blankets For Relief Workers. "They are somebody's bairns, down in their luck at present, many of them are personally known to me, and some of them will yet make good in this country, but my plea for them is that they be supplied with more blankets," was what a social worker said yesterday, after he had spent an hour at the metropolitan relief depot at Hobson Street watching men who were going into camp, presenting orders from the Labour Depart" ment so that they could get equipped with suitable outfit. Mr. Grieve, the official in charge of ' the depot, has a thorough grip of his job (declared < the visitor), and he is ably assisted by a wellqualified staff drawn from amongst relief workers. ■ "The method of checking applications and the i carding system are excellent. Every applicant has , the choice of five articles, the socks, the ehirts, < denims, underpants, singlets and the blankets are . very suitable for tieir purpose, while the quality of the boots, manufactured under expert super- j vision, could not be better. One blanket seemed ■ to me to be a scanty covering for a tent camp j bed. If a special appeal could be made for i blankets, it might touch the hearts of those who i have more than they need. Some of the splendid i chaps in camp cannot have too much done for - them, and they would appreciate it to the full." <