GENERAL NEWS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4807, 6 January 1887, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

A New York correspondent telegraphs that larger orders for -war material for France and Turkey are now being executed in the United States than were ever known before.

A committee of English and Canadian residents is being formed t« organise a celebration of the Queen's Jubilee, and one of the suggestions to be considered is the erection of a. colossal statue of Her Majesty a hundred feet higher than M. Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty.

Baron Gustavo Heine Geldern, the editor and proprietor of the Vienna Fremdenblatt, died on Nov. 15, aged seventy-eight. He ■was the younger brother of Heinrich Heine, the celebrated German poet. The latter, as it is known, died in 1856 at Paris in poverty. Gustavo Heine, who had absolutely none of his brother's literary talents, leaves a fortune of millions.'

' A goods train on the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Railway; consisting of thirty waggons, ran into some stationary •waggons in Manchester, and drove them against the parapet of a bridge crossing Sheffield-street. The wall gave way, and some of the trucks toppled over into the etreet, while others hung suspended over the thoroughfare. Singular to relate, no person was injured.

Mrs J. W. Barron, a cousin of Charles Sickens, is said to be living in New York under straitened circumstances. She tries to earn a living by selling cherry brandy, of which beverage the New Yorkers are very fond. She has a number of autograph letters of the great novelist in her possession, which she absolutely refuses to sell, though handsome prices have been offered by collectors.

The shaft of a Celtic cross of lonic pattern has been unearthed in the churchyard of Rothesay. ■ Amid ti) interlaced ornamentation peculiar to Norse and Celtic monuments, the slab bears on the reverse side the well-executed figure of ahorse with its rider. To the age of this relic, in the absence of lettering of i ny kind, there is no direct clue, although its distinctive features point to a late Celtic period.

The Primitive Methodists of Horwich, near Bolton, had a special attraction for their Sunday evening service. J. Billington, who has once officiated as executioner, •was announced to officiate -with Hallelujah Jimmy, from Kearsley. There should have been an out-door service, but this did not take place. The members of the congregation resented the grotesque announcement, and the hangman had a meagre audience.

The London Telegraph required a column of its space for a description of the funeral of the jockej Archer, but could only find room for seventeen lines for Mr Mathew Arnold's farewell. The Pall Mall Budget thinks that " the journal with the greatest circulation " desired to supply an illustration of what Mr Arnold meant when he said the previous night: "I find plenty of deleterious and detestable influences at work; they are not the influences of teachers; they are the influences of journalism."

General Grant left a legacy of £1000 to liis friend and physician, Dr. Douglas. Some weeks after the General's death, Dr. Douglas rendered his bill for attendance, which amounted to £1400, and it was paid ; but when it came to paying the legacy it ■was announced that "the family" held that tho legacy was to be used in liquidating the claim. This seems rather shabby, srufl the courts would hardly .support such a view; but Dr. Douglas declines to stir in tho matter, in consequence of his great regard for the General.—Truth.

A despatch form Statesville, North Carolina, says that Henry Lakey, of Cross Koads Church, Yadkin County, eloped with the eighteen-year-old daughter of James Co'oley. The girl's father pursued the flying pair, and, having the faster horse, overtook the runaways about a mile from the house of the minister whom they had expected to many them. Cooley called upon Lakey to give up the girl, whereupon the young man drew a revolver and shot him dead. The murderer fled, "leaving the young Tvomau standing by the dead body of her Jfathcr.

In the Newcastle Chronicle was recorded the following remarkable instance of longevity in a Northumbrian family:—Mr lloberfc Wood, of Chesterhope, Redesdale, died on the 6th inst., aged 87 years, and. ■n-as buried on Tuesday ; his grandfather, William, died at the nge of 88 ; his father, Daniel, SW ; his brother, William, 96; his brother, Ealph, 98 ; his sister, Elizabeth, 85 ; his sister, Ann, 87 : his brother, Daniel, 83 ; and now himself, at the age of 87 years. This line of lives represents a total of 717, giving an average of nearly 90 years to each individual.

Owing , to the failure this season of the ■whale .fishing at Davis Straits and at Eehrings Straits, the price of whalebone has increased in value from. £1,450 to £2,250 per ton. A Dundee dealer is in the market offering to sell whalebone at £2,000; but the other local holders are not inclined to sell under £2,250 per ton. Five of the Dundee fleet arrived at Dundee last week from the Davis Straits' whale fishing , with ;i total catch of 354 tons of wliale blubber and eight tons of whalebone, representing a money i - alue, including skins, of over £23,000- Whale oil in 1884 sold at £50 per tun; but now £23 per tun is with difficulty obtained.

Truth is informed that there is a -'project of marriage " between the Duke of Augustenburg and the Princess Louise of Wales. The Duke, who is the nephew of Prince Christian, and the brother of Princess William of Prussia, was born in 1563. He possesses large estates in Silesia, and receives £15,000 a. year from the Prussian Government to compensate him for the loss of his father's dominions. The Duke's mother is the Princess Adelaide of Hoheulohe-Langen-burg, the sister of Count Gleiehen, and seuond cousin to the Queen. The late Louis Napoleon -was very anxious to many her in 1852, and he proposed twice for her, but her English relatives did not approve of the match, and nothing would induce her father (the fete .Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe, ■who died in 1855) to sanction it. Outside New York the ohief result of the elections has been to decrease somewhat the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives'at Washington. These words "Democratic" and "Kepublican" have now practically no'meaning left. Tho only jreal difference is that the former is theoretically the party of free trade, and the latter that pi protection, The present elections thus shew a weakening pf the Free Trade movement. This, however", 18 OIU y theoretical. President Cleveland is a Jree-Trader at heart, but he is ahead of his par pnd if the Democrats were in a majority in' Houses to-morrow the old cast-iron Phila" dflphian protection would probably be left untouched for a long time. Free Trade is only a theoretical love of the Democrats, practically—and luckily for England it is etiU far oif.—Pall Mall Gazette. In the Dublin Bankruptcy Court on November 12 the case of an arranging trader came on for hearing. The trader stated at the preliminary hearing that his failure was due to the boycotting system to which, he lmd been exposed. He produced copies of resolutions passed by the local branch of the National League. The single opposing creditor, who had been subpsenaed, and who is a member of the League, admitted that such a resolution was substantially passed. Witness did not approve of this resolution, and supplied flour,to the arranging trader after the resolution was adopted, but had to stop the supply in August, lest his own trade should suffer. The arranging trader stated that a watch lutd been kept on his shop-door, and there was a decrease of 60 per cent, in his takings after the passing of tho resolution. The judge said that, under the circumstances, the offer of os in the pound was reasonable. The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's the insolence of office, and the pangs of despised love, nre among the reasons alleged by Hamlet as justifying a nun in committing suicide, if he has the - pl.ick to take bin chances on "the other M-le." The pangs of hunger and tho dread / of penal servitude are in modern times even 1 more frequent motives to felo-de-se. It has S ; , been reserved for a Manchester man to *' i invent a new reason for : self-slaughter, and to take strychnine because his wife had' i£ ' never given him anything on'his birthday! -Vj. "Had it only been a penny cigar," he jjfcj wrote pathetically, " I would have prized j** it." He does not say that he would have ,\: Hinoked it, and this nice selection of terms argues a certain method in his madness sf-CHe will doubtless be received with diatincW tiouia the "Purgatory of Suicides" a* one f* v , who has invented a novel motive for shaking i^ , tho yoke of inauspicious stars from his ilesh.' Hjt; itoportors were irt admitted to the | itt Newoastle on Tuesday, but BSB&P-Wt F°* "' * tuildtng oTeriooiwg , the ligjjripan. two «fa>j?Wß el tbv pjepii wift 9C m&t tjsftli f| jts«i >y the prifofl wN«jr»

curieviely inspecting the movements of those in t'jio yard through a field glass. The gov/ernor of the gaol, Lieutenant Wookey, oft being made aware of-the fact, gesticulatad and shouted to tho reporters to get dciwn. Little or no heed was taken by the pressmen. Superintendent Beattie, of the A Division of police, appeared at the base of the building and peremptorily ordered them to descend, but they sat motionless on the roof. Shortly afterwards a policeman ascended the slater's ladder by which the reporters had got up. The constable denied the right of the reporters to stay there, but the latter would no.t come down. The prison officials, however, by means of two long poles on which was fixed a large screen of tarpauling, prevented the adventurous pressmen from seeing much of the dismal proceedings.—ft ewcastle Chronicle.

The World's Providence (R. 1.) special says:—"As strange and startling as was the story of the disappearance of Frederick A. Gower, the telephone inventor and aeronaut, is the information of his re-appearanoo, alive and well, in Bombay (India.) Gower, who was a newsboy, and subsequently editor of the Press in this city, left his newspaper desk when the first public exhibition was given here of the telephone. He contracted with Professor Bell to deliver a lecture throughout the country, and afterwards took the French capital as a field for introducing the telephone. Soon after reaching Paris lie amassed a fortune. Having satisfied his thirst for discovery and invention in one direction, Gower set to work experimenting with machinery for aerial navigation. He made extensive preparations for ascending in a monster balloon from Dieppe. The balloon went out to sea, and the only vestige of it that was ever found was the basket. Gower was given up for lost. He had, not very long before, married Mdlle. Nordia, the prima donna, who, however, did not live happily with him. Now comes the story that on Malabar Hill, in Bombay, the vanished American is living in good health, while his brother, George Lewis Gower, is in France taking care of his interests. Gower, it is said, is a great friend of a handsome Indian princess, and is the lion of a very lively European circle."