SATURDAY HALF-HOLIDAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXVI, Issue 20, 23 July 1903, Page 6

SATURDAY HALF-HOLIDAY.

? TO THE EDITOB. Sir — It has been reported that the letter appearing in last night's issue over the signatures of employees of several retail houses was written at t)he instigation of their employers. We wish to give this statement an emphatic denial : our employers have not broached the subject to us in any way. — We are, etc., B. P. GULLY. JAMES G. DAWSON. Wellington, 23rd July, 1903 .

This afternoon the case of Thomas Priske was before the Full Bench of the Supreme Court, consisting of the Chief Justice and Justices Denniston, Conolly, Edwards, and Cooper. Mr. Jellicoe appeared in support of the rule nisi granted by the Chief Justice for a writ of certiorari calling on the Crown to show cause why the warrant of commitment directed against Priske should not be cancelled. He moved for a rule absolute. Mr. Myers opposed. Priske was convicted by the Magistrate on a charge of bringing into the colony sertain opium suitabie for smoking, or capable of being made suitable for smoking, the importatio>n of which is alleged to be restricted, and contrary to such restriction. Argument is proceeding on the interpretation of the Customs Laws Consolidation Act and the Opium Prohibition Acts of 1901 and 1902. A very enjoyable evening was spent by the Loyal- Antipodean and Britannia .Lodges of Oddfellows last night in a cribbage tournament, which resulted in a win for the Antipodeans. It was decided to forward a letter to the Friendly Societies' Dispensary Board thanking the Board for making its annual meeting open to members of the various lodges. The Britannia Lodge members were the guests of the Antipodean Lodge. The theme of Rudyard Kipling's story "The Man That Was," dramatised by Mr. F. Kinsey Peile, and staged by Mr. Beerbohm Tree on Bth June, relates to an English officer who, captured during the Crimean War, spends twenty years in Siberia before he returns to India, there lo meet his brother officers. His remembrance of who and what he was has become effaced from his memory, and when recollections of the past are recalled he falls asleep and dies. For dramatic purposes the Story has been somewhat enlarged, a female character having been introduced into the piece to relieve its intensity. Sb. James's Gazette considers the dramatisation unsatisfactory, but praises Mr. Tree's presentation of the leading character. Suett, the great English actor, having offended a brother actor, the aggrieved party was determined on revenge, and waited at the stage door to punish him. The night was extremely wet and dark, and as the actors passed, most of them muffled in their cloaks, the enraged man was obliged to ask of each of them, lest he should cudgel the wrong one, if he were whom he wanted. At length the wished-for man arrived, who, rushing in wrapped in his roquelaire and drenched with rain, was addressed with the usual query : "Are you Suett?" "No," he replied, "I am dripping," and fo passed into the theatre. Mr. Daniel Frohman, ,the American manager, was in London last week buying plays and arranging for their performance in the United States. His New York theatre, the recently rebuilt Lyceum, will be reopened in September with Mr. Justin Himtly M'Carthy's play '"The Proud Prince," the idea of which is based upon Longfellow'e poem " King Robert j>f Sicity."