THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1885.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 5344, 14 November 1885, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1885.

The usual meeting of the Debating Club was held last evening in the Town Hall. Mr Matheson Vice President, in the cha r. The business for the evening was the bringing down a constitution for the Government of the Island of Guam on conservative lines. Messrs Thornton, Westbrooke, and Petrie were entrusted with the preparation of the constitution. Mr Thornton, as premier, brought forward the constitution in a very elaborate speech. Mr C. Smith followed on the opposition side, followed by the Rev Mr Westbrooke, speaking on the Ministerial side ; Mr Adams also spoke in favor of the constitution, and Mr Boase against it, after which Mr Rae moved the adjournment of the debate, which closed the business of the evening.

Mr W. A. Ellis gave his first performance here last evening at the Public Hall. He professed to be unable to give any reason how he became possessed of the power to catch and interpret the impressions thrown off by those whose peculiar temperaments were in sympathy with his. Thought-reading was very much like mesmerism, the successful readings rarely averaging more than 25 per cent., though J on one occassion his percentage was as high as 90. After the display of a little craniology, and dimly identifying certain things in connection with a couple of gentlemen on the stage, which met with some applause, he aski d for a few photographs, locks of hair, and letters. On these he discoursed in an amusing way for the greater part of the evening, describing peculiarities of, or incidents in, j the career of the originals of the photo- J graphs. He was about equally successful with the letters, except with one letter, which apparently must have been of an j actively repellant character, still he made a good many clever guesses, no- matter how he arrived at them, his success being ! freely admitted by those who passed up the articles to be divined from. {Mr Ellis promises an entire change to-night, and on Sunday evening he will lecture on " Modern Thought, or Religion, without Superstition." This lecture has been delivered all through the North Island, and has been well spoken of by some of the organs of public opinion. A very handsome silver cup is now on view in Mr Dupre's window. It has been very generously presented by Mr Thomas Jones of the Terminus Hotel, Brunnerton, to be run for at the Christmas sports at Brunnerton. J. W. Easson and Co. will to-day sell at their rooms (per Courtenay Smith and Co.) a large lot of unredeemed pledges from Wellington. At a meeting of the committees of the two volunteer companies, held on Tuesday evening, a unanimous vote of thanks was passed to the stewards of the Greymouth Jockey Club for the use of the racecourse on Monday ; also to Mr Ronayne for the admirable arrangements made and the way in which the convenience and comfort of the volunteers and public had been met. The Paris Figaro has published a conr urination of the statement that 10,000 Christians had been massacred in China, and states that the victims included 300 nuns, most of them French, in the districts wherein the missionary buildings were destroyed. Two remarkable cases of boycotting may be cited as showing to what extremes the Irish go. A telegram was recently returned to the Post Office, the messengers refusing to deliver it to the addressee, who had been prescribed, the local league ; while food was denied to a woman who had lent her horse and chaise to a magistrate. Mr George Augustus Sala has announced that he intends when he gets home to collect all his letters about Australasia, and after adding a great deal of original matter, to publish them in two large volumes, illustrated with maps and engravings. This will indeed be a "Golden Fleece" in more than one sens '. Mr Judson (Ned Buntline), a ready writer of cheap fiction for the American press, has recently been making some confessions as to authorship. He admits the authorship of between 300 and 400 sensational novels, and claims to have made from 20,000 dols. to 60,000 a year. Besides "Ned Buntline, "Mr Judson has five other pen names : " Edward Mintum," " Clad Garnet," " Reckless Ralph," "Sherwood Stanley," and "Julia Edwards." As the elephants of Barnum's circus were being taken back to the railway after an exhibition at St. Thomas, Ontario, a goods train came up behind the famous Jumbo, and as his keeper was unable to

iiiduco him to go offthe line, -crumbed him against some trucks on the hejghboring siding. The train being on an incline the driver was unable to stop it. Jumbo only lived half -an hour. His English keeper Scott is said to have wept over the body. The.. hide will be preserved at Tufft's College, Massachusetts, and the skeleton, at the National Museum in Washington. Tenders close on Monday, 16th inst. for the supply of 6410 tons of West Coast coal for the city of Dunedin gas works ; and on the same date for the supply and delivery of coal to the New Zealand Railways. In his address to the Grand Jury on August 7, Mr Justice Hawkins, at Winchester, spoke very strongly on the subject of bail. No man, he said, should suffer a single hour's imprisonment unless there was an absolute necessity for it, J until the time came that he should receive his punishment. If acquitted, his imprisonment beforehand was not calculated to do him much good. Sometimes the com- j mittal of a man drove his wife and children to the workhouse, entailing their support on others instead of himself. In trifling cases a man should be liberated on I hi? own recognisance, or, if the magistrate did not adopt that course, they should be satisfied with very moderate sureties. Laboring men could not be expected to find two suretiessiof £10 each. In small offences 40s would be amply sufficient. Speaking from experience, he did not believe that in one case out of a hundred would a man fail to answer his bail. Once at Leeds thirty-five prisoners, charged with very serious offences, were out on bail, and not one failed to appear when called upon to take his trial. In an article headed " Can We Hurt England ! " United Ireland, Mr Parnell's paper, deals with M r Chamberlain's recent figures, and sets forth the injury 4,000,000 of Irish people can do the other 34, 000,0C0 of people in the United Kingdom. It mentions what it terms matter-of-fact eventualities that everybody who thinks that the Irish 4,000,000 can but grind their teeth however the 34,000,000 may choose to hector them, would do well not to overlook. There is, it _ says, the possibility of a great national boycotting decree against English commercial travellers, the boycDtting of every English official, soldier, and policeman in Ireland, the boycotting, if need be, of every steamship or cockboat carrying on intercourse between the two islands. For a while all these things would involve a great deal of rad ruin and breaking up of laws, would anybody say they were beyond the power of a people ready to face any sea of weltering troubles provided that Mr Chamberlain shows them that English domination in Ireland cannot otherwise be overthrown ? It exhorts Mr Chamberlain to moderate the rancour of his tongue. Irsh- Americans propose to raise £45,000 at the Convention to be held in January, to enable Mr Parnell to pay ninety Irish members £100 each annually^for five years. ■ " - ■'**"- A correspondent in Rangoon -writes, under date Sept. 9, to the Times : — " Soopayalat, T-hebaw's Queen, has been seriously il with dysentery. The native doctors were consulted, but were not allowed to see her, and were obliged to. prescribe on the reports received from the" maids of honor. The Queen having become worse, an Italian physician resident inTVTandalay was called in. He also was unable to see Soopayalat, but ascertained 1 her condition through his wife, who speaks Burmese, and who is allowed access to the patient. The Queen is now better. . Her death would, have an important effect on Burmese politics as she keeps the king in complete subjection, and has been his", evil genius. She was one of the principalauthors of the Mandalay massacres of 1879." Advices from the Red Sea continue to describe the discomforts experienced at Suakim as very serious. The English soldiers, it is said, are "a pitiful sight," not one man in fairly healthy condition, while even the. Indian troops are grumbling bitterly and almost mutinous. The heat ii tremendous, the frequent sandstorms most distressing, and the deaths very numerous. But if Suakim is bad, Massowah, which the Italians have copied, is worse. A private letter says : " VVe called in at Massowah and had to anchor for the nitfht, and a more frightful, horrible night, I never spent, not a breath of air, and the thermometer 122 deg. Fah. This is no exaggeration ; we were panting about the deck ; the heat seemed to choke you ; sleep was out of the question. Some negroes seemed to feel the heat more than Europeans, and were groaning fearfully, and pouring buckets of water over their heads, which, however, was of very little use, as the water was between 95 deg. and 100 deg. Fah. Five Italian officers have committed suicide, and I no wonder. Aden, after Suakim and Massowah, is a perfect paradise. The defence of Simla is proceeding with great rapidity. There are 3000 men employed in the work. Just landed, exStKilda, from Wanganui direct, a very superior lot of prime quality bulljcks, sheep, lambs, and porkers, for Clough aad Keating, London Butchery, Boundary 3tt:eet.— [advt.] Why will people dose themselves with terrible alkaloids like Qunine, which is a most dangerous drug, and at ihe best affords only a respite in cases of chills and fever, when there is a harmless, effectual and speedy remedy, which totally eradicates any complaint of an intermittent or remittent character. And why do they not anticipate such diseases by protecting themselves against the effects of malarial poison with such an antidote and preventative as Udolpho Wolfe's Schiedam c Aromatic Schnapps. — advt. Half Asleep! — "I never," wrote a young lady to a friend, "go to church or lecture but I am half asleep, and I never know afterwards what the sermon or lecture was about." It was a plain case of nervous lethargy, produced by want of action of the liver and digestive organs. She was persuaded to try Hop Bitters, and now she writes :— "How intelligent and bright are sermons and lectures now, and how glorious the world we live in is ! Hop Bitters are indeed a blessing to me." — advt. The brazen serpent. — Like the brazen serpent that the great Jewish leader lifted high in the sight of the perishing followers, whereby they were saved from death, the discoverers of Hop Bitters have' placed before Buffering, ailing mankind, a remedy which enables them to fight disease with, conquering advantage. — advt.