LONDON TOWN TALK.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3909, 8 May 1877, Page 2

LONDON TOWN TALK.

(Correspondent of the Melbourne ."Argus.") ■ Party feeling goes a great way in this country, but never, save in the following instance, has it gone the length of an excursion train. The Liberals of Rochdale took on a certain occasion a " special" to London, and on their return journey from King's Cross found a Conservative pleasure party hitched on to their engine, whereupon they all got out and paid 17s apiece to go by an ordinary train rather than travel in such company. And .now they have brought an action. against the railway for the money which they claim ought to be refunded, on the plea of the humiliation attempted to be put upon them. On the Great Western also the other day, at Bristol, rather a funny thing took place. In the first-class waiting-room was found a diminutive young gentleman, only a fortnight old, with a change of linen in a bundle and a feeding-bottle tied round his waist. No less than three ladies left their addresses with the station master, expressing their willingness to adopt the child if they could obtain their husbands' sanction. Alas, for the inhumanity of the male — that child is still in Bristol Workhouse. Everyone knows the story of the unhappy Cambridge professor, who, meaning nothing but science, introduced the water weed from his garden tank into Hobson's Conduit, from the Conduit to the Cam, and from the Cam into half the *J rivers of England, to the destruction of ' their navigation ; and now it appears this same catastrophe has been repeated in France with respect to the pnylioxera, the destroyer of vineyards. A scientific gentleman of Bordeaux has made a collection of vines of all countries, and among them some American specimens which had this accursed insect at their roots. The vine of the United States, although it produces it, is, it seems, unßuitttlto the development of this scourge, Tbut among the French vineyards it grew and thrived, and extending in all directions, threatens to paralyse the chief branch of industry of the country. Every means to efface it have been tried in vain, and as a last resource it is now suggested that American vines should be planted in France, and the French vines grafted on to them. It is certainly strange that such widespread mischief should have arisen in two countries from the gratification of an innocent and laudable love of science. It is stated of the proprietor of Truth, that he came down to his club on the day after its publication, with the idea of receiving the congratulations of his friends. A golden silence, however, reigned among them, except in one instance, where a gentleman ventured to observe that, though "very, very clever, he thought the paper just a little — well, scurrilous." "All," said the proprietor, "then I've won my bet." "What do you mean?" inquired the other. " Well, before I left home this morning I bet a friend five pounds that some fool or another would make that very observation." If these gentry are thus conciliatory in private life, it is not to be expected that they should spare the rod, or the flail in their printed columns. Both the World- and Truth have fallen foul of the editor of Punch (Tom Taylor) this week, and describes his particularities and shortcomings in true American style. I read that you are setting up aquariums in Australia. Do not put the alligators and alligatresses in the same compartment with their young, otherwise the same thing will take place as has just happened at Brighton. A little alligator was suddenly missed. The father and mother professed ignorance, except a blink of the dull eye of the lady, which (in connection with a slight moving of her under jaw) excited the curator's suspicions. He prized her mouth open, and found a small scaly leg, which, being pulled, produced the missing infant. It was quite unhurt, and it is supposed that its mamma had had no intention of hurting it. It kgd found her mouth open and crept in, Said she was to lazy to object to the intrusion. This puts the insouciance of our maternal aristocracy (hitherto supposed to be unrivalled) completely into the shade. Parliament has opened, but it is soon to be deprived of the august presence of Dr Kenealy ; he has been so ill-received, and his umbrella so roughly handled by his constituents, that he has resolved to temporarily leave an ungrateful country that it may learn to value him by his loss. He is going to Spain to cross-examine the new survivors from the Bella, a batch of whom have again turned up. He wrote to Lord Derby for "an extraordinary passport " for his purpose ; but that Jack-in-offi cc (as the doctor calls him) only sent him the usual form of application to the Foreign Office, and had even the cruelty to remind him. that the communication must be prepaid. An amusing incident took place yesterday in the House. The good doctor was calling its attention to the fact that the martyred Orton was suffering tortures in Dartmoor Prison, when Whailey jumped up and inveighed against the brutal indifference of the Home Secretary, who, instead of listening to the hon. gentleman's " harrowing statement," was actually engaged in conversation with a friend. The other martyred Arthur — though in a different cause — the Rev. Arthur Tooth, is not occxipying (as scandalously stated) the same apartment in Horsemonger Lane Gaol that was inhabited by Mr Valentine Baker. He is lodging in a room hallowed by more classical associations, but which I fear he will not appreciate much more highly, namely, the one Leigh Hunt was confined in for calling the Prince Regent "an Adonis of 50. " It was here that he was first introduced to Lord Byron, and was constantly visited by Keats, who addressed to him that well-known sonnet — What though for showing truth to flattered state Kind Hunt was shut in prison. Its walls were then papered with festoons of roses, and the cell transformed into a poet's haunt. The present martyr's honjteis more like an oratory ; he is serenaded nightly by men in cassocks and ladies attired as sisters of charity, and feeds on pheasants supplied by the dignitaries of the Church. As 11 judges are now solely occupied in trying the question of his ecclesiastical vagaries, I do not presume to give an opinion of them. If you should hear, however, that in the meantime his unhappy flock is deprived of the " offices of the church," j r ou must not picture to yourselves the consequences of a Papal interdict. The plain English of it is, that folks at Hatcham who want to get married have to do so in the next parish.