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Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5017, 25 February 1878, Page 2

The ranks of the early colonists of New Zealand are rapidly thinning. We heard the other day of the death of Mr Rhodes, of Wellington. To-day, we hear, of the death of a man whose career bore, in many respects, a close resemblance to his, Captain Read, of Poverty Bay. Our telegrams inform us that he dropped down dead suddenly on Saturday night last at his residence. He will be greatly missed. Of late years especially, he was a highly popular man in Gisborne, where the people had come to appreciate the kindly heart that was concealed by a somewhat brusque exterior. Many of the settlers there owe their success in life to his assistance in trying times. We believe that the report circulated to the effect that some prominent members of the Grey party visited Mr Barton in the gaol and asked him to retire from the contest, should have been supplemented by the statement that a similar request was made to Mr Hutchison. Both gentlemen, in fact, were urged to come to an understanding, so as not to split the Liberal vote. Both, however, were too confident of their chances to agree to do this. People generally appear to have been singularly ill-iaformed up to the very eve of the election in reference to the true position of matters. The New Zealand Times wrote articles daily reviling Mr Hutchison, but gave itself no trouble about Mx Barton at all. Our Wellington correspondent, therefore, in predicting as he did a few days before the election that Mr Barton had no chance, only gave what was then the universal belief in Wellington. Mrs Barton, we believe, deserves the largest share of the credit of her husband's success. Next to her, young Mr Barton. The great blunder made by the Judges in not giving instructions at the very first that a prisoner committed for contempt should receive different treatment from an ordinary felon came to their assistance in a wonderful manner, and enabled them to rouse popular sympathy to an extraordinary pitch. We have never heard of any previous case of committal for contempt in which sucli instructions were not given at once. A Wellington correspondent says : — " On dit the colony will get £50,000 in the shape of succession duties from the late W. B. Rhodes' property. Who can say that wealth contributes nothing to the revenue I Miss Rhodes will have £25,000 per annum ; Mrs Rhodes £4000." We do not think that the on dlt in regard to the amount that the revenue will get can be correct. The will, it is said, provides for a reversion in favor of the nephews andjnieces of the deceased, in the event of the principal legatee dying childless. If that is so, the succession duty would of course be calculated only on the life interest of the sum left. The harbor entrance, we are happy to be able to state, continues to improve. The following are last week's soundings :— For the 18lh, 11 feet ; 19th, 11 feet ; 20th, 11 feet 3 inches ; 21st, 11 feet 6 inches ; 22nd, 11 feet 6 inches • 23rd, 12 feet. We hear that Mr Floyd worked the telephone on Saturday night from Tauranga to Napier and back", a distance of 400 miles, with complete success. The two wires running to Tauranga were connected in the Napier office, thus making one direct circuit of 400 miles ol wire. The words spoken at the one end of the circuit travelled to Napier and back to Tauranga, and were there heard as distinctly as they were spoken. This, we understand, is the greatest distance the telephone has yet been worked, as far as is yet known. A meeting of the Regatta Committee is to be held this evening, at the Criterion Hotel, at eight o'clock. The St. Paul's Church annual meeting, which is to be held to-night, will be rendered attractive, we learn, by a sacred concert of no ordinary character. Several vocalists not connected with the congregation have kindly volunteered to assist. The performers, if we may so designate them, have been practising assiduously for some weeks past under Mr Aplin's able superintendence. The pieces to be rendered will comprise selections from the most celebrated oratorios and masses of Handel, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Rossini, Meyerbeer, and other famous composers. A little boy, a son of Mr Charles Hutchings of Napier, on Friday last found twelve one-pound notes on the footpath. He shortly found the owner, and handed over the money, when he received the munificent reward of Is. We have no idea who the owner was. We certainly do not admire the disposition displayed. We learn by a private telegram from Gisborne that Captain Read suddenly dropped down dead there on Saturday night. At the complimentary entertainment to Mr Eva, at the Theatre Royal, to-morrow evening, a novelty in the scenery will be presented. It is a set seene — a drawingroom — painted by Mr Wundram, and is the first of the kind that lias been shown in Napier. We learn that the tickets for the entertainment are going off very rapidly, and there is every prospect of a big house. We would advise those who take tickets to get seats reserved at Jacobs' fancy repository, so that they may experience n© inconvenience in having such accommodation as they may deem desirable. A correspondent at Waipawa writes in very high terms of praise of the entertainment given in the Oddfellows' Hall there last Wednesday and Thursday j evenings by the Reed Brothers. "On both evenings," our correspondent says, "there was a good attendance, and the audience was most appreciative. Miss Leaf is certainly a most accomplished vocalist. Her rich contralto voice and expressive manner of singing took with the audience amazingly. Mr W. H. Reed's clever performance on several instruments at once and his double voice singing were much applauded. Mr F. Reed's performance on the concertina and cornet also received manifestations of approval. Mr Flood also played on two instruments at once— the piano and seraphene— which, together with his affective style in playing the accompaniments, tended greatly to the success of the entertainment. It is a matter of general regret that the company cannot give _ the people of Waipawa another evening's entertainment." In the Bankruptcy Court at Dunedin lately, His Honor Mr Justice Williams remarked that if people got into business the must either keep books themselves or get some one else to do it for them. It was their duty to keep their accounts in such a manner that they could be investigated by some independent person. If a man could not or would not keep inteUi-

gible accounts, such a person will better be employed as a day laborer instead of embarking in business, and inflicting loss upon other people. The late Mr James Lick, the wellknown wealthy citizen of the United States, when he died left a large sum of money to construct the greatest telescope in the world. An American paprer says :— "lt will be remembered that R. S. Floyd, who returned some time ago from an extended tour of observation, reported in favor of two telescopes— onearefraefcor with a 40-inchglass, and the other a reflector with a mirror still Larger. Astronomers are divided somewhat as to the merits of these two kinds of telescopes. But with both all the possible advantages would be obtained. The Manufacturer and Builder, noticing these facts, makes the following prediction : ' We are confident that if this plan be realised, startling discoveries are in store. California, with its monster telescopes, aided by its clear sky and otherwise favorable situation for astronomical research, will undoubtedly take the lead in discoveries, of which those of the moons of Mars, made with what is now the largest refractor in the world, have given us a foretaste.' " Captain F. W. Sullivan, C.8., who commanded the Harrier during the New Zealand war of 1863-4 is now com- j mander on the Cape and West African ' station. A pyramid, 20 feet square at the base, and towering nearly 60 feet in height, will represent, at the Paris Exhibition, the 7,000,000 cubic inches of gold that has been produced in California. All Municipalities and County Councils i will, we presume, be anxious to obtain *as large a share of the annual subsidies voted by the Government as possible. To enable them to secure this great help it is absolutely necessary that all arrears of rates shall be paid during the present mouth of February. We learn that sfreat activity is just now the order of the day at the City Council and other Council offices in issuing peremptory " invitations to pay " with a view of securing all the subsidy that the various bodies are entitled to.— N.Z. Herald. The Town Clerk of Gisborne (says the Poverty Bay Herald) has a very original idea of altering a plan when circumstances require it. The other evening the Council wished Mr Townley's proposed river roadway put in the drawing, when members thought it could not be done without a fresh plan. "Oh yes it can," said the Clerk. "Put in a dab of green." We are charitable enough to suppose that Mr Bennet did not imply that green was the proper color to use in marking off Mr Townley's road. There is always a lurking suspicion attached to green, and sometimes it indicates a degree of verdancy ; but this cannot be applied to Councillor Townley. According to the Lyttdton Times, the Premier promised that Tawhiao should be entitled to frank telegrams and letters. The latter also wanted the privilege extended to his secretary. Messrs Royse, Stead, and Co., of Christchurch (says a Southern paper) are having a telegraph line erected, connecting their town office with their new brick grain warehouse at the Heathcote Valley. This is the first private line in Christchurch, and also, we believe, in the colony. We commend the following, from the Auckland Evening Star, to the notice of some of our local mechanical geniuses : — "Few of our readers know that every house could have its own telephone in half an hour for less than sixpence, and you could have delightful chats with your friend on the opposite side of the street, or at greater distance if needs be. I made one last night ; the tilings required are so simple and plentiful, the result so near perfection, and the fun that could be had would well repay the time occupied in its construction. I picked up in the back yard two round mustard tins, and having emptied the mud pies the youngsters had put in, I heated the bottoms till they fell off, then did the same to the end where the lid is, taking care not to injure the rim of the lid ; then rummaged in an old box and found a piece of parchment ; having taken off the rim placed the parchment on the top, re-placed the rim, and it will be like one end of a drum. Then pierce the centre of the parchment with a pin, and insert the end of cotton from an ordinary reel, and lay the pin in it, letting the pin remain in the tube against the parchment. Do both tins the same way, and the telephone is complete — the length of cotton of course according to the distance required. I use a whole reel, and both singing and speaking are perfectly distinct." Already, according to a German paper, telephones have been provided for the use of the telegraph officials at Britz, Weissensee, Linum, Raven, Schopfurth, Nauendorf, Magdesprung, Plotzkau, Wildenbruch, and Libeseele, and many more are being constructed. Telephones are also in regular use between the offices of the Postmaster-General and the Director of Telegraphs, between the offices of many of the higher officials in various public departments, between the post-offices in Hamburgh and Altona, and between the post-office and railway station in the town of Cassel. Experiments, at which a high official in the German and a representative of the French telegraph are present, are also being carried on with a telephone arranged between "Dresden and Freiburg. The Times, at the close of an article on the French crisis, says : — " While France has been rejoicing in this newly-acquired calm, another life Senator has dropped away, whose name vividly recalls the most thrilling period of the German war. The loss of a vote this time is not to the Left, but to the Right, for General d'Aurelle de Paladines has always in later years associated himself with the Right. But it is not as a member of any political party, but as the victor of Coulmiers, that his name awakes an echo among the people and will be remembered in history. Frenchmen will long recall the wild hope that the tide of disaster had at length turned which followed on the defeat of Von der Tann at Coulmiers, in November, 1870. The Government of National Defence had become sufficiently strong by the comI mencement of the month to possess armies and a plan of operations. Neither the one nor the other might be very good, but they were the hope of France at this time, and when General d'Aurelle de Paladincs on the 10 th November smote J the advancing Bavarians, and showed kis j capacity to make a fight for Orleans, all France believed that the expected change was at hand. The resources, however, of the Loire Army were not so great as they seemed, while those of the advancing army improved daily, and it was impos° sible to follow up the victory of Coulmiers with the promptitude necessary to take full advantage of it. The fall of Mete, letting loose still larger numbers of Germans, increased th^ difficulties of an advance on Paris every day. German corps made their way from the north and east, and when, later on, M. Gambetta insisted on an advance by way of Fontainebleau, and d'Murelle de Paladines made conditions, he was removed from the chief command, as De la Motterouge had been before him. His sympathies were rather Imperialist than Legitimist, but in the catastrophe of 1870 he was chiefly known as the successful soldier. He has since voted with the Right, but he hardly meddled with politics down to the time when, at the hour of a great paaceful triumph for his country, his death, in his seventy-fourth year, comes to recall some of the most exciting memories of the present generation of Frenchmen. There are beautiful warm soda springs in Colorado, and people who go bathing in them at once exclaim, " Oh, but this is sodalicious !" An American " writerist " wishes to know why people always spell finis without the 7t.