THE HUNTLY PRESS. PUBLISHED WEEKLY AT 2 P.M. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1917. Local and General

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 5, 23 February 1917, Page 2

THE HUNTLY PRESS. PUBLISHED WEEKLY AT 2 P.M. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1917. Local and General

Mails for the troops by next available steamei. At the Presbyterian Church, on Sunday next, Rev. E. Swinerd will preach his farewell sermon. Solo —Mr Swinerd—a cordial invitation to all. Holiday excursion tickets on the railway from Auckland to the Te Aroha races will be issued on the 2nd, 3rd, and sth of March. Mr .Bert Peckham who was operated on for appendicitis at the Hamilton Hospital last week is making good headway towards recovery. The Rev. A. F. Burchall has been appointed to the Huntly Presbyterian charge from the Cambridge outfield, vice the Rev. E. Swinerd resigned. Mr J. Gibson who has for some months been an inmate of the Hamilton Hospital, owing to injuries sustained in the mine, is now progressing favourably. The Rev. Swinerd has been appointed to the charge of Calac Bay, Southland, he will be leaviug Huntly next week. Mr Swinerd will preach a farewell sermon on Sunday. Since the registration of orchards was provided for, 100,000 orchards, large arid small, have been registered. The orchard tax, collected from commercial growers only, has produced £I7OO Mrs E. Steele notifies in another column of this issue, that she has taken over that up-to-date boarding house opposite the Railway Station (Leicester House), lately carried on by Mrs Darby. The house has been newly furnished and electric light installed throughout, and Mrs Steele hopes by strict attention to business, combined with civility and cleanliness to merit a fair share of public patronage. Wo regret to announce that Mr A. Burt, Manager of the Pukemiro Coal Mine, was taken suddenly ill on Saturday morning last at Pukemiro and' had to be conveyed to the Hamilton hospital during the afternoon, by the Rotorua Express, owing to his condition becoming more serious. He underwent an operation that evening and latest reports are that he is progressing favourably. The many friends of Mr J. Carmody will be pleased to know that his team succeeded in capturing the coveted prize in the Swedish Drill Competition at the Masterton Military Sports. Nearly every company in the 23rd and 24th Reinforcements competed, so that the team had a great deal of opposition to overcome. The judge in giving his verdict said that the team’s performance was the best he had seen put up by a military team. As he was a well-known physical culture expert (Captain Potter) the praise was well worth having. Needless to say, the team, including Sergt. Carmody, was very proud of its achievement. A farm labourer, who appealed for exemption owing to the fact that his employer could not obtain the labour to work the farm, told the Military Service Board in Marsterton that he knew for a fact that two men engaged to assist in harvesting work had not turned up, while a third man engaged had stayed to tea, but had left the next morning. Captain Walker remarked that the time had arrived when a largo number of these men should be sworn in as soldiers and drafted on to farms to do work. There was evidonee every day that men who should be assisting the farmers, ‘and the country, were loitering about doing nothing, and would not take work when offered to them. The “snowball" or “chain” prayer nuisance is again in evidence in Pukekohe (states the Pukekohe Times), the latest form of the craze being an appeal for the soldiers at the war with the usual attendant request for copies of the same to be distributed under threat that misfortune will attend any who fail to forward it on. We would repeat our former advice for the communication to be deposited in the wastepaper basket by all who receive it. The only advantage that accrues from the idiotic practice is a gain to the Government in postal revenue, and on this point an indignant Pukekohe lady complains that not only lias she been pestered with the receipt of three identical “prayers,’’ sent her by, different annonymous correspondents, but in one instance she had to pay 3d in respect of one of the communications not being stamped,