BRIEF MENTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXV, Issue 77, 3 April 1901, Page 3

BRIEF MENTION.

Already anxious enquiries as to Easter weather. Gold may be the key to society, but poverty is the strongest barrier. Love is a little sighing, a little crying, a little dying, and a deal of lying. —Vulgar bachelor. The Governor has returned to Wellington . Nelson business people —merchants and tradesmen, alike —observe Easter holidays from Thursday evening to Tuesday morning.

Things move too quickly in Blenheim to allow of so extensive a rest from "labah!"

When a woman can wash flannels so that they won't shrink she knows enough to get married.

Sandringham, which King Edward VII. purchased out of his savings, has a rental of £7000 a year.

Our colony of Singapore, with a popiilation of 240,000 only, has a trade of 50 millions —a world's record.

The little dressmaker who was walking across a field, on encountering a' bull, said she.guessed she'd better .cut biass to avoid a gore.

The new Commission of the Peace list is published. Some names —all over the colony—might well be dropped with advantage to the community.

The population of protected Melbourne has decreased 13,106 in the .past eight years, while that of Freetrade Sydney has increased 55,107. A nut for some Federal electors to crack.

While the steamship Scotia was being unloaded at Tilbury Docks, lately, the men came upon the body of a Lascar, packed among the cargo. He probably died from starvation on the voyage.

Pat: "I tell you that ould friends are alvvays the best after all, an' I can prove it." Dennis : "How?" Pat: " Where'll yoii find a new friend that has shtood by you as long as the ould ones have?"

Told by Mayor Aitkeu, of Wellington, at the Women's Christian Temperance Union Convention last week.

'• In spite of many temptations, he had never tasted alcoholic liquor. He was once one of a company of young fellows, seventeen or eighteen years of age, in a public-house in Glasgow,

He was the only abstainer, and the others resented it, and five or six laid hands on him to pour the liquor down his throat. They didn't manage it."

Although the Mayor of Wellington is a pronounced abstainer, he carries oh business as a wine and spirit merchant, which strikes an outsider as being very peculiar I

A lady, who writes to a London paper, thinks that with a dress allowance of £400 a year she is particularly harshly treated by her lord and master.

"My queen I" fondly exclaimed the infatuated you th. "My Jack!" sofll y responded the blushing maiden.

Hop-picking must be a profitable pastime in Nelson, when one family can knock £40, another a piano, and another a swag of furniture out of it.

The Sahara is not a barren waste, as is popularly supposed. Not long ago there were 9,000,000 sheep, 2,000,000 goats, and 260,000 camels in the Algerian Sahara alone, and the oases furnish 1,500,000 date palms.

A witness in the District Court at Masterton the other day was giving evidence in a ease in which bushfelling was concerned. . The witness in question stated he was not an expert bushfeller. Asked by His Honor how he commenced to work, lie boldly exclaimed, "with an axe."

Mrs Goode: " You are the sixth man who has asked me for something to eat to-day." The Tramp (sadly): "I s'pose so. If de competition in dis life gits any wuss, some of us'll have to go to work."

On the oath to uphold the Presbyterian Church of Scotland being administered td the King at his first Council, he did not kiss the New Testament, as is customary in England and the colonies, but elected to take the oath Scotch fashion, holding up the right hand.

" I think I'll let you measure me for a sack suit out of this cloth," said Crolly indicating his preference. "Very well," said his tailor, " I can make you that suit for £6 or £20." " What's the idea of the two prices ?" "Cash or credit."

A young man named Beattie, while engaged as a marker at the Warwick rifle range (Queensland) on March 16, was shot in the back of the head, and died instantaneously. The bullet passed through the earth and timber work of the marker's shelter.

A cheerful old lady who was among the applicants for old age pensions at Wellington on Saturday (says the Times) was confronted with a difficulty which the officials explained could only be overcome by her writing to her native parish in Ireland.

As she was leaving the Court, another applicant, also an elderly dame, said to her, " You ought to write at once ; there's an English mail going to-day." "Ah, yes," was the reply, which convulsed the Magistrate and everyone else in Court, " but it's the Irish mail that I want."