BRIEF MENTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVI, Issue 148, 27 June 1902, Page 3

BRIEF MENTION.

Wbatheu much colder,

Blenheim, 4T, was amongst the lowest temperature readings at 9 o'clock this morning.

Latest bulletins more satisfactory, and announce slight improvement in King's condition.

News as to his health being anxiously awaited.

Plants grow faster between 4 and 6 a.m. than at any other time during the day.

For the past 16 months the cost of carrying the wives of members of the Federal Parliament over the railways was £700.

Nurse (who has been many hours on duty, to patient's mother): " When do you think I shall be able to go to bed ?" Patient's mother: "Go to bed? I thought you were a trained nurse!"

A charge of 2d per head isn&w made at night to all persons who are not passengers for admission to the Feilding railway platform.

Foxton is without a Mayor. , The Mayor resigned, and none of the councillors would consent to assume the responsibilities of the office.

A league has been formed at Adelaide to urge the construction of a transcontinental railway to Port Darwin on the land-grant system.

Booker T. Washington tells an amusing story of an old coloured preacher, who was endeavoring to explain to his congregation how it was that the children of Israel passed over the Red Sea safely, while the Egyptians, who came after them, were drowned. The old man said : " My brethren, it was this way: When the Israelites passed over it was early in the morning, while it was cold, and the ice was strong enough, so that they went over all right; but when the Egyptians came along it was in the middle of the day, and the sun had thawed the ice so that it gave way under them and they were drowned."

At this a young man in the congregation, who had been away to school and had come home, rose and said:

"I don't see how that explanation can be right, parson. The geography that I've been studying tells us that ice never forms under the equator, and the Red Sea is nearly under the equator." " There, now," said the old preacher, "that's all right. I'se been 'spectin' some of you smart Alecks would be askin' jest some such fool question. The time I was talkin' about was before they had any jogafries or 'quators, either."

There are 2850 blind persons in the East End of London, many of whom have to beg for a living, states Mr Ben Purse, the sightless president of the National League of the Blind.

In the Supreme Court, Adelaide, the Chief Justice ruled that the term "children" in a will did not include illegitimate children, except where the circumstances, or the necessary implication, were such as excluded any other meaning.

"Have you anything to say before sentence is pronounced against you?" asked the judge. " The only thing I'm objecting to," answered the convicted burglar, " is bein' identified by a man that kept his head under the bedclothes the whole time. That's not right at all."

The sum of £600 was lately given by a book buyer for one of the only two extant copies of the original edition of Tennyson's " Lover's Tale." To the ordinary man," says the Athenseum, "it is an insignificant, discoloured little volume," with some corrections in the poet's hand.