BRIEF MENTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVII, Issue 121, 25 May 1903, Page 2

BRIEF MENTION.

Empire Day. School children saluted the flag. Patriotic lecture at Picton to-night. Heavy sea off Capo Campbell at 9 a.m.

Southerly weather has closed the bar against navigation for the present.

What a blessing the district has a magnificent harbor.

This is an age when absence of backbone is called conciliation and resolution is termed tyranny. —Yorkshire Herald.

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.—R. Browning,

In a case at Westminster County Court a lady was called as an expert in the building trade. -

Superstition dies hard.—A swagger proceeding Grove wards from Picton, passed a homestead where evidently they looked upon black cats as mascottes.

He counted five and went on his way. One of them followed him, and be looked upon it as the reverse of a mascotte, and did his level best to induce it to return to its home, but for long time without avail.

The settlers counted heads at night and one black pussey was missing, but in the early morning she returned like a homing pigeon with a letter round her neck.

•' Your black cat would follow me" wrote the swagger. " I've had enough bad luck, without having a black cat follow me, so am sending it back."

A fine stamp of a draught gelding was sold in Wyndhatn last week at the handsome price of £54,

Milking 9f> cows on an 80-acro farm, a Waimate settler obtained £500 in seven months.

What We're Coming To.—Spirit: " Don't I hear the souod of hammers ? I thought there was to be no work up here?" St.Petor: "Well, we couldn't help it. That last skyscraper went through the floor,"

American papers report the death of Mrs Margaret Shepherd, tho ex-nun who recently visited New Zealand on a lecturing tour. She died in a Detroit hospital after an operation.

A wild greyhound has boon creating havoc among the sheep in the Kaiwera district, and although it has had to run the gauntlet of a number of irate farmers wielding firearms it is still at large.

Mr Mauley: " Well, darling, I've had my life insured for £1000." Mrs M.: "How very sensible of you! Now I shan't have to keep telling you to be so careful every place you go to."

The wedding of John Wilkinson and Emma Harrison, of Cleveland, Ohio, has had to be postponed until a second license is obtained. The original document being missed, a search led to the discovery of its last remnants disappearing down the throat of the bride elect's baby brother.

A philanthropic old lady in Exeter, very keen on the drink question, got hold of a very bibulous old sailor whom everyone had given up as a bad job.

He had lost a leg and one eye, and used to do odd jobs about tho marketplace.

He told the old lady that, if he could once get a fair start on his own account, he would try to reform, many of the jobs he now did beiDg paid for in drink.

The old lady, after mucli thought, purchased for him a tray to hang round his neck with a broad strap, and a supply of nice gingerbread, and she taught him the following sentence to* repeat at intervals :— I

"Will any good, kind Christian

Buy some fine spicy gingerbread Off a poor afflicted old man?"

When he had sold a shillingsworth he congratulated himself on his strength of abstinence, and thought he would treat resolution to just one half-pint.

This, needless to say, led to two or three more, and when he resumed his station on the pavement his cry became a little mixed, and in a loud voice he appealed to passors-by with:

" Will any poor aQiicted Christian

Buy some good kind gingerbread

Off a fine spicy old man ?"

Trade became very good, and he again treated resolution, with the result that his cry became:

"Will any fine spicy Christian

Buy some poor aOiicted gingerbread 015 a good kind old man ?"

In order to advertise their wares a Washington business firm have just concluded an extensive sale of money. They offered new Treasury bills of 4s 2d each at half-price. Tho firm tired of the sale sooner than their would be purchasers.

Mrs Suburb: "I have been hardly able to breathe all day. Those people next door have been burning the dead leaves on the lawn, and tho wind is in this direction." Mr Suburb :'• Never mind, my dear. Wait till the wind turns, and then we'll burn ours,"

The late Sir William Brooks, the banker, had, it is said, a curious way of showing his moods in writing to his friends. If he was iv a good temper ho wrote with a violet pencil, when he was angry ho wrote with rod, and when he was very wroth he used blue.

11 ARRESTED"—Sounds horrible, Empire Company's Extract of Soap arrests all dirt from anything, Get it