Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 249, 20 October 1868, Page 3

. — ... - — » A laughable scene occurred the other day at Queenstown, at a meeting of electors called by Mi-JShepherd. During the course of Mr Shepherd's address some one introduced a donkey iuto the room, which led to great merriment, but the joker was speedily arrested and removed. When brought up before the magistrate on the following day, the delinquent urged that if asses were excluded there would be but a poor attendance at public meetings. The plea was not held good. He was fined £2 and severely reprimanded. In the discussion of the Telegraph Bill before the Committee of the House of Commons, Sir C. Wheatstone's explanation of his cryptograph, the intrument by ■which ciphers are transmitted, was very entertaining, and still more so were the ■speculations as to ' milkiug' or ' tapping ' the wires. This, it seems, has never been attempted for serious purposes — not even •as a witness said, in Stock Exchange or racing operations; but it eau be done. A clever clerk can read a message in transit at a point where it is not intended to stop. The French Government have been accused of 'tappiug the telegraph,' but they deny it. There must be a great many persons in collision to ' tap' successfully on system, and the fact is always discovered. A letter from Pesth, dated the Mth May, which appears in the Pall Mall Gazette, says: — Count d'Andrassy yesterday gave a ball, at which the Emperor Francis Joseph was present, remaining more thau two hours, and seemiug to enjoy being in Hungarian society, where an absence of constraint and a natural gaiety prevail. Perhaps no monarch ever passed an evening so pleasantly at a partv in which there were at least a dozen "individuals whose death warrants he had himself signed at different times ; and never also I must say, did a company show more deference to a sovereign. The host, who was haDged in effigy in 1849, set the example. M.M. Pulszky, Klapka, and Savanka were present.