CLIPPINGS FROM THE HOME PAPERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume X, Issue 18, 21 January 1875, Page 4

CLIPPINGS FROM THE HOME PAPERS.

The present value of wheat is the lowest within the memory of any living farmer. Last week, at the local corn markets in Surrey, good samples of wheat were sold at the unprecedenedtly low figure of £1 per sack. Out of 743 soldiers sentenced last year for desertion, 229 alleged they disliked the army, 57 were annoyed by comrades or harshly, treated by noncommissioned officers, 44 married without leave or had " love affairs," 87 through drink, 89 on the "spree," and 18 through " whim." "Mark Twain'? declines to lecture any more. He was offered £6,000 for 50 nights, and wrote to say " Your offer does not tempt me. I have run about the world long enough. I mean to live and, die at home if I starve at it. I love you* but I cannot lecture any more," Just now he is making a fortune by the royalty paid him for leave to act his tale, the "Gilded Age." Much excitement has been caused at Lowestoft by the only daughter of the Russian and Danish Vice-Consul eloping with d cab-driver. It has since transpired that the parties were married in a neighboring town. A York cabman, named Blair, in the employ of Mr Johnson, cab proprietor of Bootham, York, has recently fallen into the handsome inheritance of over £17,000. Blair resides at Fulford, a village adjacent to York, was formerly of Newark, and he is one of a family of eight, among whom is shared the handsome sum of £150,000. John Lilly white, the celebrated cricketer, died last November, aged 48 years. Sentence of three months' bard labor was passed by the Clerkenwell magistrate, on* Tuesday, on a woman named Ann Chapman for having fraudulently obtained money by pretending to tell fortunes with cards. The Archbishop of York addressed a meeting in Sheffield a short time ago upon the temperance question, which he regarded as one of the most important of the day. He said if ministers of the national Church only taught men from the pulpit certain tenets their functions were but imperfectly fulfilled. The diamonds belonging to the exQueen Isabella of Spain, which are said to be worih twelve millions of francs are, according to a Paris journal, to be sold shortly by auction. Queen Victoria has now four-and-twenty living grand-children. Two life boats are about to be despatched by the National Life Boat Association to Napier, New Zealand. Belies of the Prince Albert, the ship sent out by Lady Franklyn, have just been brought home by a whaling selIt was stated at a recent meeting of the City Commissioners of Sewers that there were millions of pounds of spurious tea in the wharveß and warehouses of the City of London, some of which had been accumulating for thirty or forty years. The attention of the sanitary authorities was directed to the fact. At the Old Bailey, a baby farmer, named Augusta Grammage, was lately sentenced to ten years' penal servitude for " feloniously slaying " a young child that had been entrusted to her care. The judge characterised the case as one of the most brutal that had had come bafore him. The Toronto Globe is informed by iis local correspondent that on the 12th Oct., a mackerel was exhibited at Halifax, Nova Scotia, caught off the harbor, measuring 9ft in length, and weighing over SOOlbs. Mr. Stanton and Mr Keen, the bicycle riders, rode a match at Lillie Bridge grounds on Monday, and the former won. He completed the distance of 106 miles in one minute five and a half seconds less that eight hours. The Daily Telegraph states that letters have been received from Mr H. M. Stanley, who has charge of the expedition sent out by the Daily Telegraph and New York Herald to Africa, stating that he had been well received by the Sultan of Zanzibar, and was actively engaged in completing preparations for his iourney to the interior of the continent. Messrs De la Rue will (says the Athenaeum) issue this season a pack of novel playing cards, in which, whilst historical personages of the present time are introduced as the. honors, the traditional quaintriess of the old playing cards is preserved, so that the card- . player's attention is not disturbed. Dr J. J. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, has written a letter commenting on the Austrian Polar Expedition in which he declares his conviotion. that the '• open Polar Sea '" may be reached by a steam vessel through Smith's Sound, and he announces his readiness to start on another voyage of Arctic expedition when the funds are forthcoming. Last year the number of deaths from snakebites and wild beasts in Oudh was 1,298.