Untitled

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 79, 2 April 1878, Page 2

-A contemporary calculates that the redemption of the various promises made by the Premier during his recent stumpiug tour would cost the Colony seven millions of money over and above the cost of the works already contemplated by Parliament. In Dunedin a policeman has been fined 20s, with the option of three days', imprisonment, for " playfully throwing a handful of sawdust in the face of a female prisoner." He will probably be dismissed' from the service. A writer in Truth says:'—" I hear from St. Petersburg that the Czar is seriously indisposed— and. so thin that he sits on pillows to prevent the bones from coming through the skin. He is depressed, too, with a presentiment of his approaching death. -No Romanoff has lived beyond sixty, and he will be sixty in April. When his sister ' died, some two years ago, she reminded him of this, and told him he must be prepared to go beforhe was sixt}'. They say her words made a great impression on him then, and now that he is not. well they constantly recur to him."

On the 12th of November, 1852, a trial took placed at Cologne which caused extraordinary excitement, and attracted the attention of Europe. Two youthful Communists, Burgess and Becker, the latter of whom was called " the red Becker," from the color of his hair and of his i>olitics — were sentenced (for what crime is not stated) to six years imprisonment. Against the condemned there were arrayed three witnesses — being, respectively, a police inspector, a constable, and a lieutenant in the army. The subsequent career of the accused and the accusers furnish a curious and suggestive comment on the uncertainties and ups-and-downs of life. The police inspector, after being promoted to a high official position in Hanover, committed suicide. The lieutenant was made a hank director in Pomerania, where he ran away with the cash-box and then rnrde away with himself. The constable still Jives broken in health and out of employ. So much for the three witnesses, ard now as to the two men who were condemned. One of them, Becker, is at the present moment Mayor of Cologne and member of lhe]?russian House of Peers; while the other, Burgers, is a member of the Lower House, and in high esteem. And so the whirligig of time brings round its changes To-day a beggar — to-morrow a prince : a convict in 1852, ard a Mayor and member of t':e House of Peers in 1877. Such is life.

A bar of gold valued at 16,327 dollars, obtained from 368 pounds of rock from the Perseverance quartz mine, Cariboo; arrived at Victoria (Vancouver Island) recently.