NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6116, 24 June 1881, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A public laundry has been established in Tauranga. Mr. F. A. White is on a visit to Waihi. It is understood steps are to be taken at once to erect a battery. It is better to have loved and lost than to be obliged to get up at 5 o'clock on cold winter mornings to start a fire. A Scotchman, it is said, has bought Punch, j That publication may, we suppose, now be expected to become humorous. Professor Darwin, though past seventy, and confined to his bed, continues to prosecute his researches. He is an inveterate reader. A book for children, descriptive of modern life in Palestine, has been written by Mrs. Holman Hunt, who handles the brush as well as the pen. The fire is still smouldering in the ruins of Mr. Wrigley's premises in Harington-street, Tauranga, the bonded goods apparently supplying the material. The Earl of Dysart, editor of Vanity Fair, who is to be married toMdlle. Bischoffsheim, daughter of the Jewish banker, divorced his first wife for adultery with Sugden, the actor. Ah Cliong, an applicant for the interpretership at the Sydney Metropolitan Police Court, bases his claim mainly upon the fact that he is the " father of eleven children." The Anti-Chinese Association will be delighted to hear this. Two lines from the evidence given at the inquest in Sydney, on Peter Buckley, who drank himself to death recently at a city public-house :— " Deceased had about 2000 drinks in three weeks for himself and others." And yet we have a licensing system. James Payn, the novelist, in a letter received by a Melbourne man, says ho heard it debated by some scientific men whether it is possible, after shooting ones-self through the heart or head with a revolver, to throw the weapon from one. They all thought not, except one, an Irish doctor. He thought it might be done— with practice ! There was a scene in a fashionable church the other day. The respectable churchwarden—a bank manager o£ the most aggressive orthodoxy—was carrying round the bag for a collection, when a little girl who had been overdosed with scripture history and had learned'to detest "the purse-bearer," broke into a terrified scream of ''Oh, mamma, mamma, here's Judas coming!" Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., the eminent health lecturer, draws attention to the evils arising from the employment by builders of sea-sand containing salt, and of wood that has been saturated with sea-water. This note of warning hasn't, of course, any reference to contractors ill these colonies. "A jury of four" don't catch us "at it again." Expertenlia " does it," as they say in the Klassiks.

The Sydney Bulletin has the following notes :—The trustees of the Auckland Savings Bank offer to lend money in sums of £50 to £0009 repayable quarterly if desired. We will take £5000 on these terms. Our desires about repayment are very moderate. —"Our Boys" was lately mutilated by a company of amateurs at the Thames Goldfields, New Zealand. The local papers gave the usual greasy notices, aud compared the aspiring young man who appeared as the Buttorman to Lingard. Ahem !—The Governors of the Wellington (N.Z.) College, being unable to get money elsewhere, have borrowed £500 at S per cent, from their new head-master, on mortgage. Now, that's something like giving a teacher an interest in a school.