THE LOST TORPEDO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8814, 1 March 1892, Page 3

THE LOST TORPEDO.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, During the last seven years the readers of the Herald havi been persistently worried and annoyed by the ceaseless cavillings of a woman whose chief delight, whose sole occupation, seems to be snapping viciously all round, with a gall-fed pen, at | matters delicate and indelicate, most of them being beyond the domain of practical politics for women of refinement, and more fitted for the surgeon's knife and the discussion of duly-qualified medical practitioners over the operating table with closed doors. She finds a grievance everywhere, in everything, aud in nothing. She appears to subsist on a vitiated atmosphere, laden with germs of every disease under the sun, and to revel in the contemplation of the disgust and annoyance experienced by all wliotig souls are not e.ttuned to the study of her favourite subjects, subjects from which the pure-minded and the virtuous of both sexes shrink with loathing. I see by your issue of this date that the lady has sniffed out another grievance in " the lost torpedo" and paints a blood-curdling picture of the result of a collision between the lost torpedo and some vessel. lam free to admit that in writing on a subject she understands, the lady in question writes intelligently and sometimes trenchantly, but alas ! and alas ! her latest find is the nest of a mare. As a matter of fact, sir, the Whitehead torpedo was the one used in practice at Wellington, and when discharged from the Ringa' contained not one particle ot explosive matter, and wherever it may have secreted itself is as harmless as an empty nail-can or a drawing-room coalscuttle. So Mrs. Aldiscun take comfort or disappointment to her soul, as itseemeth unto her meet, there will be no heaving billows " kerimsoned with ber-Uid," no mutilated bodies of unhappy women and innocent babes o'er which to weep and pray, perchance to write. Will the lady kindly give us a rest ?— am, etc., Only A Sinful Man,