NOTES AN COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13160, 25 April 1906, Page 4

NOTES AN COMMENTS.

ROMANCE OF A GOLD MINE. Another chapter in the romantic story of the Mysore Gold Mining Company closed the other day, when, at the annual meeting in the Cannon-street Hotel, Londo«, dividends were declared totalling 145 per cent, for the second year in succession. The profit for the year was stated to be £450.556, the superintendent reporting that the year had been one of the busiest in the history of the company. The mills had crushed 195,650 tons of quartz, yielding 184,9570z of bar gold. As far as age and consistency in dividends are concerned, the Mysore gold mine is probably the richest in the world, and yet there hangs in the London office of the company a framed certificate of the transfer of 1000 £1 shares, at the price of ninepence each! Such shares would be worth £14 each to-day. For the last 10 years the dividends paid have ranged between 100 and 150 per cent, per annum. Since 1886 the lowest dividend for one year has been 10 per cent. The original capital was £135,000, and in the 25 years' history of the mine the shareholders have received dividends amounting to no less than £4,406,542, while the precious metal yielded in the same period has amounted in value to £8,308,014. One of the officials of the company gave some details of the romantic rise and progress of the Mysore gold mine to an Express representative. He recalled a time, 24 years ago, when ill-success had reduced the company's capital to two or three thousand pounds, and a winding up was only narrowly averted. " A directors' meeting was held to consider the position, and it was proposed to wind up forthwith," lie said. " Sir Charles Tennant was chairman, and he offered vigorous opposition. 'I did not came up from Glasgow to wind the company up,' he said. ' I think we should go a little deeper.' Captain McTaggart supported Sir Charles 1 and so did Mr. John Taylor. The rest of the directors walked out of the room. These three, getting their own way, spent the company's last few thousands in going a little deeper, with the result that nearly eight and a-half million pounds' worth of precious metal has been got out of a goldfield whose existence would otherwise never have been dreamed of. The Kolar field provides work for 40,000 persons, and is in many ways a source of benefit to the M'ysore Government, as well as to the 5000 odd shareholders in the mine." FOOTBALL AN ANCIENT CHINESE GAME. In the Nineteenth Century Mr. H. A. Giles, Professor of Chinese at Cambridge, writes on football and polo in China. He remarks that football was played by the Chinese several centuries before Julius Caesar landed in Britain. Its invention has been ascribed to the mythical Yellow Emperor of the third millennium B.C. He quotes an ancient record: —"The Emperor, Ch'eng Ti, B.C. 32-6, was fond! of football, but his officers represented)to him that it was both physically exhausting and also unsuitable to the Imperial dignity. His Majesty replied : 'We like playing, and what one chooses to do is not exhausting.' An appeal was then made to the Empress, who suggested the game of tiddlvwinks for the Emperor's amusement. Several writers have left- us accounts of actual games: 'On the Emperor's birthday two teams played football before the Imperial pavilion. A goal was set up, of over 30ft in height, adorned with gaily coloured silks, and having an opening of over a foot ia diameter.' The object of each side appears to have been to kick the ball through the opening, the players taking it in turns to kick, and points being scored accordingly. The winners ' were rewarded with flowers, fruit, wine, and even silver bowls and brocades. The captain of the losing side was flogged, and suffered other indignities.' " The names of several great footballers have been handed down to posterity. Ancient Chinese poetry is quoted descriptive of various football games. Polo was also very popular. A maker of polo clubs, as duly recorded in the Book of Marvels, was taken up to heaven in broad daylight. THE CHURCH AND LABOUR. " Is the Church of England the Church of the people as in earlier times'.' I doubt it, ' said the Earl of Harrow by at a church meeting in Hanley recently, a,t which the Bishop of Birmingham made a remarkable speech. They wanted reform in their Church ; they needed' to modernise their Church, and to popularise their Church, said Lord Harrowbv, and the only way to do that was to give the laymen a greater voice in the management of Church affairs. A great wave of irreligion was passing over this country, which must be disastrous to the welfare of our country, and he called upon every man and woman to endeavour to stem that tide, and to leave the Church to their children iu the same condition that they inherited it from their forefathers. The Bishop of Birmingham (Dr. Gore) said it was fatal to them to get nice and comfortably settled inside the Church, and to be content that those who were outside should remain outside. The most vigorous periods of the Christian Church had been those when the Church had drawn its strength from the body of the wage-earners. He believed that it was coming about in English politics that England was going to be governed more and more not only for the people, but by the people. He believed it whs going to happen that a greater real share in the responsibility of government was going to belong to the wage-earning classes. He did not want the Church of England to be political, and he did not want it to take sides in what was commonly called party politics, but their real Church extension should be grounded on the lives of the wage-earniug classes. It lay in getting hold of the wage-earning classes, and in the Church giving up being the Ladv Bountiful and getting people to come to church not for what they could get, but for what they could <rive. He wanted (lie Church of England to be moral aiiid spiritual, not political, and to know who belonged to V- ,