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New Zealand Mail, Issue 426, 10 April 1880, Page 25

We regret to notice the death, at an early hour Tuesday morning, of Mis 3 Marion Louisa Featherston, sixth daughter of the late Dr. Featherston, at the age of twenty-seven years. The cause of death was consumption.

The last Novelty.—The Americans are a remarkable people. The last novelty proposed in the way of leg competitions is a standing match. Competitors to stand on a foot square of ground without lifting their feet. The last one who drops to win.

Modern Warfare.—ln the following brief but unusually graphic description a writer in the Atlantic endeavors to impart to his readers a sense of what war in certain of its aspects is really like : " There are no more ' billows of cavalry'—if there ever were any ; cavalry dismounts now, acid fires from behind walls, and thickets, and other cover ; only now and then does it steal a charge on other cavalry, or on broken infantry—never on infantry not already broken. Nor does infantry ' stand like a rock,' but rather like ' reeds shaken by the wind.' It stands as well as it can against shrieking fights of missiles, scattering wounds and death. It stands firmest when it lies down, using what shelter and hiding it can find—a ripple of ground, clumps of bashes, tall herbage. . It stands, not in solid masses, but in fragile groups or slender lines, swaying backward and toward, unexpectedly gaping open here and there with slaughter or sudden quailing, cobbled into temporary form by hoarse and anxious officers, supported hastily by panting reinforcements, doing its suffering best, perhaps, but not at all like a rock. The columns of attack which one reads of are frail and fluctuating threads, for the moat part dragging wearily along as if on a march, though sometimes breaking forth'ln. brief partial spurts. What thev advance against the spectator can seldom discern with the eye ; he only guesses it when a lor>g light roll of smoke leaps from the earth iu front, followed by a continuous harsh roar ; something invisible, and perhaps altogether unexpected, is causing regiments and brigades to vanish away. Or, if the charge succeeds, it seems marvellous that the defeated should have fled, the conquerors look so scattered aud few. A return attack will surely sweep them, backward, and the master of the science of war is still needed, or victory will be turned to defeat."