MAIL NOTES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4206, 12 September 1874, Page 3

MAIL NOTES.

ENGLISH. A monument to the memory of Wilson, the Scottish ornithologist, is about to be erected in the* Abbey at Paisley, his native town. A skate was lately caught in the Firth of Clyde, off Skelmorlie, which weighed not less than eleven and a-half stone. The Duchess of Edinburgh is to be presented with a magnificent sapphire, valued at 10,000 rupees, which was lately found in Ceylon, the Alloa Association of Brewers lately advertised for a man to collect the empty barrels in England and Ireland, and see them forwarded. Out of a list of about 2000 candidates, Sergeant Mediae, of the Burgh Police, was appointed to the situation, at a salary of £IOO per annum, exclusive of expenses. AMERICA. THE SUNDAY KECOUO OF CRIME. (From the JVcw I ork Herald , June 16.) It is a' humiliating and disheartening fact that the Sabbath Day seems to be the particular period of the week for the worst passions of men to display themselves in this city. Scarcely a Sunday passes without a murder or some outrage of a kindred nature. A raffle held on Saturday night for the benevolent purpose of assisting a distressed carman resulted the next morning in a row, in which a pistol and an iron bar were used with fatal effect. The victim in this case was, unfortunately, a peacemaker, whose efforts in the cause of order have brought him to the hospital, and, likely, the grave. Another crime on the list is one which has become painfully frequent in some of our tenement houses. It is a brutal case of wife-beating, brought on, of course, by drunkenness. The same fruitful source of crime led to two serious stabbing affairs in Brooklyn on Sunday mornning. A temperance crusade of some kind or strict police regulations ai*e needed in the metropolis, particularly on Saturday night and Sunday. When liquor dealers are permitted to serve out to drunken customers their vile poison -without a care for the consequences it is time for a stringent excise law to be put in force, as far as such dens arc concerned. We should then be spared the disgrace and shame of a regular list of murders and outrages for every Sunday morning. Found in the Tide.—On the 16th June, during a remarkably low tide, two brothers, oystermen, were engaged on the east side of the harbor, near the lighthouse, digging for hard shell clams. The water was several feet deep, and their attention was attracted to a peculiar looking object within the teeth of the tongs as they were raised up to the side of the boat. An examination disclosed the fact that it was a pocket-book, within which were several pieces of American gold and silver coin, in a good state of preservation, and a large roll of bills. These, as ia thought, will amount to §IOOO, and to-day an attempt was made to separate them—not an easy task, as the pocket-book had been under water at least ten years. The bills, so far as determined, are of large denominations, mostly greenbacks of the earlier issues and State bank bills. They are reduced to a mass of pulp, and must be handled -with the greatest care. Remains of paper documents once written on were also found, but nothing by which the name of the loser or the exact date of loss could be determined. The general supposition is that the pocket-book belonged to a passenger on some steamer plying between this city and Hew York, and that he must have accidentally dropped his treasure overboard. This idea is strengthened from the fact that the book was found near the channel where the steamers of the Hew Haven line pass up and down the harbor. The finders think the bills can be separated, and they will be redeemable, in which case they can say to their fellows that Tuesday gave them the biggest “find” ever known in the history of Connecticut fishermen, inasmuch as it is doubtful if the unfortunate loser will ever appear to claim his property. A Young Girl Sold into Polygamy for a Span of Mules.—Two Mormon farmers are neighbors in the south-eastern part of the city, near the Penitentiary. In the family of one is a daughter, aged fifteen, a pretty English girl, with the rosy beauty of her native land in a sweet and guileless face. Her father is a Polygamist, and often told his daughter that the system which tears mothers’ hearts to pieces is, after all, but a Cross of Salvation. This, the maiden would not believe. The other farmer, also one of the plurality class, and an Englishman too, courts the neighbor’s cliild. She, so young and comely, would make a charming substitute for the good pld and wrinkled woman who had crossed the seas with him. Accordingly, the two men meet for a business talk. At first, the girl’s father said that he expected Elder , one of the Twelve Apostles, wanted her, but finally concluded to give up thinking so. These neighbors, each one fifty years of age, then agreed to the terms of a bargain, by which the damsel was sold by her own father to the hoary lecher, the price being a span of work mules. The ceremony, which is to complete the transfer of that girl to her owner, will take place in the Endowment House, on next Monday. A child's hope, virtue, and happiness, are to be sacrificed on the altar. Daniel H. Wells, Mayor of Salt Lake City, is to be the executioner in this moral tragedy. The slavery of former days sold negroes at a public auction block, but in Utah the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” robs the cradle, and finds victims for its hellish traffic. Yet, when these horrible things are published, the demons who do them cry out, “Persecution! Persecution!” —Salt Lake Tribune. A Terrible Tragedy,—lt has rarely been our sad duty to record a more terrible event than the following :—A mother has killed her three little children and wounded her husband so fearfully that he may not recover. Mrs. Dwyer, of Horth Eighth Street, Brooklyn, E.D., first struck her husband, a cooper, with a cooper's hammer and fractured his skull while he was sitting quietly in a chair reading a newspaper. They had some words before about the distress of the family, caused by Dwyer having struck with others of the Coopers’ Union against their employers. As soon as the unfortunate man rushed from the house for the police, Mrs. Dwyer slew her three children, aged seven, four and two years, in a horrible manner. The woman appeared stolid, and gave no sign of grief. There appears to be little doubt that she is crazy. In fact, she had been in a lunatic asylum about a year ago, though discharged under the supposition that she was cured. It is said there is nothing in her countenance to indicate a cruel or vicious nature, that she was a good and tidy housewife, and that she was not addicted to the use of intoxicating liquor. The deed is so shocking that .it is some consolation to believe the wretched woman was not sane. Desolation in the Sooth.—The New York Herald of the 20th of May has the following : —“ A Southern journal tells us that over one hundred and forty thousand people are without food and shelter in the South, and that the floods have robbed them of all but life. First the war, then the carpet-bag domination, and now the floods. Hover in history were a I>eoj>le so severely punished. Can wo not do something to relieve their burdens, something more than to sing hymns and strew flowers over Confederate graves on Decoration Day ?” A Murderer Lynched in Illinois.—A special despatch to the Chicago Tribune from Carrollton, 111., June 21, says : —“To-day has been one of great excitement in Greene county. A mob of about forty masked men visited the county gaol in this city, about two o’clock this morning, and pretended they had a man under arrest for murder whom they desired to imprison. The gaoler then opened his doors, when about ten of the number rushed in, and while one portion held the gaoler at bay, the other took the keys and went to the cell of Clark Evans, the prisoner who had made a confession to the murder of Farmer John Halbirt, on the 30th of April last, at his house, five miles west of here. They cut his chains

loose, and hurried him into one of their waggons in waiting. Before the alarm was given they had cleared the city, and the authorities did not so much as know in what direction they went. About seven o’clock the word came in that a man was hanged, or found hanging, near the town of Hew Providence, and it was soon ascertained to be the culprit Evans. Under the direction of the Sheriff an inquest was held, witnessed by a very large number of persons, who had gathered there from all directions, and the verdict was given in accordance with the facts elicited from the testimony of the gaoler. While the excitement continues to be very great, it would seem that but few deprecate the action of the mob, and it was one of the best planned and most quickly executed affairs on record. In their haste to get out, however, the mob broke down one of their buggies, and left it within a block of the gaol. Unless this circumstance should reveal some of the actors, their identification by the authorities will probably never be made. Thus ends the sad story of man, who was guilty of many crimes, by his own confession.”