GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5288, 28 May 1904, Page 16

GENERAL NEWS.

BLOWN TO I'IKCIiS.

A remarkable story of a smack/iicu bo- 1 lug blown io was told ut. Kamsgaro recently on tlic arrival ol tlio fishing yi .1boI Alfred. On 1 lie previous ijaUui.ay, when the vcsm-I wars oil I hi; Jim oh coast . a member of (he crew observed a small keg Onalii.s 'a the v.aler. A sailor named 1 Lioldsmllb anil a deck hoy pul oh in a small bout to obtain the log, ana. having placed il in the boat, l-ndd-miilh attempted til open 11. I lie neg expiorl.-!, i and lioldsinii 1. was blown t> pieces, till traces 01 him di-sapi-eaiing. It is supposed that 1 bo la;;; cou.Mmu dyaamite, and bmoni'.ca io mu hai'iuo 1-eglns. which had previously gone unbare on Goodwin .Slum's, when the car};,, was jettisoned. 'lie- bout wlueh OtddMMilb ocboy was rescued severely injured. BY BOYS. At K’iiigsion-ou-’i iianuta on -Monday (Apul Ibifi. .11 Uii.r IvrrtU (11), names wun.e.L ill), am! Arthur Cunnett br tlie.s, were cliar;;ed with stealing Uie eoaf, 11,11. urn luxes. £3 in cash, sU unities oi .-menu lunlal wme, and ISO »l*-on» iruni liinereni. eiiupcis. It was slated _o> the pollen tlial. ! hey were ol opinion that Bi'VCrel o, n 1 r cn.-.e 01 burgi.iry ConiuuVrcd In the district recently 0 igut be placed to Urn I luce ooys. Since their arrest Arlmir Um»!l find tmnlc a caules.-uun voluiitanlv io (he euect that Jim this brothel } and la.M.seij and t'urroU broke into 11 elm;, d ami look the money irinu the boxes, i'pirett got a chopper from thy garden neat door. The next morning they nil went to a codec shop and had a dinner, I’crrcl t paying iur it, and went to the (heiitro in the evening. On Saturday they went into another chapel. Jim broke the wdudow with a stone. They called at the Cairo shop and asked the proprietor to buy the spoony, but ho did not buy them. They next went to a mission hall. Permit opened the window, and ihey all had .11111,11 tea. Jim and Perrctt brake the cups. Jim and Permit did not take him with them when they had “got other John.” Mr Norman Hart, will') appeared for (In- Society of .Friends, laid his clients did not wish to press the charge of breaking into the hull, but asked the Bench to make tho charge one of wilful damage to the extent of 535. It was staled that the boys had got beyond control of their parents, and they were remanded with a- view to their being sent to an industrial school. LOVE ROMANCE IN PARIS. Thiband, an Alsatian, now aged Gt> years, fell desperately in love with the widow Bidet, of Paris, a laundress who is 10 years h’is junior. Aladamo Uriel offered her friendship to the unitor, but he continually pestered her to marry him. Ho frequently fell on his knees before her and begged of her to make him one of tho happiest men on earth. It was in vain that the widow told him they were both too old for love and marriage. Moreover, Madame Bnat has a son aged 30, who by no means requires a stepfather, On Tuesday (April 13th) Thibaud loft the institution where he .0 boarded and Lodged for a small monthly sum, as ue is too old ro work, and called on the widow. Madame Briet was alarmed at his strange attitude. He, shut all the windows _iu her Hat, and said 0 her : —“Now i am detei mined that nobody else shall have you." The widow, frightened, rushed to the door of the ro_om in which she had been sitting, whereupon he pointed a revolver at her head and said that if she did not listen to him be would shoot her dead. Madame Uriel stopped, whereupon Thibaud be;gan his old (rick of dropping on his kneed before her and placing his right hand, in nomantic fashion, on the left side of hlis waistcoat. Tho widow knew what eras coming. and she reiterated her refnsa 1. whereupon her suitor jumped up and beat her with tho butt of his revolver on the head and face. Madame Briet escaped, and Thibaud fired at himself, putting- three bnliets into his head. Tile police removed him to hospital and Madame Uriel was looked alter by her neighbours. Examined in hospital by tho police superintendent of tho Champ de Mars, district, in which the affair happened, Thibaud declared in a weak voice that he attacked Madame Uriel in a moment of madness. In his clothes was found a letter to the police, in which "he declared that he was jealous of everybody around the widow, and that he fully intended to kill her and thou to commit suicide. NIGERIAN RIGHTING. The Colonial Office is still without news of the reported attack on the' Northern Nigeria Force. The Expedition, which started in January last, was,, as has been stated, directed to the punishment of the natives who murdered Captain O’lliordan and Mr ■ Amyatt'Burney while patrolling the district iu December. A start was made from Lokoja, having no fixed objective. The v.nloiual Office fully expected that the object would by this time have been accomplished, but it a printed out that the country 1,1 dense with bush and difficult to traverse. No fear is. however, entertained as the safety of the British force. Captain Merrik, of the Northern Nigeria Frontier /Force, who commands the expedition, is an experienced bush-fighter. ’ Since the start of the force in January various reports have been received of , slight fighting, and it >s not thought, adds tho “Central isews," that the recent report can have reference to anything 11103 serious, otherwise Sir Frederick Lugard would have made tho fact known by telegraph. CHINA'S NEW ARMAN The’ M&ssagerios liner lAustralien, which arrived at Marseilles from the Far East brought 50 Italian officers who had ' taken to Japan the armoured vessels Nysshin and Kasuga, bought at Genoa. Tho Russian officers added nothing ‘o the details already known of the battle of Chemnlphio. News from China states that groat movements of troops are being made at Pekin, where Japanese instructors command 60,000 men, armed with Japanese guns. The European instructors have all been sent back. TTIO Chinese Empire will be divided into 18 provinces, each having .an army maintained at its expense. Orders have been given to the governors to encourage by every means in their power the formation of an army hostile to Europeans. A MUSICIAN’S JEALOUSY. Herr Hubert Wondra. who is a nephew of the former director, Herr Jahn, and lies been 16 years the chorus director of the Vienna Court Opera, was recently the victim of n dastardly outrage. A young man named August Locbi, a brother to a lady named Hermine Loebl, who was recently dismissed from the ch rus, called on Herr Wondra at his moms, and demanded satisfaction for the allo’cd injustice to his sister. After a heated interview Herr Wondra showed the visitor to the door, whereupon Locbi whipped out a revolver and shot the director in the left lung, threatened to shoe, a ‘servant who attempted to stop him. and got clear away. He subsequently surrendered to the police. Herr Wondrn’s condition is critical. BELLES OF THE NEW WORLD. ■ Sir Philip Burne-Jones is the latest distinguished Englishman who has taken to saying nice things about America and American peonle. lie says them in a ."book called 'Dollars and Bcmocracy." Tho women charm him—"they are sj

well set up. so excellently groomed. _ And '‘there is none of the slouching ana stooping to which we t»re accustomed at homo, nor any II rum ting colours or cheap imitation jewellery." Further, “one rarely comes acivwfl a hiidly-drcs-'cd woman in any rank of life 1 imagine a well-dressed American woman is the beat-drcsscd woman in -he world" . , .Mmther thing Sir Fillip has notice** i-> too nh.tCnce of all signs or poverty in the htreets.

1 ilo 1 Imiks remarkable also, the great \ cl.eanlii,e*w of the population-oven or ; the I »sorer people. 1 ,4 'i iivit; iu -ometJling pathetic about the attitude of .\iuencan men io their women I folk. J.hey are so anxious for them to 5 have a good time.* Their chivalry and i courtosv to women is very pretty, too. . j . . When all’s . aid ana done, America ! is Urn land for women." { Lot Sir Philip is sever© on New xoio-c ! society. "Or late years there has grown tip wi America a sort of aristocracy of great wealth. . . . The members of this I email coterie of extremely rich people, | which constitutes New York’s so-culled I nxm-ty, have arrogated to themselves a position s.onewhut analogous to that of oilr own nobility. And in doing so they 1 have out hcroded Herod." TRAC IC MOTHERHOOD. At early mass in a Belfast church on . Sunday morning (April 10th) there was i a young woman in the sparse congrega- | lion, a. men; girl, who carried in her an s. wrapp ’d in'a shawl, a little baby. , i She must have shown signs of a hard 1 life, of a sorry h>L The lught before she : had walk-’d the streets, alone with her 1 baby, and for many days and nights, bc- | fore that sho and her child htfd been hm-icl'-ss and without food. None .noticed her. for in Belfast the poor they have always with them; but it in (he "congregation there had been on a able Z> see the tragedy she bore with her, the poignant gried that oppressed liio young mother, it must have become known thcr® and then that the baby she carried with such tender care, sue a auxToiib gentleness, was dead. She sat out tho mass with the corpse of Tier child In her arms. The girl-mother was Mary Gorman, t servant maid who gave birth to a child and lost Tier situation. That was nearly four months ago, and none can tell how she has subsisted since she carried her baby and her shame firth to the merev of (ho streets. Tor sonic .weeks, however, the ?canty charity of casual Samaritans kept her alive, and at her breast tho doslitute bain* drew its feeble life. On Stnulay night (April 10th) twT policemen saw her. She was trying to gain admission to a hcusc, from which tho owner repulsed her. She persisted desperately; sho had the child, and .die must have a lodging, she told the police when they stopped to question her. She had had nothing to eat for almost a uav, she added, but she-would not go to the workhouse. There was that in tho trouble of her voice, in her desperate courage of n stricken woman, that lent her tale die force of truth. She was miserable to see, a tragic figure, and one of the constables was moved to offer her money that, she might get food and a bed. She heard his offer dully, but broke down altogether wh n u he had finished. '•Til tell vou the truth." she said simply. "The child—the little child * have in my arms—is dead, ami .1 don t know what to do! I don't know what to do!" They drew something of her story fron her by degrees. The night before, trudging the pavements hopelessly, she gave the child the breast. It had been uneasy. Soon after she felt the little body stir in her arms, and then it stirred no more Between terror and dumb hops she carried it till dawn, and the light that: came when Hie sun rose showed her tho baby dead. They took her in all pity and gentleness to tho police-station, and Giere she sat silent against the wall. She seemed to gra?rp nothing of affairs; her arms loosened and tightened about the tiny corpse, and she dandled ** lovingly, gazing wide-eyett before her the while, when the morgue van rumbled to tho door they took it from her, But she was not willing to let it go. CANKER'S QUEER WILL. Tn the Edinburgh Court of Session re cently Lord Low closed the record and .ordered issues f°r the trial of an action ■by Catherine McCaig, Clan, against the court of the University of Glasgow as trustees of the late John Stuart McCaig, banker, Oban, in which the plaintiff asks for the reduction of a deed of corroboration and assignation, daied 27th January, 1903. granted in favour of the defenders. Mr McCaig was possessed of extensive heritable properties in. the vicinity of Oban yielding a yearly rental of between .£2OOO and i!3WO. besides movable estate valued at ,£IO,OOO. The deceased left a will by which he ; conveyed his whole estate to the defendants for certain purposes, including tho erection of statues of himself, his brothers, ami sisters on the tower of Batlor3 r Hill, above Oban, and of artistic towers in the district. After the erection of the statues and towers the free revenue was to be applied in creating and endowing a chair to be called the John Stuart McCaig chair, for teaching sculpture, painting, music or other fine art or kindred subjects. The plaintiff, who is deceased's sister and next of kin. maintains that the will only disposed of such parts of'his heritable estate as would be required co erect the statues and towers, and that she signed me deed sought to be reduced upon a misrepresentation that she had no claim on her ■ brother's estate beyond a provision for an annuity of *£3oo per annum. ■ Tho defendants maintain that the plaintiff was fully advised of her rights when she granted the deed.