Items.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5095, 3 October 1891, Page 4

Items.

A correspondent writes to a Christchurch contemporary :—" Til reading the telegraphic accounts of the wreck of the barque Fiji, it seems evident to me that Williamson lost his life through ignorance of a simple but very important feature of the art of surf swimming. It may be useful to future swimmers if 1 explain this wrinkle, the ignorance of which has, I have no doubt been the death of many. When in South Africa, a Hottentot showed me how to land with comparative safety through a mighty surf. The plan is simply this : —When a wave lias overtaken you and is on the point of breaking, turn suddenly, facing it, and spread yourself as horizontally as possible, legs and anus extended, aga'inst its full force ; you are then carried on like a straw on the crest, and all you have to do is to endeavor not to be thrown too roughly on the shore, and to make tracks as quickly as you cm when you get there. I have practised this plan myself, and can vouch for its success when properly carried out."

The following advertisement recently appearcd in a 2sew Souths ales paper •' Wanted, a lady to do a small family's washing each week, and to take her pay in violin or piano lessons from a competent teacher.

Labor (wrote Charlotte Bronte to a friend) must be my cure—not sympathy. Labor is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow. The Hawaiian race has been steadily dwindling in numbers during the present centurv. and the latest census gives it a population of but 40.000, or a decrease of one-half within a half century. A poet sings : '• I have a son. a little son. a boy just five years old. ' We don t see anything peculiar in this. If the poet had a little daughter who was a boy just five years old. it would be interesting. The great artist, Benjamin West, tells that his mother once kissed him eagerly when he showed her a likeness he had sketched of his baby sister, and he adds, "That kiss made me a painter." It's all very tine having a ready-made rich man. but mayhap he'll be a readymade fool ; and it's no use filling your pocket full o' money if you ve got a hole in the corner. It'll do you no trood to sit in a spring cart o' your own if you've got a soft to drive you ; lie II soon turn you over into the ditch. 1 allays I d never marry a man as had got no brains ; for where's the use of a woman having brains of her own if she s tackled to < t geek as everybody's a-laughing at ? .She might as well dress herself fine to sit back'ards on a donkey.—George Eliot. Police-Superintendent Oliver, of Consett. who was in charge of the police when tlicv made a baton charge during the disturbances at the Silksworth evictions on February 25th, has received a notice from the solicitors acting on behalf of the ID men, intimating that he will be sued for L 9500 damages, being LSOO for each man whose skull was damaged during the affray. At the end of life we discover that we have passed nearly one-half of it in being happv without realising it, and the other half "in imagining that we were miserable. . .

Hungary, as well as France, is waking up to the evils of betting. The Minister of the Interior has issued a decree prohibiting all betting offices. Betting, which has hitherto been very general, and has spread even among the lowest classes of the population, will in future only be allowed at the totalisator, or through a bookmaker on the racecourse. „

A correspondent writes to the Temperance Record, London :—" On visiting the Royal Institute of Painters in Piccadilly, my* eye caught the words ' Local Option ' on one of the works exhibited. I rushed to the object and found a graphic picture of a bull dog, wearing a bit of blue on his collar and looking supremely self-satisfied, as if conscious of being on the right side. He was on duty, guarding a double-crown jHister on a board announcing a meeting to be addressed by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr John Hilton, the Rev. Dr Burns, and Mr H. J. Gill. On the official catalognel found the title of the picture to be ' The Latest Convert,' and the artist, Mr S. T. Dadd. We understand the picture sold as soon as the exhibition opened, at the full price marked by the artist, viz., .30 fcuineas."