Items.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7183, 11 April 1898, Page 3

Items.

Swimming classes have been formed at 22 Melbourne schools, representing about 1250 boys and 900 girls. A class has been formed afc Malmsbary, and it is likely that swimming will also be taught to the children attending schools at Geelong and B*llarat. . In Alaska even the dogs are required to wear shoes. This is to protect their feet, against the rough mountain ice over which they have to travel. Ic was Bishop Warburton who once flished onb the witty " aside " : " Orthodoxy, my lord, is my doxy ; heterodoxy is another man's doxy." First Policeman : " What did you do with that young woman you pulled out of the water ?" Second Policeman : " Oh, I let her so. She said she was a 1 new journalism' reporter, and had been sent out to write an article on ' How it feels to be drowned.'" An Auckland shoemaker claims to possess an abfcral body, and to have seen the Jubilee procession in London by means of it while his natural body was fast asleep in its littie bed in Auckland. But these people never seem to turn up until a long time after the event A eremafion recently took place at I Hatni'.fon. Victoria, when the body of Ali Singh, a Hindoo hawker, was burnt in a gully near the town. The corpse was aoon reduced to ashos. The teeth and other small bones collectable will be sent • to lidia and thrown into the Ganges.

The population of South Australia, exclusive of the Northern Territory, was 358,224 on January 1, an increase of 3000 since last year. A gang of burglars has been actively engaged in the Bathnrst district Recently four bicycles were stolen from All Saints' College. " Bridget, you've broken as much china this month as your wages amount to. How, how can we prevent this occurring again ?' 41 Oi don't know, mum, unless ytz raise me wages." The Mayor of Sydney has received several reports as to the possibility of farther retrenchment. A brief glance has convinced him that it will be a compara tively easy matter to effect a saving of something like LBOOO to LIO,OOO a year. A Napier townsman took a horse on trial before purchasing. Calling on a friend he took the animal out of the trap, fastening it to the fence. On going out he found the horse lying dead, it having been hanged by the rope. At Melbourne the other day a poor half dead consumptive with " no visible means of support" was sent up for a month. The next prisoner, a notorious scoundrel with a list of previous convictions as long as his arm, also charged with vagrancy, got 14 days. At the Police Commission down south Mr Taylor said—" Will you allow me to ask if Justices of the Peace incited persons to break the law 1' The Chairman : " No ; we cannot allow you to ask a question impeaching a judicial tribunal." A B*d Egg.- Jabez Balfour, of the Libi-rator Building Society, was under public examination in the Bankruptcy Court recently. He declared that he took no more money with him to Argentine than LSOO, and denied that ho acquired property in the Republic. He recognised that he had made a great blunder in seeking to evade arrest by flight to the River Plate.but in so acting he deferred to the advice of persons who ought to have known better. His estate is likely to show a surplus of assets amounting to over L 30.000, with which he can begin the world again when liberated from prison. Judge Conolly at Auckland Supreme Court: " The weakness of the lungs displayed by most of the witnesses is appalling," whereupon Lawyer Tole : " The times are so hard, your Honor, they can't raise the wind." A retired Adelaide draper told a recent interviewer : " I started with the simple principle one hundred per cent on all I sold, and I found it succeeded admirably." He must have got up a lot of " alarmiug sacrifices " in his time 1 M. Gilbert, a French pedestrian, who is walking round the world, has arrived at Adelaide. He is in sood health. Professor Anderson Stuart states that there are only 400 neople in Sydney who give regularly towards charitable institutions. At the Sydney City Council, Alderman M. Chapman called attention to the excessive cost of cleansing the city streets, the amoant of wages for this work totalling L6OO a week. "It must always be clearly and distinctly uuderstood that drink is no excuse for crime ; drunkenness is a crime in itself,' 1 said Judge Conolly at New Plymouth recently.