LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXI, Issue 2721, 21 November 1910, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Tenders are fnvited by the Ohinemun County Council for a number ot contracts.

The Farmers' Co-operative Auctioneering Company will sell on 6th December,; by order of-the mortagees, three residence site sections, together with 'dwelling house and outbuildings thereon, known as the property of Mrs M. Moore, at Mackaytown. Holiday excursion tickets will be issued from all stations in the Auckland district to Auckland on November 23rd, 24th, and 25th, available for return up to 2nd December. Messrs J. and W. Harp will have a replace advertisement in our next issue with regard to their Christmas stock. Notice is given that by order of the Warden the Incognita special quartz claim, consisting ot 90 acres, situated at Maratoto, will be sold by public auction at the Courthouse at Paeroa at eleven o'clock on Monday, sth December.

A telegram from Dr. Anderson, Assistant Inspector-General ot Schools, Wellington, has just been received notifying the headmaster,.of the Paeroa District High School that Ethel Casley, Edith Scott, and George Hart have obtained senior free places in the secondary department as from January next. This success is very creditable to the pupils concerned.

In connection with the Auckland Agricultural and Pastoral Association's show at Auckland, the Northern Steamship Company notifies that excursion tickets from Paeroa to Ajckland will be issued at the reduced rate of ios saloon return from the 24th to the 26th inst. The tickets will be available for return for one week from date of issue. The Druids' excursion to Te Aroha on Saturday was to a certain extent spoiled by the heavy ram that tell. However, a fair number made the trip, but naturally the outing was not as enjoyable as it otherwise would have been. A well-known battery hand in the person of Charlie Maberly died on Wednesday at Te Puia, Waipiro Bay. About 13 years ago deceased helped to lay the foundations of the Waikino battery and subsequently worked at the dry crushing plant. He contracted the dust complaint, and eventually succumbed to that affliction. He received every attention m the hospital at Te Puia, and was, we are informed, liberally treated by the Waihi Gold-mining Company. Nurse Maberly, ot the Waihi Hospital, is a sister of deceased.

It may not be generally known by users of the telephone that the cup into which they speak when talking through the instrument is of ahighly inflammable nature. A telephone subscriber in Carterton found this out. He approached the edge of the cup too near a lighted malch, which he held in the other hand, as he turned from the telephone to address a remark to someone in the room, and the cup instantly took fire and burned fiercely. Anyone using the telephone by candle light or by the aid of a match must take care not to let the light come in contact with the enunciator, or there will be a blaze.

How easily persons may innocently commit a breach of the Licensing Act was illustrated by one of the technical cases heard at the Court the other day, says the Oamaru Mail. The defendant was a young man charged with giving an order for liquor to be sent to Oamaru without a statement in writing ot his name and address and the name and address of the person to whom such liquor was intended to be sent. It appeared from the statements made by defendant's counsel that the young man had been about to return to Duntroon from Oamaru, when a friend said to him "Ask Bert r- —to send me a bottle ot whisky ?" In compliance with the request, defendant had pulled up at the Empire Hotel, and shouted to the barman, " Send a bottle ot whisky to ." The licensee had despatched the liquor through the Court in the usual way, and subsequently a police officer, looking through the hotel books, had marked the absence of the written statement from the person ordering the liquor. Since it is outside the province of the police to discriminate between innocent breaches and those to which suspicious circumstances attach, a prosecution and conviction followed.

A strong plea for competition among architects for the designing of public buildings was made by Mr Alexander Campbell at the Master Builders' smoke concert at Wellington. People who pass through {he dominion and make sarcastic remarks about the architecture overlooked the fact, he said, that but seventy years ago the buildings consisted only ot a few Maori whares, and these people expected that New Zealand architecture should be in the same state and have the same standing to attain which required hundreds of years, in older lands. For the time the dominion had been established, its buildings compared favourably with those in any other country that had been in existence for the same time. He, for one, thought that the cheese-paring policy of the Government in reference to the principal buildings had a good deal to do with the quality of the architecture. The speaker maintained that designs for the larger public buildings should be open for public competition among the architects of the dominion. A novel protest was entered at the Port Chalmers Court, says the Evening Star, against the prohibiting of a married male inebriate. It was urged that the lack of self-control on the part ot subject ot the contemplated order would result in heavy fines for non-observance of the provisions of the order. These fines, it was stated, would deprive the family of more of the father's earnings than would his unrestricted indulgence in alcoholic liquors. The other side of the question was shown in the evidence tendered by the police to prove it was m the interests of both the man and his family that he should be prohibited. Mr Widdison made the order, remarking that heavy fines for breaches of prohibition orders were much more effective as a deterrent than were light fines.