GIRL CHLOROFORMED.

Opunake Times, Volume LVV, Issue 3675, 23 October 1923, Page 2

GIRL CHLOROFORMED.

George Ayre was charged at the Otaki Court with unlawfully entering a kiosk with intent to commit a crime,, and that on or about October 9th with intent to commit or facili tate a crime, he caused Margaret Parata to be affected with chloroform. He was also charged with assulting Maud Colterell. The evidence showed that accused entered a kiosk at the Otaki beach, chloroformed Margaret Parata and assulted Maud Cotterell. He pleaded guilty and was committed for sentence.

“It is a very uncommon thing in the United States to find more than 40 pupils on the roll of a primary or secondary school, “ states Mr N R Mckenzie, of Auckland, who has just returned from an exchange visit to Canada and the States. The size of the schools was very much smaller than those in New Zealand and he found that at the University high school at Berkeley, California, 23 pupils was the maximum number permitted in any one class.

The United States Government has began another drive against brewers and bootleggeus in New York and New Jersey States and has arrested eleven men, who are said to have conspired with prohibition officers to permit brewing and the distribution of real beer and traffic in liquors,

At a Masterton school during a recent examination .one of the general knowledge questions was! “What is the duty of a fireman ? “ One of the answers received was : “The duty of a fireman is to turn on the hoses and die if necessary to save the lives of others.“

The people of the Solomon Islands cherish their pigs,“ said the Rev J Metcalfe, in a lecture. “Valuing a woman as not being worth two of the animals, they treat the pig as a child, taking it to church with them and banging it in a basket outside.**

The Mayor of Northampton (Eng.) having offered a prize for arithmetic at a girl's school, the Mayoress promptly offered one for the girl who could black a grate without blacking her face and apron. “Husbands,“ she said, “would rather have wives who could mend socks than do arithmetic. “

At a public school one of the boys in the class had been giving much trouble to the teacher. The teacher announced that he would thrash the whole class if someone would not teli him who had committed a certain offence. All were silent, and he began with the first boy, and thrashed everyone in the class until, finally, he reached the last one. Then, dropping his cane, he said, sharply, “Now, if you will tell me who did this, I won't punish you." “A 1! right, sir. I did it," came the sad reply.

The Hon Downie Stewart, Minister of Customs, proposes that persons owning publications detained at the Customs or post office as suspected of containing prohibited matter, indecent publications and publications inciting to violence or lawlessness shall be entitled to appeal from the adverse departmental decision to a board consisting of: Chas Wilson Parliamentary librarian, H Baillie, Wellington ' public librarian ; H South, representative of the New Zealand Retail Booksellers' Association, and that the decision of that board should be accepted by the Government, except in so far as any decision turns on purely legal considerations.

Many a clever man (especially if his cleverness is close to genius) is regarded as a “crank* 1 or “eccentric" by his friends. That was the kind of impression which Edison made on some people when he was a boy, “It was Edison's unsympathetic schoolmistress, “ an English writer remarks, “who told his mother; ‘■This boy's brain is addled; we can do nothing with him." He had given one of his companions a Seidlitz powder, to find out whether the gas would lift up his patient in the air! Mrs EdisOn was wise enough to take the boy's education into her own hands, • and proved herself the loveliest and most wonde. ful teacher on God's earth, as he afterwards declared. “

“Won't you, “ she pleaded; “won't you give up drinking for my sake? “ He gazed thoughtfully down in her upturned eyes. “I‘m not drinking for your sake, “he growled, and once more there was trouble in Eden,