MELBOURNE ITEMS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) April 2.

Otago Witness, Issue 1951, 11 April 1889, Page 17

MELBOURNE ITEMS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) April 2.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. Dr Neild, who is the dramatic critic of the Australasian, has delivered his soul by way of a lecture on " The Manners and Customs of Marvellous Melbourne." He is a spick-and-span kind of gentleman himself, neat in his clothing, precise in his manner, the model of regularity in his habits. The manners and customs of the Australian native are consequently very hateful to him. He lives in a constant atmosphere of disputeand civil war with railway porters, tramway conductors, and post office clerks, whose flippant behaviour and boisterous hurry harrow his old-school feelings. Even the girls who attend at the letter windows of the post office annoy him. They seem " very unpleasant persons." For the habits of Melbourne people the doctor had nothing good to say. He preached a powerful sermon about dirty gutters, stinking back yards, and so forth, and in application of his remarks could instance the spread of typhoid. But this disease flourishes in country as well as ,in town : in a bran new settlement like the irrigation colony of Mildura as well as in the wretched slums ef Collingwood and South Melbourne. One often doubts whether the doctors have plumbed the depths of typhoid yet. They never account for the immunity of nightmen, for instance, from it. There is an open field for some young medico who wishes to hand his name down to posterity in the typhoid epidemic. The disease has to be studied as Pasteur has studied diphtheria and hydrophobia for instance. It needs to be traced down to its roots, and the man who does this will deserve well of his fellows. THE COLLAPSE OF THE LAND BOOM. In cDnnection with the collapse of the boom the recent meeting of " The Mercantile Investment Trust" is somewhat instructive. This was one of the creations of the boom period. It proposed to save small investors the worry of finding their own speculations. They were to unite their fucds, have them invested for them by the company's directors, and like Mark Twain's negro, simply "lay low" and wait for the interest. The directors promised to spread the shareholders' capital over a wide field, and they pointed to similar concerns in England which placed their funds in over 200 different securities. Unfortunately the directors were bitten with the mercantile finance fever. They placed a good deal more than half the funds entrusted to them ia that stock, which has seen so many vicissitudes, and the shareholders are as much' disappointed as was the negro aforesaid. Their capital is sunk, and no amount of " laying low " produces any interest. The only thing the shareholders can now do is to instruct thB directors to make no further investments, and particolarlvto make no further call, without first consulting those who have to find the money, which the sorrowful directors have promised to do. A MYSTEBIOUS BANK BOBBERY. Another mysterious bank robbery has taken place. This time the English, Scottish, and Australian Chartered Bank is the loser, One of their clerks named Cordner had taken the notes of other banks to the clearing house, and among his parcels was a bundle of Commercial Bank notes of the value of £1225. This bundle mysteriously disappeared, and it simply cannot be found. There does not appear to be any reason to suspect the clerk, who still remains in the bank's employment. Somebody is the richer, but the detectives fail to discover who it is. The robbery of £7000 from the Commercial Bank;

about two' months ago' is also still tfn tindiscovered crime. The clerlk SSpita* wfco took the I money ha! never been seefl £ra6e) A SAD STOEY. . A tramway accident which occurifea sfb t>ne Melbourne Hospital gates on Saturday night; jtf surrounded by very sorrowful circumstances. K. Mrs Jane Smith got oft tile out while ib was* in motion, and being thrown dowri W!» taken, into the hospital in an unconscious state. Aoput midnight her husband came to the hospital to inquire jf anything had been heard of his wife, and when he ascertained that she was there he told one of the saddest stories ever recorded. Their little boy lay dangerously ill in the hospital from diphtheria, The mother, hearing that he was worse on the Saturday nigtt, hurried down to see him, and in her' anxiety stepped from the tram before it was stopped. While' she lay in an unconscious con* dition her boy died, and the hospital officials, recognising no connection between the two patients, removed the body to the mortuary. The husband, finding 'that his wife did not return when he expected, feared the worst, and went to the hospital to learn the full extent of his troubles. Here he ascertained that his son was dead, and that his wife was injured so severely that her life was despaired of. She has since, however, rallied considerably, and returned to consciousness. She can remember nothing of thrf accident, and the doctors are now hopeful of her recovery.