LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 84, 15 July 1895, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Mr T. Wright, of Kakaramea, advertises fruit, shelter and hedge plants for sale. An advertisement of interest to some lady or other appears to-day relative to exchange of lady’s jacket, shewing how easy a mistake arises, and how easily, in this case, it can be adjusted. Mr W. Cowern notifies a sale of fruit and forest trees, flowering shrubs, etc., on Saturday next, particulars of which may be found iu our advertising columns. These trees come forward at a very good time, and should find ready sale, as the Easter breeze left many a gap in hitherto perfect plantations, and the sooner the gaps are filled the sooner the eyesores outside, and blighting winds inside, will disappear. Mrs Jacomb notifies that the second term of her dancing class commences on Thursday next in the Masonic Hall. Anyone attending the closing evening dance of last term must have felt that Mrs Jacomb’s class had been pbenominally successful, and there is no room to doubt that the coming term will be equally successful, as pupils have the advantage of excellent music, ns well as capable teaching, so that the fullest advantage is secured by all attending the class. A peculiar incident occurred at Gwayas last week, (says the Egmont Settlor.) A pure bred polled Angus bull was missing. Search was made iu every direction, but no signs were found. Four days afterwards a man quite accidently happened to pass a small whnre, and hearing sounds within he opened the door, wh»n to his astonishment out walked the bull, none the worse but very hungry and thirsty. The bull appoaredto have closed the door, which opened inwards, and was unable to open it again. He was a valuable animal and but for aohance would have been starved to death. The sale of the jewels and racing cups of the late Duchess of Montrose known in sporting circles as “ The Red Duchess,” who raced horses under the name of “ Mr Man ton,” took place on May Ist, and realised over £25.000. A celebrated pearl necklace was sold, according to the terms of her will, for the benefit of the poor of East London. It was knocked down .at £11,200, amid nn excited crowd of wouldbe buyers. This necklace is composed of seven rows, and contains 362 finely graduated pearls with a diamond clasp. The mate of the necklace for size, colour, faultless match, and symmetry, can hardly be found. A terrible tale of revenge is reported from Michigan. A young man of 21 years named Hale was married to Miss ‘Bella Hammond, a girl of eighteen. After the ceremony the couple went_ to occupy a house which Mr Hale, senior, had given to the couple as a wedding present. Early next morning flames were seen issuing from the house which had made such headway that escape for the inmates was impossible. When the firemen succeeded in putting out the fire the body of young Hale and his bride of a day were charred beyond recognition. It was afterwards discovered that the stairs flooring was saturated with kerosene, and that greasy rags were stuffed under the carpets. A young man named John Allen has been arrested on suspicion of setting fire to the House. It is said that Miss Hammond was engaged to Allen before she met Hale, for whose sake she jilted her former lover, and it is surmised that for revenge he committed the terrible crime reported above. A duel with cannon that took place at Sebastopool is described in The Crimean War from First to Last, by General Sir Daniel Lysons, G.C.8.” Our sailors’ gun detachment,” says the general, mounted on their parapet and took off their hats, saluting the Russians. The Russians returned the compliment. The English gun was given the first shot as the senior gun ; it struck the side of the Russian embrasure. Then they fired—a very good shot, too. The thir 1 shot, from Jenny (*he English gun) went clean through the Russian embrasure, and up went two gabions. The bluejackets jumped up on their parapet and cheered, thinking they had beaten their opponents. Not a bit a minute afterwards down went the gabions, and out camo the Russian gun again, Several more shots wore fired from both sides, all very good ones. Jenny got a nasty thump, bub it did her no harm. At length, on the seventh shot from our side, we saw the Russian gun knocked clean over. Our fellows cheered vociferously, and the Russians mounted Heir parap°t and took off their hats in acknowledgement of their defeat, Thus ended a great gun duel.”

“ Come up to my house, Smithson, and hear my baby talk. Its the most wonder fal “ You forget said Smithson with dignity, ‘"that I am a father myself.” Napoleon Bonaparte, being told by a Russian officer that his countrymen fought for glory and the French for gain, replied “ Ycu are right, every man fights for that which he does not possess.” Boardinghouse-keepers are sometimes rather shy of ladies iu knickerbockers. At an Arbor university in Michigan, the bead of [a boarding establisment recently re fused absolutely to allow a learned lady undergraduate to sit down to dinner in knickerbockers. She said, “ You cannot oat at the same time. The girl boarders must all have a lap to put their serviettes on when they eat!” The lady student remonstrated in vain, and last she gave in, and consented to wear the rejected skirt. “ Rational dress ” appears to have sturdy enemies. Some excellent v cus populi overheard at the Academy are given iu the National Observer The writer “ came upon a couple of old men entranced with the realism of Mr Joy’s ‘ Bayswater ’Bus.’ ‘ That’s what I call a picture,’ cried one ot'the patriarchs, * you can read the advertisement s® plain,” Bat the best remark cf all was made by a comely dame anont Mr Sydney P. Hall’s ‘ Yiva Yoce in the Old Schools, Oxford.’ ‘ Which of them is Yiva Yoce ?’ she inquired of her cavalier, who replied evasively, ‘ I suppose the one bending over the table ’ ” At High Wycombe, (England) last month a barber, named Abrahams, was charged with having feloniously wounded John Holdstock, schoolmaster, with intent to willfully kill and murder him. —Thomas Hawkes, a labourer, said he was in the prisoner’s shop on Saturday. Prisoner bad shaved the right side of Holdstock’s face when the schoolmaster said, ‘‘ Huiry up; it’s time you had done.” Prisoner at once went to his living room, drank something from a bottle, and returning to Holdstock, who was leaning back in the chair, deliberately cut his throat with the razor which he held in his hand, saying that “ he meant to do for as he had given him a bad name.”—Dr Weaver said he found Holbstock lying on the sofa with towel’s soaked with blood round his neck and there was a wound iu his throat two and a quarter inches long and threequarters ef a inch deep. The cut stopped just in front of the wind-pipe, and was jagged as if a second attempt had been made. Holdstock being too ill to appear, the prisoner was remanded. Of the writing by women in journals for women the London Spectator has a very poor opinion. “We are not of those who doubt women’s capacity for literary work; but certainly, if we ever distrusted it, it would be after glancing through a number of newspapers written by women for women’s benefit. There are so many of them, and they are generally so poor, so lacking alike in seriousnees and in any distinctive quality. They are not, of course, all alike ; but the majority of them leave on a man who reads them the impression that some at least of the old satires against women must have been merited, or the papers which they wrhe for themselves could not be so full of ‘ society ’ rubbish, millinery, and feeble chat upon subjects not worth discussing. We suppose the abler female writers prefer to expend their strength in papers and magazines edited by men, for oven the essays intended to be instructive are often childish in all except a certain ease, rising occasionally to felicity, of expression. There may bo an explanation of this iu the much deeper gaps which exist between cultivated and uncultivated men, but of the fact there can be no doubt whatever. ’

The two hundred lady temperance advocates, chiefly Americans, who, according to a cable message of last week, addressed London congregations last •Sunday afternoon, are (says the Christchurch Press) delegates to a remarkable Convention, now being held in London, of members of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union, It is remarkable for being probably the most representative gathering of women that has ever been held. Among those present are members of the Women’sChristian Temperance Unions from Australasia, Japan, South Africa, North and South America, and many other countries, The meetings began last Friday, and were to culminate in a groat demonstration on Wednesday in the Queen’s and on Thursday in the huge Albert Hall. The speakers nt the Nonconformist churches on Sunday last were to include several from Australia including Miss Jesse Ackerman, who it will be remembered, visited New Zealand some years ago on a lecturing tour. It may be mentioned that the delegates from America are so numerous that a special ship was chartered to convey them to England. All this, and much more, was told to an interviewer by tbs well-known woman reformer, Miss Willard, President of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who is leader of the Convention, The Nicaraguans (with whom Great Britain lately had a difficulty), according to the Saturday Review, were bem tired. In a climate that is exceedingly enervating it seems natural to lie down and gossip and laugh and flirt away the time. The only season 'of the year when the inertia disappears is the Pasco alMar, the bathing season, which begins with the moon of March, when the whole population of the towns migrate for a few weeks to the Pacific coast. They camp in gipsy fashion, high and low alike, for miles along the shore and pass the time in morning bathes, round games, gallops by day, and moonlight dances by night on the yellow sands with partners of every variety of eolour, down to the laughing yellow girls of the native class and the simple Indian peasant damsels of the fields. Each family rigs up its own cane hut, light lyjthatched with palm trees, and floored with petates or mats, the whole wickered together with vines, or woven together backetwise, and partitioned in the same way by means of coloured curtains of cotton cloth. The more luxurious ladies send down their neatly-curtained beds, aui make sometimes a certain show of oleganco. Outside and rather after the fashion of their permanent residences, is a kind of broad and open shed, which boars a very distinct relation to the corridor, Here hammocks are swung, the families dine, the ladies receive callers, and tho men sleep. These places of course, belong to the higher classes, the officials, and the dons. The mozo and his wife spread their blankets at the foot of a tree, ami the woman weaves a little bower of branches above them—a work of 10 or 15 minutes. Tho poorest and the laziest refuse to make even this alight exertion. iu tbe .Iry «au4 t