The Patea County Press, [With which is incorporated The Patea Mail.) "Be just and Fear Not." MONDAY, OCTOBER 12th 1896. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 118, 12 October 1896, Page 2

The Patea County Press, [With which is incorporated The Patea Mail.) "Be just and Fear Not." MONDAY, OCTOBER 12th 1896. LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The (School Committee meets this evening at half-past seven in the Council Chambers.

The 'Waverley Town Board, Domain Board, Cemetery Board and Wairoa Domain Board meet to-morrow evening the first named at half-past seven. The School Inspector, Mr Yereker Binden and his assistant Mr Milne are engaged in examaning the Patea School. Mr Bindon will be alone to-morrow when Mr Milne will examine the Whenuakura school.

We should like to point out to the execus tive officers of the Patea Sports Association that we are nearing the middle of October and consequently quite close enough to Boxing Day to be getting out the programme. Dr and Mrs Perkins are at present paying a passing visit to Patea and are the guests of Mr and Mrs Christie. The Doctor looks, though well in health, as if work in the Old Country if more profitable is at the same more trying Mr John Graham, who took a run home to the Old Country some months ago, returned a d ain last week looking as if the trip had agreed with him and he had agreed with the trip. He is rather in - clined to lean towards a return there at no distant date.

The if; New Zealand Farmers’ Dairy Union is somewhat of a remarkable institution. A representative of the Hawera Morning Post lately went to “interview ” the Manager of the Palmerston North DairyJFactoryJso as to get ajcorrect idea of how things are carried out, and, having * obtained particular's as to the butter I working, etc., somewhat rashly entered j into the financial management of the concern, when he was gravely informed by the factory manager that the business was worked “ on co-operative principles, and the profits already made had been devoted to the reduction of the Sinking Fund,” “ There is many a true wo'd spoken in jest” and probably this is a fair sample of the application of the adage and that ihe profile (/) already made have I taheii the shape of a rcduciioii of the Sinking Fund, In real profit making concerns | a portion of the profit is usually devoted to I building up the sinking fund not in reducing it. But then co-operative dairy companies are like women i( Kittle cattle to deal v. i.’

The Patea Harbour Board meets tomorrow at half-past two o’clock. A correspondent in a Dunedin paper contrasts a fine of os inflicted on a man named \V. Arthur for a brutal and unprovoked assault upon a female and the fine of £lO infiiceed ou Robert Hardie for his assault on Mr H. S. Fish. Ho might go further and contrast it with a fine of £2O lately inflicted down south for working horses with sore shoulders. Hawera public, Haw era private, Hawera press, and Hawera bodies have never tired of howling about the necessity of having refreshment rooms attached to the station, and trains delayed to enable passengers to “ refresh ” notwithstanding the fact that well appointed and equipped rooms were already established at Patea less than twenty miles away. Hawera, however, had its way, the rooms were built and prepared for occupation and Hawera “ j übilated ” in its success but hi! presto ! The scene is changed ! With a licensed hotel not thirty yards away, the “ department ” could not see its way to grant a license to retail spirituous liquors with the result that amongst all the dwellers in that reputed hot bed of prohibition there could not be found one —no not one —who had sufficient faith in the absolute necessity for a “refreshment room ” room as to even tender for the rooms. Not one soul in the whole of Hawera had sufficient love for or faith in prohibition to induce him to run refreshment rooms, devoid of license, the welfare of the travelling public notwithstanding Fresh efforts are now being made to obtain a tenant for the newly erected rooms.

We have to apologise to our contem* porary, the Hawera Morning Post for having on Friday last inadvertently omitted to acknowledge the source from whence we obtained, the article headed “Truth stranger than fiction.” The fault, however, was not ours as the usual instruction to acknowledge was sent out with the article; nevertheless we must bear the blame and can only hope our contemporary will accept our apology and “ forgive us our trespass.” How easy it is for an oversight to occur against the wish of the editor is shewn in the same issue of our contemporary in which the complaint against our oversight occurs, where a paragraph referring to the sittings of a Justices’ Court x'cads as follows: “ A gentleman versed in Native matters called at our office yesterday, and appointedly drew attention to the law as affecting the Maoris, contending that they must have the services of an interpreter in any Court of Justice, and failing that any sentence passed upon them would be quashed by the inferior courts.” This is the first time we ever heard of its being within the power of an inferior court to quash a sentence passed by any other court and we certainly should be sorry to think that there was on the face of the earth any Court inferior to the average New Zealand “Justices’ ” courts