LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Patea Mail, Volume XXXIX, 1 July 1914, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

“ Time and tide wait for no man,” nor will the furs wait for aoyooe at the prices now quoted at Cody's drapery establishment.

One Councillor who has been attending a number of committee meetings as well as the ordinary and special meetings of the Council during the month remarked with feeling at the close of Monday’s meeting “ Thank goodness this will be the last special meeting wa’ll have to attend this month anyway,”

Chairmen are apt on occasions to be unduly loquacious. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tells of a talkative chairman and Dean Hole. After the Dean's chairman had spoken for nearly an hoar, he announced; 11 The Dean will now give his address.” "My address,” replied the Dean, as he deliberately got up, 11 is The Deanery, Rochester, and I am going back there now.”

A story is told of a “ printer’s error ” that once caused consternation in a country village. An arch in the church had become dilapidated, and a fund was started for its repair. Upon one occasion, so as to make the appeal more widely known, the rector had a notice regarding the arch fund printed in the village, with the result that on the following Sunday announcement appeared in large type : "The collection today will be for the arch fiend.”

There has been a protest raised agaiast tbs amount of public money which American legislators spend ou baths. The sums expended by the House of Representatives last year was £1,240 But free bath is not the only privilege the representatives of the American peopla enjoy. They can gat a free shave and a free bair-out as often as they have a mind to. They can even get thoie faces massaged and their hands manicured at the public oost.

The question whether a man could live in the moon has beeu put to an eminent astronomer, who replied : "I am afraid not. A man transplanted to the moon would find himself the lone inhabitant of a perfectly lifeless orb, in which eternal silence reigns. Ha would have to manage w : thout air, water or fire. He would not need to pot windows iu his bouse, for there is no wind, no rain, no dust upon the moon. It has been truly and practically observed that the moon is " apparently abandoned ti death, nourishing no inhabitants, producing nothing resembling trees, flowers, or beautiful things of any kind—useless in short except as a mass of extinct volcanic rubbish, which drags the sea into tides, and re fleets the sunbeams.”

The question of Asiatics immigration promises to become prominent iu the near future owing to the influx of Hindus to New Zealand, said Mr Arthur M. Myers, MP. in the course of a pre-sessional address at Auckland last Thursday night. This influx is open to the gravest objections, both economic and social, The introduction of coloured labour iu other parts of the world—South Africa, Cmada, and the United States—has been followed by results too significant to be ignored. Believing that Asiatic immigration is incompatible with our determination to perpetuate a healthy British type in this part of the world, I will support the present Governnentin any measures it may take to insure a continuance of the " white New Zealand policy,” (Applause.)

A journalist who wanted to go from Gottaro, in Austria, to Montenegro recently, but bad no passport, solved the difficulty in an amusing fashion (according t > the Paris correspondent of the Daily Mad). At an hotel where he was lunching, the story runs, he explained his difficulty to Ihe head wait or. The latter picked up the hotol menu and said : "This is the only passport you will need. Every time you are asked to produce it just hand the officials a packet of tobacco,” Armed with his menu-passport, the journalist did as he had been advised. The {Montonegrin Customs officers gravely went through the menu, glancing at the traveller from time to time to see if the " description ” trilled, and then with a bow restored the document and told bim to proceed. The first dishes on the hotel menu were, " Calf’s head, pigs’ trotters, shoulder of mutton.”

I A Ban Francisco correspondent, writing under date of May 26th, says that diverting tales came out of Mexico every now and then of the way warfare is conducted by the lazy, spectacle-loving natives, but nothing more amusing has been recorded than the postponement of a battle, and an important battle, too, so that moving pictures might be taken of the engagement. Villa at first intended a night attack on Torreon, one of the chief strongholds of the Federal troops leading to the City of Mexico, James A. Galligan, the representative of a moving picture concern, called on the rebel general, and protested vigorously, using some picturesque and, perhaps, unreportable colloquialisms in so doing. “ How do you expect your friends in America are going to sea you capturing the city if there is no light for me to use my camera r ” he asked Villa, and packing his moving picture machine and films on a string of mules, he started for the coast. He had travelled about an hour when he was overtaken by a messenger, who told him that rather than disappoint his friends in the United Sfcnteq. Villa had decided to postpone the attack on Torreon until daylight. And bei kept bis promise, Torreon was taken.

Miss M. K'-nny (an Australian) recently swam from the Palace Pier at Brighton to Sboreham, a distance of five miles, in 148 minutes which is a record. The time was put np despite a rough sea.

Amongst the strongest advocates of nO'licensc in America to-day is John L. Sullivan, the famous ex-pugilist, according to Mr O. H, Poole. " John L ” says that it was not “ Jim ” Oorbett who knocked him out, but Jim Jams.

The following advertisement appeared in the Times last month:—"Two thousand golf balls for sale.—Advertiser living on the boundary of the Golf Club, not 100 miles from London, offers a collection of various brands of sliced golf balls. This is the only way of recompensing himself for broken windows and ruined dower-beds. Wat offers ? Box ”

At a dinner in London last month Sir Robert Baden-Powell, referring to the action of the colonies daring thn South African war, said that for bard workers the Canadians could not be beaten; for locality and for never being lost, the Australians surpassed anything he bad previously witnessed; but the New Zealanders were the bravest of them all.

Says the Wellington Post: “ Remits for the July Congress which is beiug promoted by the Bed Federation are mainly extreme Socialistic nroposals, in which there is an insistence on vast - expenditure, bat nothing like adequate provision for the orgy of ‘ humanitarianism.” The Te Kuiti branch of the Social Democratic Patty recommends * that the maximum working week be fire days of four hours each.’ " The head of a large business bouse bought a large number of those Do it now ” signs, and them up around his offices They were effective beyond expectation, and yet it can hardly ha said that they worked welL When, after the first few days, the business man counted up the results, he found that the head cashier bad skipped off with £2OO, the head bookkeeper had eloped with the typist, three clerks bad asked for a rise in salary, and the office boy bad set out to become a highwayman. Mynheer Nicholas van Nellenbogen. of Curacao, who recently arrived in New York, declares that the Dutch colony is happy in the possession of a" jag bug,”

whose bite is intoxicating. One bite has the effect of a cocktail, ha declares (according to the Express correspondent), while a number of bites produce the same consequences as ale followed by champagne. A parasite has been introduced on the island, Mynheer van Nellenbogen said, which destroys the jag bug, and, strange to relate, anyone who has been bitten by the jag bug and then by the antidotal insect immediately

becomes sober and a tee-totaller there* after. What may be called a baptismal freak seemed to be disclosed to the Brighton Bench the other day when a witness to whom the oath had been administered said his Christian name

was "J.P.” (relatis the Melbourne Age). All concerned promptly desired to know what names ” JP.” stood for, The man rather petulantfy reiterated that his name was " J.P.”—that and no more. A solicitor on the ether side asked him whether "J ” stood for “ Jay*” but the witness hotly rejoined that he was no more a jay than the inquirer. He then informed their worships that from his birth his father had called him •' J.P.”—nothing more

and nothing less—and had christened him so. A Paris wit, M. Galipaux, is well known fur his amusing monologues. Recently at an evening party, the Mail says, his hostess was particularly pressing that he should enteitua her guests in this wav, M, Galipaux at last consented. " I must have a hammer and a screw driver,” he said. “I will give you a monologue on the way iu which musical instruments are made.” The tools were brought and the humorist began to take to pieces the graud piano begin to take to pieces the grand piano, keeping up a running stream of amusing patter. At

last the piano lay a tangle of wires and keys on the drawing room floor. The applause was sincere. ** The only thing is,” whispered M, Galipaux to his overinsistsnt hostess, “ I have not the faintest idea bow to put it together again.”

- 11 1 guess,” said an American, " none of you ever saw such parsnips ss I grew out in the States last year. Why I bad fto hire a steam derrick to get them oat of the ground.” " Talking about parsnips,” said Perkins meekly 1 “ reminds me of some I once grew in Lancashire to try the effect of a patent fertiliser my brother invented. The result was astonishing. Those parsnips for size easily beat all records, and just how far the roots penetrated into the earth we oonld only guess, but to our disappointment the tops suddenly sickened and died.” " I guess that was a great pity,” said the American. " What was the matter with ’em ? Outgrew their strength, I suppose ? ” " Well,” replied Perkins, calmly, " wo found out afterwards it was because the end of the roots had been eaten by the rabbits in Australia.”

Ferdinand Eglinski, age 53 years, a tailor in the village of Ahlbeck, on the Baltic, claims to be the champion father in Germany (says the Daily Mail). He married at 20 years of age, His first wife had 24 children and died in 1906. He married her sistir who had II children—triplets once and twins twice. Nineteen boys and seven girls are alive, and last year six Bglioskis were serving simu'taneously in the army. Oa the entry of the sixth son in the army (in 1913) Eglinski was received in audience by the Kaiser, who ordered bim to be entertained in Berlin for a week. After pressing a 50-mark note (£2 10s) in Eglinski’s hand, the Kaiser clapped him on the shoulder and said: “ Just keep up the good work, Eglinski !" Cracking his heels at the salute the man replied, " At your service, Majesty I”