THE SHOW OF WAXWORKS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 949, 13 November 1879, Page 2

THE SHOW OF WAXWORKS.

Mantalini's Waxwork Exhibition opens to-morrow at the Masonic Hall. The figures are very numerous, and in their lives as told in history or related in police reports, were extremely varied and diversified of character. Here is the representation of a cool devil-m'-care man who once threw himself over a raging waterfall quite a hundered feet down to save the life of his affianced, and he did save her. He was the hero, it will be remembered in biography who went down Mount Vesuvias immediately after an eruption to pick up a gentleman's hat from the depths of a sulphurous ci*ater. There are historical personages, some very virtuous and others who had gone into quite another line of business. Some who might have been canonised ; others who should have been hung. Here we shall see Kings and Queens, celebrated highwaymen, notorious murderers, or maniacs who have in their time and day done things very bad indeed. Women who have poisoned their husbands, or have poured molten lead in their ears while asleepl in order to marry other husbands only in the end to serve the last one the same way as the one before. Husbands who murdered their wives, and stewed down their bodies in copper boilers or got rid of them by dropping them bit by bit in carpet bags over the London Bridges — chiefly Westminister. There is something in human nature, we cannot say what it is or is not ; but still there is something in some part of us which causes us to feel a delight in villains aud villiannesses, when they are so situated as to be unable to do us any personal injury ; and we take this to be the case when they are shown up in wax. Among the figures will be found the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, who appears if he were entreating the celebrated bushranger, Ned Kelly, to give himself up to the constituted authorities, and Kelly lias just the look of a man who is not likely to do anything of the kind. However, the " show " is well worth looking at, and better worth going to, because each person who pays for admission will get a present of some kind or other. It may be a silver watch, or a cigar, or a looking-glass, or a needle case, or a French polished washstand with toilette set complete. Just as it may or may not happen. The exhibition openg from two to ten to-morrow.