NEWS ITEMS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8418, 18 January 1899, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS.

A woollen mill will probably soon be started in Invercargill by private enterprise. The buildings are already erected. ! The Otaki -Mail reports that quite a numiicr of local residents are sufl'erini* from a. mild form of what is known as the English cholera. The end of a bright career :— Mr Fred Maccabe, ventriloquist and society entertainer, is now an inmate of the Omskirk Workhouse. I There is (says a Nelson paper) great scarcity of several classes of labour in Nelson just now. The "K " jam factory has been shorthanded for some weeks ; in the rough carpentering department no men are to he had, nil those available in the district being employed on the work at the Railway Wharf. According to the Pahiatua Herald it is almost impossible just now to hire labour in that district for cither outdoor or domestic work. Domestic servants and farm bands are at a premium. The Bush Advocate (Dannevirke) tells the same story of difficulty in engaging laborers in Dannevirke. A strange and mysterious story reaches the Wairarapa Standard from Papawai. On Thursday afternoon a tangi was held over the supposrd death of an infant. The parents and friends were weeping and wailing to their heart's content, and arrangements were all in ordei for the little one's interment. The fiicnds in mourning had all gathered together, and were having a last look at the child, when a rangitirn. thought he observed a twitch in the sleeper's face. Quickly summoning hot water and bandages, be bathed the throat and body of the supposed corpse, and in ,i few minutes the child opened its eyes and smiled at the astonished crowd. Their excitement and joy knew no bounds, and for a time they really believed the visitor li.i'l ]ip] formed a miracle. The chile] had Lten in a tumue.

The Three Springs Estate, ir, the Timnm district, has been offered to the Government by the National Mortgage and Agency Company. There is no necessity, says the North Otago Times, far the Government to bunt up land, as nearly every big estate in the colony is under offer to them. The complete moa's egg, found Ir.st month in the well hole of a dredge on the Molynoux, Otago, lii.k been purchased to be added to Rothschild's world-renowned collection. It is understood, however, that the Government are endeavoring to secure the detention of the egg in the colony. At the Christcburcb Magistrate's Court Gilbert and Robert Lennox were committed for trial on a charge of stealing 91 slieep, value £-15 10s, the property of \V. Acton Adams. Charles Lcnnmi was committed for trial on a charge of stealing 28 sheep, also the property of W. Acton Adams. The temporary repairs which are necessary to the P. and O. Co.'s steamer China, lately stranded on the Island of Perim, at the entrance to the Red Sea, to England, are extensive, and as they have to be carried out to a large extent by divers, they have necessarily occupied a great deal of time, but it is anticipated that she will shortly be ready to commence her voyage homewards, steaming with her own machinery. As soon as she arrives she will be placed in the hands of her builders, Messrs Harland and Wolff, of Belfast, so that she may be restored in every way to the state of efficiency of a new vessel. It is estimated that it will cost £75,000 to refloat and repair this vessel. ToaFrenchman studying English nothing is so hard to acquire as the idiom — the very part of the language which comes most natural to a native. The difficulties of our tongue in this respect are illustrated by the following dialogue between a foreigner ami his English master : — " When you give a thing," asked the foreigner, "you cannot keep it too, can you V" " Certainly not." "But when an honest man gives you bis word, he, of course, always keeps it, doesn't he?" "Certainly." " But when he gives his word how does he keep it? Does he take it back?" "Certainly not. When an honest man gives his word he never takes it back." " But if he keeps it he does not give it?" "Why, certainly he does. Because if he doesn't keep his word lie is no longer an honest man." " Oh, I begin to see ! Having given his word, and never taken it back, lie keeps it all the while ? " " Certainly." " What a beautiful language is the English ! !J

American newspaper enterprise is a thing to be spoken of with reverence and ! with awe. On the night when Theodore Roosefelt was declared to have beaten the r Tammany candidate, Van Wj'cfc for the Governorship of New York, the New York Journal (which lias a mild circulation of a million and a quarter a day) entertained its clients between result waits with band | playing, a pyrotechnic display, cinemetographe exhibitions, etc., etc. , at a cost of ' thousands of dollars. Roosefelt's cowboys ' were the heroes of the war, and to this ' their intrepid commander owed a great ' deal of his popularity, and probably his ' election. As showing the quaint manias ' which take possession of the Americans at a time of popular excitement, it may be mentioned thot small models of " the hat that Teddy wore" (meaning Roosefelt's r officer's head-covering worn at Cuba) were f sold in the streets of New York on the i night of his election. Mr Yerex, who was j present on the occasion, says that the scene when the final result was declared was pandemonium, with specifications for additions and improvements. A Fall Mall Gazette correspondent has [ been enquiring into the sale of fiction and > general literature nowadays. He finds ' that Scott keeps his high place, but 1 Dickens and Thackeray are on the wane. Their once high position in public favor * is now held by Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Charlotte Bronte, and such ■j writers as Miss Braddon and the author of "East Lynne," while the young and the giddy and the uncritical still call for j Ouida, The eighteenth-century novelists are going out of fashion, but Smollett and * Fielding have still some admirers. Swift I and Laurence Sterne, once all the fashion, i are now comparatively neglected. It is 1 going hard with the poets, but Tennyson 1 is the most popular. Byron, Russell - Lowell, and Browning are fairly well read, , but ihe E-reat epic poet of all time, Milton, is not much enquired after, nor are the Lake poets or Tom Hood. With regard j to travels, the works of Lord Curzon of Kedleston on India and the Far East hold 7 a very high place with the reading public, and since his lordship's appointment the 7 sale has very considerably increased. Mark Twain' recently contributed a t characteristic paper, entitled " About Play-acting," to the Forum. He had I been to see "The Master of Palmyra in Vienna," and was struck by the depth and I truth of what he calls a great and stately j metaphysical poem. It moved him to a moralise on life to-day and in the past, ' and to reflect on " this picturesque failure '. of civilisation." Ancient civilisation was not able wholly to subdue the natural man, ' and to-day the spectacle of ,i shipwrecked French crew, clubbing women and children who tried to climb into the lifeboats, suggests that modern civilisation has not ' accomplished much more. " A year ago, . in Paris, at a fire," he says, " the aristocracy of the same nation clubbed girls and women out of the way to save them- ' selves. Civilisation bested at top and bottom both, you see." All this leads up to a ' project that Mark Twain wishes to advertise. He runs through the li3t of plays ' staged during the year in New York, and finds it composed entirely of the lighter * forms of amusement. The world needs a . tonic, he thinks. " You are trying to ' make yourself believe that life is a comedy," says the humorist to his reader ; " that its sole business is fun, that there is nothing serious in it. You are ignoring the skeleton in your closet." New York t ought to have one theatre devoted entirely ; to tragedy, so that its people might learn > some necessary lessons. We are eating too l much mental sugar, he thinks, and will - bring on " Brighb'a disease of the intellect." ; "Do I seem to be preaching?" he asks. f "It is out of my line ; I only do it because : the rest of the clergy seem to be on vacar tion." I luve asked a good many officers (writes ! "Labby" in Truth) what their profesl sional opinion of the Sirdar is. It seems , to be this : He is a good organiser, but by ' no means an able manccuvrer or strategist. i At the Battle of Omdurman, the cavalry t charge which resulted in a considerable loss was due to his want of ability on the ' field of battle ; for had his manoeuvres k been rightly conducted it would have been j unnecessary. Personally, he does not ; manage to make himself popular either , with officers or men. When he announced, t atter Khartoum had been taken, that those ' officers who had temporarily joined his ' f army might return home, to his surprise j almost all of them availed themselves of , this permission. His chief quality is a dogged persistency, much of the same j character as that which distinguished | Gcnoral Grant. When ho said that he ' and his army would be at a given place on , a given day, he and the army were there. t But he made too much of this clockwork ', exactitude, and in carrying it out he did not pay sufficient attention to keeping his army together, troops in the rear being often far behind those forming the advance guard. His line of advance was, in the opinion cf these officers, far too long, and had the Dervishes been possessed of a : knowledge of strategy it \. ould have been - cut more than once. Against all this it . may, however, bo said that a good general t takes into consideration the character of , his enemy, and he does not adopt the same j tactics when opposed to Dervishes as when opposed by European troops under the command of skilled European officers. "The tendency in America and Eng- " land nowadays," said v returned Welliuctoniun to a "Times" reporter, "is To form a combination of business interests in t order that they may be conducted on n - large scale. Companies are promoted for 3 the sale of bicycles, ready-made clothing, : patenUooth-pcks— anything ; with capital 3 ranging from thousands to millions. In - London, for instance, there is the ' Kodak, J Limited,' formed with a capital of ■ £1, 800,000, to sell the kodak in British .' territory. 'Bovril, Limited,' is another i' example, and ' Himlcs, Limited,' which re--3 stricts itself to the output of hair curlers, . illumines Trafalgar square each night with : its electric light advertisement. ' Kalo, ! Limited,' turns out an unmentionable number of ladies' knickerbockers every . year. John Wannemaker's establishment in New York has five miles of counter. [ His employees number thousands, and are , fed, clothed and given a higher education ' on the premises between times. Wannemaker devotes his time to politics as well as to business, and was recently Post-master-General of the United States. He boasts also that he is the teacher of the ' biggest Sunday -school in the world ' 4900 pupils. Recognising that sweet are the uses of advertising, lie publishes a paper all on bis own account. The result of all this monopoly is to crush out the little man, but it, makes for good goods at a cheap rate in the majority of instances, and this brings about universal benefaction." So says our friend, who has seen the system in operation. Perhaps, after all, the world is to bo saved by the Socialist of Monopoly !— N.Z. Times.

At a dinner in London a few years ago Mr Gladstone was sketching a stirring scene in the House of Commons in the early forties. Lord (irnnvillewanagiio.it at tlic dinner, and was in the Commons at the timu of the events to which Gladstone referred. " Did you lake part in the division," asked Mr Gladstone of Lord (Iranvillc. "I'm sure I don't know," replied Lord Granville ; "1 can't remember whether I did or not." " Not remember,"' fairly shouted Gladstone ; "why it was only 48 years ago!"