The Southern Cross. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. INVERCARGILL, SATURDAY, MAY 4. General News.

Southern Cross, Volume 9, Issue 5, 4 May 1901, Page 8

The Southern Cross. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. INVERCARGILL, SATURDAY, MAY 4. General News.

The Hon. Mr Seddon entered on his ninth: year as Premier on Wednesday last. Examinations for stationary engine drivers will be held at Invercargill at nine a.m. on Tuesday, 14th May. The balance-sheet of the Borough of Gladstone is advertised in this issue. Sunday, March 10, was the thirty-eighth anniversary of the wedding of the King and Queen.

The Ophir, with the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, is due at Melbourne on Monday.

Mr T. D. A. Moffett, grain, seed and produce broker, Esk inserts an announcement. Messrs Perrin and Murray notify that they can supply gravel for mixing concrete. The annual meeting of the Committee for the licensing district of Invercargill will be held on 7th June. It is expected that Corporal Vickery and Troopers Wallace and Henderson will reach Invercargill by Wednesday’s express.. The opinions of two medical men regarding, Jones’s Honey Pectoral are given in another column. The jury disagreed in the ease of Mrs Jana Smith, charged with the murder of P. Conway, and there is to be a new trial. A Southport clergyman has received £3. from His Majesty for the wife of a groom who had given birth to triplets. Bread has gone up. Mr R. Meredith intimates that owing to the advance in flour the price of the 41b loaf will be 3Jd for cash.

Mr Jas. Falconer has leased the Corporation baths, and will effect a number of improvements, including additional hot plunge baths. According to the Southern Standard’s correspondent, several Eiversdale residents have been suffering from a disease said to be British cholera. A sitting of the Assessment Court under the Government Valuation of Land Act will be held at Winton at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 14th May. The Bruce woollen mills, Milton, havebeen destroyed by fire, throwing about one hundred people out of work. The mills arete be rebuilt. The Eailway Department notify that time-tables may be seen at all post offices in outlying districts, and further that copies will be supplied for a year on receipt of a shilling,

One of the oldest businesses in the district —Mr T. McEwen’s bakerj and shop at Avenal—is for sale by Mr W. B. Scandrett.. The business was established on the North Hoad about 39 years ago, and the proprietor is retiring owing to ill-health.

Members of that veteran institution, the Southland Building Society, hold their annual meeting on Tuesday evening, 14th. hast. It is understood that a good year’s business has been done.

Eor a wager of half-a-crown, John Colling, wood, an ex-policeman, living at Cowton, Yorkshire, agreed to drint a bottle of whisky in a couple of draughts. He accomplished the feat, but died soon afterwards from alcoholic poisoning.

It is understood (states the British Weekly) that the following are the forms in which we are to pledge the loyal toasts during the reign of King Edward YII : —-His Majesty the King. Her Majesty Queen Alexandra the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, and the other members of the Royal Family.

The Eer. E. A. Bennett, a Maori clergyman and eloquent preacher, appointed by the Provincial Synod to promote a scheme for the higher educational and spiritual development of the native race, will preach at All Saints’ on Sunday morning, and at St. John’s at night.*

The Taieri Advocate suggests that the Mosgiel Borough Council should seek to carry out the following progressive policy : Eating on unimproved value. A gas or electric light scheme. A water supply. An efficient drainage scheme ; the septic tank system, if available. A municipal tramway service.

Miss Edith Wood, aged twenty-two years’ eldest daughter of Mr William Wood, J.P., of Dukinfield, was shot dead by her brother aged fifteen, whilst the family were sitting rouuu the fire talking. The boy was showing his small Derringer pistol, which was pointed towards his sister, when it suddenly went off.

About 300 people witnessed the chopping match in the Queen’s Park on Wednesday between O’Kouarke and Mitchell for £IOO and the championship o£ N.Z. He beat Mitchell, who did not finish, by fully 20 secs. Time, 4 min. 1 l-sth secs. Mr J. A. Mitchell, who was among the onlookers, agreed to start the men. The money paid for admission went to the Victoria Memorial Home fund.

Ambulances are to be provided by the London School Board to convey physically defective children to and from the schools, where a mid-day meal is to be given to them. Four schools are to be established for the poor little cripples in different parts of London.

The New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Co., limited, are in receipt of the following cable from their London office:— Wool. —The sales opened this day at a level of last sales for merino, fine crossbreds, and at an average decline of about 5 per cent on last sale’s closing rates for coarse crossbreds. Competition by both Home and foreign buyers is fairly active. A firm of Glasgow chemists who supplied wrong medicine to a merchant, causing him an illness of several months, were sued for damages, and set up the defence that the plaintiff had not taken any of the medicine. The judge denounced the defence as in effect adding insult to injury, and the plaintiff, who had twice inquired if the medicine were the right kind before taking a dose, was awarded £7OO damages.

Lecturing at Gore on Federation the other evening, Mr McNab, gave point to his remarks by the following illustration : As opportunity makes men, so men will not be made without opportunity. Federation supplies this opportunity, both in the number of questions and their importance. Had we not had a system under which a course lay open from the private soldier to the fieldmarshal, the telegraph operator at the Bluff could never have become the PostmasterGeneral of the colony, the introducer of the jaenny post into New Zealand, and the prime originator in the colonies of the Pacific cable.