LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 67, 24 July 1913, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

A full rehearsal of “The Pirates of Penzance” is to he held at the Town Hall this evening.

Afc the Court this morning a firstoffending drunkard was fined ss. Mr J. Black, J.P., was on the bench.

The latest addition to the local telephone bureau is No. 108, the private residence of Mr Cecil \\ right, solicitor.

A man named George Cann appeared at the Court this morning before Mr J. Black, J.P., and was remanded to appear at Hawera to-mor-row on a charge of misappropriating £1 13s at Norman by.

To find the child smoker to-day : one should go to Holland brays a 1 London paper). To the English \isi-j tor the parental sanction of such in-| dulgence is one of the most striking features of Dutch life. And it is | not the frivolous cigarette that is poplilar in the nursery. One sees the family out for its walk, and the boy of eight walks sedately at his mother’r side pulling at a cigar every I it as big as father’s. Theoretically smoking' stunts the growth, but the naked eye fails to detect any point in which Dutch physique is inferior to oui s. Which only goes to show that the naughty boy does not always get his deserts.

A medical inspector of schools recently bemoaned the decline in the consumption of porridge, says the! Medical Press. “Nothing,” it says, j “is more governed by fashion and: custom than the choice of food. Were] porridge eating to come into fashion] there would be no need to preach | its virtues to any class of society,! it would, in a trice, become* popular as tea and tobacco from the humble cottage to the lordly palace. So far as eugenics are concerned, the general introduction of porridge—one of the most valuable of foodstuffs—would in a single generation do more to improve our race than a hundred years of popular agitation.” Why not begin, asks our contemporary, with the school children?

It would be difficult to imagine Mr 1 Asquith moving the* adjournment of the House in order to give members a chance of seeing the Derby, yet this (says a writer in a Homo paper) is what Mr Gladstone did in 1872. He did more—he defended the adjournment against the arguments of Mr Thomas Hughes, who pointed out that as the House had recently decided to sit as usual on Ascension Day, it would be absurd to sacrifice a whole day to the festival of the Turf. Mr Gladstone agreed that gambling, was a great evil, b|it he nevertheless saw in the Derby “a noble, manly, cis-( tinguished, and, he m,ight almost say, historically national sport.” For the first time for 36 years the House sat on Derby Day in 1882;,’ but it was an Irish Coercion Bill that detained them, and it was agreed that the regrettable incident should not be taken as a precedent. But nowadays Parliamentary time has risen in value.

In conversation with an Otago Daily Times reporter, Mr Rylands, chief engineer of the steamer Havre, spohe very highly in praise of his Chinese assistants, and in proof of their regard for the machinery which they assist to keep in a high state of working efficiency, he stated that on several occasions when the steamer was being badly buffeted by heavy seas his men had burned insense among the machinery to appease the wrath of evil spirits. “They would not smoke on this ship for £IOO while the hatches are open,” he subsequently remarked, and he also stated that he never had any occasion to remind them of dangers to be apprehended from benzine cargoes, of which they were always most careful. As the men were extremely sensitive to rebuke from their superior officers, the latter had to he very certain of their.facts before taking them to task for anything, but when convinced of the justness of the complaint they submitted with their customary Oriental stoicism.

I The frequency with which the firei bell rings in Timaru has evidently got on the nerves of some people, to | such an extent that they can see fires where none exist, says the local “Her- ' aid.” An alarm was given the other i night from the corner of Queen and 1 High streets. The clanging of the | hell suggested that a serious outbreak had occurred, and repeated statements to the effect that the drill-shod was in flames caused considerable excitement. The Fire Brigade turned out promptly, but on reaching the drillshed went further on to a spot where the fire was said to be, namely, in Charles Street. Here again no fire was in evidence, and for a few moments the brigade were nonplussed. Then a man volunteered the information that he had given the alarm, and exhibited a badly cut hand that had been injured in breaking the glass of the alarm box. When asked why he had given the alarm ho replied: “Oh. 1 saw a good bit more smoke coming out of one of those chimneys than I thought ought to bo coming out of it.” On being further questioned as to which chimney, he waved his undamaged arm in a circle that took in nearly every chimney in the neighbourhood, and said: “One of those, I am not sure which.” On finding beyond doubt that their anticipations of a

conflagration wore not to ho realised, tho crowd dispersed, apparently not to well pleased at having had a hard ran for nothing.

The following Stratford team meet Xgacre in to-morrow's cribbage match —T. Lawson, C. Kelly, H. Jones, W. Clifton, H. Trotter, W. Collins, W. 11 van, J. Harston, J. McMahon, T. Colson, J. Jones, J. Mills, A. Speck, C. Speck.

L'p to yesterday afternoon Dr. Paget had vaccinated seven hundred persons since the outbreak of the smallpox scare, in spite of the fact that for two days he was unable to operate owing to the fact that the supply of lymph did not come to hand. A large supply, however, has now reached him, and the work is proceeding as merrily as ever.

“I travel about a lot, and I find that it is quite a rarity to find a Native driving at night with a light.” remarked Mr W. A. Barton, S.M., at the Gisborne Police Court the other day, when dealing with William Babington, a Native, charged with driving a vehicle without lights along a road at Matawhero. “The practice is greatly prevalent amongst Natives, and is a dangerous one,” continued * His Worship. “You will be fined £1 and 7s costs.”