LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 69, 13 July 1914, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Owing to the broken weather on Sunday afternoon., the Municipal Band found it impossible to give the concert advertised to be held in Victoria Park. In view of previous disappointments it is understood that the Band intends in future to render a programme in Victoria Park on any Sunday on which the weather is fine enough.

In view of the closing of nominations on Wednesday for the Carnival Queen contest a considerable degree of activity is being displayed by those concerned. The Contest Executive will tonight meet representatives of the A. and P. Association, the Horticultural Society, and the Operatic Society, and to-morrow they meet delegates from the friendly societies.

There was a big gathering of delegates from the sports clubs on Saturday evening to choose a candidate for Carnival Queen, the hockey, cricket, football, gun, swimming, motor-cycle, racing and golf clubs and the Mountain Club and Acclimatisation Society being represented. From seven nominations Miss M. Hignett was chosen as the sports candidate, and those present were formed into a committee to further her interests. Mr E. S. Ruth2rfurd was elected to represent the sports committee on the executive.

Whereas a few years ago motoring ,vas considered either a craze or a luxury, it is now very apparent from the number of cars and motor vehicles me encounters everywhere, that the notor is fast coining into its own and is being looked.upon by the community generally not as a white elephant, but is a fond necessity, commercially and iocially. As further evidence of this uid also of the increasing popularity >f the Studebaker cars, the Stratford gents (Mr Newton King) report having last week, disposed of five of these nodeni cars in this district, and two more in New Plymouth.

So groat was the crush at the Dundin Botanic Gardens the other mornig to see Miss Ellen Terry, the Eug'ish actress, plant a tree in the Shakespeare Garden, that the rustic bridge 'irokon down and shot a dozen or twenty persons into the watercourse. Luckily it was dry. and nobody was hurt. Mis< Terry, in the course of her remarks, said': "In return for the pleasure you have given me this morning, may 1 ask you to accept a little gift? Here are some violets to plant in your Shakespeare Garden, some white double violets. J give them with my love, remembering that Shakespeare says, 'Never anything can be amiss when ximpleness and duty tender it. Goodbye, my friend*, and bood-by«, my tre», and may all the saint* have you in their keeping.' "

j Another of the series of euchre parties is to be given this evening under the auspices of the Oddfellows' Lodge. The first practice for juveniles in connection with the Fire Brigade's annual ball is to be held at the fire station on Thursday next at 3.30 p.m. A meeting of ladies will be held at the same place at 3 p.m. i The "Waterside Workers' Union at Auckland, at a meeting attended by about six hundred members,, expressed the unanimous opinion that a permanent staff similar to that proposed on the Wellintgon waterfront was against the interests of unionism and of both the. workers and the shipping companies. The executive were empowered (states the Press Association) to take any steps necessary to oppose the new arrangement so far as it would interfere with the working conditions existing at Auckland, where the utmost good-feeling at present exists between the Union and the employers.