NEWS ITEMS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12467, 17 February 1909, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS.

The children of the new council schools at Bedworth, Warwickshire, paid £300 into a penny bank during . last year. The amount represents . 6695 depositors. . ' „ Through a box of crackers catching fire on December 29th in the mail van of a. train between Bremen and Oldenburg, the van and £150 worth of .New. Year gifts were destroyed. To date the subscription received towards the erection of a" children's ward at the Christchurch Hospital total £3250. There are still a number of returns to come in. The Oamaru "Mail" has forwarded direct to London, through the Secretary of the Treasury, £100 in aid of < the Children's Bread Fund. A remarkable freak is reported from Sunderland, where • a boy named Charles Dixon, ten years ..old, respectably connected, is suddenly seized with a wander craze.- Without warning lie starts off and- covers on foot part of England, and sometimes j of Scotland, being away many-weeks * together. He starts penniless and returns ragged, emaciated, hungry, and almost bootless. His mind, too, is a blank. He returned the other night to his anxious parents after a month's absence. John Burns. hates nothing so. much as the thought of the English working man becoming a prey to that cringing shirking pauperisation which Keir Hardie holds out as the highest social - . ideal. John Burns wishes to see the working man brave, upright, and j above -illj: independent.— "Harper's Weekly." y - I From London comes the account of 'the first meeting presided oyer by England's first woman Mayor. Tlious- ! ahds of women stood cheering [and waving handkerchiefs as a f rail little ■ i grey haired old lady, in white cap. ■ black dress aud white shawl, stepped on to the platform. It was Mrs Gar-rett-Anderson, M.D., of Aldeburg, England's first woman Mayor, who took the chair at a meeting of profesI sional and industrial women in support of female suffrage. A bagpipes story was told by. tbe Rev. T. Tait at tbe annual conversazione in connection r with St. Haul's Church, Christchurch. He said that a Seotclinun who was dying was taken to a : hospital" and placed in a ward with 15 other patients. He san k rapidly, and his fneods were in despair,, until one of them suggested the bagpipes. The idea was acted .upon at once. A pipar was brought inland walked up and down the ward playing pibrochs, - latnsnts and dirges with -almost su-: peraaturai skill. Soon the sheets of the Scotchman's Ded. began to move, twitching3 were seen where, his feet protruded,,, and then ".-'lte . sheet was thrown up, the feet a;pearedj and tha man arose from tho bed and began'to beat time with bis feet on. tha floor. His cure wps as complete as it was rapid and unexpected, and he quiokly recovered -.-, his good health. But. all the other 15' patients were found to be dead! I Watts had painted Carlyle' s por- ' , trait. When the, picture was flushed : Watts reriioved the screen and asked j Carlyle how he liked . it? ' Carlyle : I looked at it, and then said to Watts,- : ! "Mon, I. would have ye know lam in : the habit of wurrih' clean lunen/' ; On another occasion when' Carlyle • went to Whistler to sit for his port- : rait he remarked, "Now, mon, fire • away.". That was not Whistler's.: idea of how it should be done, when : Carlyle remarked, "If ye' re- fighting • . battles or painting pictures the only " thing to do is to fire away.'' : i - y' -. '■' : y There ia a rumour of. trouble, at : Panama. It is said that the wonder- ; ful Gatun dam, which was to hold * back one of the greatest of the arti- * ficial water levels of the ocean to ocean ditch is an engineering impossibility. It is planned upon soft earth and from the begnning some of our best engineers have been sceptic ',-cal'bf this part of the scheme. Becently a section of the Gatun dam foundations collapsed, flooding a portion -of the work and causing; loss of life,-, ahd this accident has yocussed pubiic attention upon this feature oi the work. So sharp, is the national interest 'upon the work that Mr Taft will make a trip to the Isthmus, accompanied by, expert engineers of his own choosing within the next month, in order to satisfy himself as to the progress of the work.