ATHLETIC.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8791, 29 May 1890, Page 2

ATHLETIC.

ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEETING IN SYDNEY. CHAMPION MATCHES. New Zealand has sent a team of amateur athletes to Sydney to do batttle on her behalf for championship honors against New South Wales, Queensland, and Adelaide. We have sent to Australia cricketers, footballers, and rowing men, all of .whom have acquitted themselves with credit to the 'and of their adoption, and, judging from all accounts, our athletic representatives promise well to triumph over their Australian cousins on May 31, the date of the New _ South Wales Amateur Athletic Association's Championship Meeting. I The events on the championship proj gramme will be taken in the following order : — Heats 120 yds handicap, one mile walk, half-mile flat, 220 yds all schools, high jump, 100 yds flat, one mile, three miles bicycle, 120 yds hurdles, quarter-mile flat, throe miles walk, 220 yds, long jump, three miles Hat, final 120 yds handicap. The New Zealand teum consists of H. M. Reeves, Christchurch ; R. B. Lusk, Auckland ; J. H Hempton, Invercargill ; M'Kelvey, Dunedin; P. Morrison, Timaru ; L. A. Cuff, Christchurch; D. Wood, Christchurch ; and F. White, Hawke's Bay.

|PBB PRESS ASSOCIATION.] Sydney, May 28.— The Now Zealand athletic team are in active training. J. H. Hempton is not running well, but H. M. Reeves has improved ; E. B. Lusk and F. White are expected to make a great race in the hurdles; P. Morrison is the fittest man of the team, and the only competitor likely to push him is Fergusson, of Queensland; McKelvie is believed to have a really good thing in the walking events.

A Bill has been recommended to the United States House of Representatives, under which the ' Frisco Mail Service wil, be subsidised to the extent of about 34,000 dollars per annum.

It is said that poverty is not a crime, but if, says the Napier Telegraph, we view the proverb in the light of the sentence a lad named John Mordin received the other day in Dunedin from one of the justices there, our faith in the saying will be greatly shattered. The lad, it .-eems, sought the shelter of a stable to sleep in, in preference to walking the streets all night or sleeping on the town belt. For this he was brought before a jujtice, and received the sentence of four months' imprisonment vrith hard labor ! This ia justices' justice with a vengeance. The lad was not a vagrant in the ordinary acceptance of the term, nor yet did he creep in amongst the straw in the stable with any worse intention than sleeping theie. Nevertheless the justice dealt with him as if ho were a hardene I criminal, and as if he had gone there with evil intent. There is little wonder that the Minister of Justice has been asked to release the lad. It was a shame to send him amongst criminals in the gaol in the first place, and it will be a greater shame if he is not at once granted his liberty. Only the other day a recent arrival in Melbourne from New Zealand was robbed of his watch and chain (with violence), and the robber, on being captured, was sentenced to four months' imprisonment, exactly the sentence meted out to young Mordin for sleeping in a stable ! Is there any similarity in the crimes ? Weighed in the scales that the Dunedin justice evidently .uses, the Melbourne criminal should have received about ten years for his offence.

Professor Cook, of Harvard College, is one of the most popular instructors in the university. One of his lectures is devoted to dangerous explosives, and ia stir always goes, over the room when he picks up a bottle labelled nitro-glycerine. His smile is as innocent as a child's, and it reveals the most genial and sympathetic natnre in Harvard College. When he picks up the bottfe and holds it up, the yellow liquid stirring with the shaking of his hands, he always says something like this — " Now, gentlemen, it is commonly believed that if I were to drop this little, bottle we should all be blown to the skies (his hand trembles a little more, and timid freshmen look longingly at the door), but if this compound is pure, perfectly pure, mind you, I can light a match with perfect Lifety, and thrust it down the neck of the bottle." Here he feels xor a match. " But," he instantly adds, " I am free to confess that I have not enough confidence in its purity to try the experiment." Many sighs of relief and one of the professor's divine smiles.

Madame Patti hissed off the stage ! Can such things be ? The incident happened at Valencia. She had refused to rehearse with the tenor, and when night came and in the duet ("Traviata " was being played) she waS imperfect, and the Spaniards hissed her. After this she was thoroughy put out and sang her last air, " Morir si giovano " without energy or spirit ; and the public fancying she did it on purpose, rose to the occasion, gallery, pit, stalls, hissed her off the stage so that she rushed off in her costume, never took the time to inform Nicolini, who sat in the dressing room guarding her diamonds and dresses, but drove home in all haste, protected by the police, and then off to Madrid.

During a recent performance at one of the Paris theatres a man and his wife had to quarrel on the stage — the woman in a rage of jealousy, the man trying to persuade her that she was too suspicious and too passionate ; both were acting with great spirit, when the wife moved her arm too near the candle and her muslin dress was in flames in an instant. Both actors kept their heads, however; the husband extinguished the fije, and proceeding with his part, interpolated, " You see, my dear, I was right; you are ready to flare up for the least thing." Captain Barnard, of the Salvation Army, after being lame for a prolonged period, through a severe affection of the knee, was cured by Renshaw's, Monarch of Pain when" doctors failed. — Advt.

The real name of "Rolf Boldrewood,' the author of the now popular " Robbery Under Arms," and other Australian stories, is not Valentine Browne (as has been stated), but Thomas Alexander Browne. He is the police magistrate and coroner in charge of the Albury district of New South Wales. Valentine Brown is a colonial celebrity of a totally different character. He is the Civil servant who obtained £1000 damages for a libellous picture in Melbourne Punch. It having transpired in Parliament that the Mr V . B, was a postal official with a handsome salary and nothing to do, Mr Punch improved the occasion by representing Mr V. B. standing in the corridor of the General Post Office with protruded tongue, as a sort of animated stamp-moistener, a hint to the authorities that his services might be profitably utilised in that manner. For this little pictorial joke Mr V. B. brought an action against Mr Punch and won it.

Two men discussing the wonders of modern science ; said one — " Look at astronomy, now I men have learned the distance of the stars ; and with the spec troscope, what they are made of." " Yes," said the other ; "but strangest of all to me is how they found out all their names."

A new " water curtain " intended for use in o|ise of fire has been tried. Numerous jets of water can be turned down at will from the flies, and this forms a complete sheet upon which colored lights are made to play during the intervals with beautiful effect. The water is carried away by a trough PMoia.Uy congtiugfecl {or the pu>