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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2144, 17 November 1875, Page 2

A meeting of persons interested in the Waio-Karaka drainage was held at the Pacific Hotel this morning, at which Mr Murray, agent of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Company was* present. This meeting has obviated the necessity of His Worship the Mayor calling the meeting as he intended, as the matter has now been got under weigh by a conference of the persons directly interested. A report of the meeting appears elsewhere.

Apiece of footpath l'ecently repaired by the Borough Council on the Beach at Shortland had a narrow escape of being washed away last night, the high tide having undermined the newly finished work and carried dow;n some of the gravel. Unless something is done to better secure the improvement effected, it will not see many high tides before it is as bad as ever it was. The job was altogether of too flimsy a character to stand for any length of time ; showing a false economy which the Council would do well to avoid.

Me Feank Weston, after an absence of three years and a-half, appeared again before a very large audience in the Academy of Music yesterday evening. The real purpose which Mr Weston had in giving what must be called his entertainment —as entertainment it most undoubtedly was — was, as he frankly declared, to advertise the merits of his celebrated "wizard oil," and this he considered he could do far better by a mixture of humorous anecdotes, comic songs and " banjoizings," interspersed with short speeches setting forth the virtues of the said oil, than by giving a long dissertation on its healing powers, which, as he said, probably very few would care to listen to. Mr Weston certainly succceeded in his endeavours to amuse, as the continued laughter and applause testified. It was not so much the actual pith of his remarks which drew forth their laughter as the droll, quaint manner in which he spoke. His comic songs were eminently comic, and he played the banjo sometimes with one hand, sometimes with two, in a manner that is seldom heard or seen.

A shoet time since (says the Waitanga Tribune) a small dog belonging to Mr L. Price, storekeeper, Waimate, was missing, and, after an absence of four or five days, returned to its home in a wretched state. The poor little thing could scarcely crawl, having had its hind-quarters completely roasted, and ife is supposed that some inhuman wretch must have hung it up by the neck while he or she made a fire under the little animal. The dog existed, in great pain, until the day after reaching its home, when- it died. The harmless little creature was last seen in a sound state on the bush road near M'Bae's mill, and it is to be hoped that the villain who practised his fiendish trick on a more intelligent animal than himself will speedily be breught to justice.

The Otago Guardian of the Bth instant says :—The usual quarterly meeting of the Otago Typographical Association was held at the Provincial Hotel, Stafford street, on Saturday evening, 48 members being present. During the evening, the starting of a New Zealand Typographical Journal was mooted, and it was resolved that such a publication should be issued, No. 1 to appear on January 1,1876. Mr J. H. Cuttle was appointed editor, and all matters connected with the starting of the publication left in that gentleman's hands. It will be issued monthly, the price being 3d. per copy; and there seems to be every probability of the journal proving a success. , '

The Australasian of the 30th October comments on the recent customs fraud in Auckland and its suppression by the Press in the following terms :—Whatever may have been the motive which induced the newspapers of Auckland to conspire to suppress all notice of an important case in which a merchant was fined for gross fraud on the Qustoms, it is evident that' the- proceeding' was a serious mistake. The reason assigned for this extraordinary cpnduct is said to be a concern for the fair fame' of the Auckland mercantile community. But this is to reverse tho sole end and object of journalism. The duty of the journalist is to supply news, not to suppress it; to do justice by-telling the truth, not to attempt to shelter, damaged reputations by concealing it. Why should not the misdeeds of Mr Moss Levy" be reported as fairly and openly as those of any common offender? The idea that the fair fame of the Auckland mercantile community as a whole would suffer by the discovery that one of it's .members was convicted of i fraud is as absurd as to suppose that matters would be improved by smothering the report of the case. Such a course naturally would only give occasion for the most exaggerated rumours, that would represent the affair to be very much worse even than it actually was. Mbreover, there was something that those newspapers should have cherished much more carefully than the fair fame of the mercantile community—and that is their own. They were under no special responsibility as regards the. former, but with the latter the case was very different. And how does this stand now ? We should imagine that the course they took must have had the result of occasioning in the mind of the public a deep and abiding distrust of the honesty and independence of journals which could combine to conceal the wrong-doing of a wealthy defendant, while they give all prominence to the charges against common offenders. If such a feeling should exist, and should prove to be an enduring one, the journals which suffer by it in influence and power and popularity have only themselves to blame.

" Raffling a Bishop " is the heading of a paragraph in which the Maryborough Advertiser says :— " The visit of Dr Thornton, Bishop of Ballarat, to Maryborough, is an event not altogtber unattended with difficulties, one of the chief being the allotment of the surrounding places which are to have the' honor of having a real live lord bishop amongst them for the space of a few hours. There, for instance, is Carrisbrook and Chinaman's. It would, no doubt, bo very desirable that the bishop should visit both these places, but the time at his disposal necessitates the relegating of one of them into the shade. To determine which it should be, a raffle took place on Friday lasfc, and; the bishop was won by the Rev. Mr Geer, for Chinaman's after a close shave with Carrisbroolc, who at one time nearly carried off the honor. The bishop will therefore go. to Chinaman's, and preach at St. John's Church, according to the arrangement made by the dice box."