Page 3 Advertisements Column 4

Observer, Volume XIV, Issue 794, 17 March 1894, Page 3

Jabez Balfour says he has ' entire confidence in the justice of God.' Which reminds us of Uriah Heep when he was in gaol. Jabez knows the value of the pions dodge. It is about the only oard he has left to play now and he'll play it like an artist. Sir T. Mcllwraith, speaking at the Colonial Institute said : ' The fear of the growth of Republicanism in Australia was a mere sentimental dread.' And yet Sir Thomas, aa an old colonist, must know that the feeling he referred to grows stronger every day. Said Rev. J. Baker, Congregational minister, at Christohuroh parochial meeting the other night: 'If prohibition became the law of the land to-morrow I should be one of the first to break the law, as I do not like my liberty interfered with. (Groans.) Sir Edwin Arnold says : *It is remarkable how few of us have ever been really thirsty throughout life.' Sir Edwin ought to come to the colonies if he wants to make the acquaintance of * really thirsty people. Some of the up-country accommodation houses could enlighten him! : A Melbourne soft goods man named Butler won a .£20,000 prize in a Queensland Building Society lottery the other day, and now the religious * organs ' want him to refuse to accept this windfall, as his acceptance would lure the young employees of the firm into temptation and to their destruction.' Butler doesn't ace it, up to date. Sir Walter Builer says he took Home his Maori curios with the idea of plaoing them in the New Zealand Court of the Imperial Institute. * I soon found, however/ he added, that an exhibit of this sort would scarcely be in harmony with the scope and object of the Institute.' Query ; What is the scope and object of the Institute r At latest advices it threatened to be leg-shows. John Allender, whose death from a tumour on the brain was announced by telegram from Wellington this week, was an Aucklander of old standing. Thirty years ago, he was the proprietor of a flourishing eoap and candle business in Darnell and subsequently he went South and engaged in business in Canterbury and latterly m Wellington. He was a man of most estimable qualities, and was held in B e j* ™ * ?, Bteem b y a large oircle of friends. Mr Allender was a brother-in-law of Mr Prater, of Auckland. He was a consistent and exemplary worker in the Presbyterian Church. Lord Rosebery, about the only peer m England who cares the butt-end of a cigarette about the ' blawsted colonies,' says, it is really a political crime that the news which is telegraphed from the centre of the Empire to its remotest limits is not more accurately chosen.' Why cert nly ! The cableman sends ub those Iu Ulfir8 *iT c don^. y ant to read and omits thoße things which we want to read in a way that fills us with a wild desire t» wallow m his vital fluid. He sends us lengthy messages re the blackguards of the pnze-ring, and fills us up with nauseating Divorce Court details and Eoyal betrothals, births, deaths, and marriages. But on topics of real interest he is as dumb as an oyster. The Mackenzies' and the MacDonalds' and that ilk are powerful and numerous m the ranks of New Zealand ship-captams. There are dozens of Mackenzies in the master mariner business, about these seas, and they nearly all oome Jk° m A y l a $St x^r '. he other Captain Murdoch McKenzie was married in Auokland to Misb Lillie McKenzie, daughter of the late Captain Kenneth McKenzie, of Auckland and Waipu. The bride's brother is a ship master-and a smart one, too— like his father before him. Either the bride or her sister was wrecked with her late father some years ago in the Auckland bngantme Borealis, off the Queensland coast, and she behaved with unusual pluckmess. The Mac's are in great force on the quarter-deck (as well as in the engine-room) all over the world and they can t be beat.' The stay of young Baird. of Gartsherry, at the Northern Club, was of very limited duration, but we are informed that he intends to pay us a more extended visitHe was a cousin of the well-known ' Abington' Baird (Golden Shore). We suppose it would be young Baird's grandfather who gave halt-a-million sterling to the established church of Scotland. In connection with that gift a very good story is told of the late Jamie Merry, a well-known sportsman, who happened to meet Mr Baird in Glasgow. Twitting him with his halfmillion grant to the church as a kind of fire-insurance' spec, Jamie asked him what he knew about religion. * Why,' said Jamie, * I'll bet you £50 that you can't even say the Lord'B prayer,' or repeat a verse from soripture.' ' Done,' said Baird, and immediately repeated Jihe first verse of the 23rd psalm. Jamie at onoe wrote out a cheque for the amount of the wager, remarking » I didn't think you could do it.