News and Notes.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 5249, 21 April 1908, Page 1

News and Notes.

Fish stories, from visions of the sea serpent to descriptions of the biggest fish of the season that “ got away,” are commonly received with slight incredulity. Yet, if there is anything in the law of averages, they must sometimes be true. This one—which is also a golf story—has behind it the authority of St. James' Budget. —“ When driving to the fourth green on Newark golf course a local solicitor sent his bail into the River Devon and killed a two pound tish. Doth ball and fish were found together, the latter bearing marks of its injury.” The managers of London theatres are trying to extinguish the “deadhead/' They say that the number of people who get free tickets for the theatres is on the increase. A “ deadhead ” has put the other side of the questiun to a representative of the Daily Mail. He says: “We are jolly useful to the managers sometimes. It’s like this. A manager produces r new piece. The public don’t take to it at all, perhaps, and if the manager didn’t invite us he might as well close his theatre. Instead of doing that, ho fills it with us, and by degrees people notice that the theatre is full every night, and they say to themselves that the piece must be doing good business, aud then they pay to oome in, and the theatre manager smiles.” In some reminiscences of an eminent counsel, St. James's Budget says:—Whole books have been written on the art of cross-examination, hut Lockwood gave one simple wrinkle worth many a chapter of printed matter. “Never continue the cross-exam-ination,” he said, “if you Bee the judge shew the slightest disposition to do it himself. If you see the judge inclined to take up the running, let him do it.” Judges like it, and like counsel who do not oppose the practice. For reexamination “ the putting HumptyDumpty together again,” as he called it, Lockwood told not so much what to do as what not to do. In the Chancery Court, he said, a witness was asked in cross-examination whether it was tiue that he had been committed of perjury. The witness admitted the soft impeachment, and the crossexamining counsel promptly sat down. It fell then to the equally eminent counsel on the other side to reexamine. “Yes,” said this gentleman, “it is true that you have been convicted of perjury, but tell me : Have you not on many other occasions been accused of perjury and been acquitted ?”

The new Archbishop of Paris, in succession to the late Cardinal Richard (says the Westminster Gazette) has now got settled to work in his new position. Mgr. Amette is a comparatively young man for such an honoured and distinguished post in the French Church. Ho is only in his fifty-eighth year, but since the present Pope nominated him as the Assistant Bishop to the late Cardinal Richard, about two years ago, it was generally understood that he would be the futuro Archbishop. Mgr. Amette is a man whom fortune has looked with a favourable eye, for ever since the days of his first entering the Church, when he became a humble member of the staff of the Cathedral of Evreux, he seems to have taken the fancy of his superiors. The then Bishop of the diocese soon made him his secretaire intime, and M. Amette was generally looked upon as one marked out for promotion to high places. He rose step by step from his appointment as Bishop of Bayoux and subsequently as Coadjutor-Bishop of the Bishop of Paris, to that of the Archbishopric of the city. A telegram from Tokio to the American press, dated 31st January, reports : —“ Promoters of the movement for the abolition of the ideograph and the substitution of Roman letters in the written and printed language of Japan are enlisting the aid of many persons prominent in literature and business. At a largely attended meeting recently Count Okuma spoke enthusiastically in favour of the plan. The ideograph, said the count, had played a great part in the history of the East, especially in enabling Japan to assimilate Chinese literature and civilisation, but now, in assimilating the greater civilisation and literature of the Occident, the ideograph was the greatest obstacle. Ideographs are written signs used by the Chinese and Japanese for expressing words or ideas. They number many thousands, so that it is almost impossible for foreigners to learn them.” Japan, however, has already advanced beyond the ideograph stage. The language (like the Maori) is composed of syllables such as “ka ” of the simplest form, composed of consonant and vowel (never the reverse). In such a case a syllabary has certain advantages over an alphabet, and the Japanese have such a system. Between seventy and eighty syllables covor the whole language, which can be written with a like number of characters, and the blind read in a Braille to correspond. The adoption of the Homan character is advisable chiefly in the interests of foreigners.