MAIL NEWS.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1749, 21 October 1885, Page 3

MAIL NEWS.

The San Francisco mail arrived at Auckland on Sunday afternoon. The following are the chief items of interest

London, September 26. London despatches report the whale fisheries a failure, owing to the heavy ice. It is proposed to cleanse and rebuild the alums of Windsor, and it has also been suggested that the expense be defrayed from the Queen’s privy purse. The Royal town is said to be frightfully filthy. Mr Samuel Plimsoll proposes to contest Sheffield for a seat in Parliament. He had a tremendous reception in that city on Sunday, 6th September. Two hundred workmen drew his carriage through the principal streets. Mr Plimsoll is about to be married to a Miss Wade, a Hull lady of great wealth. A lunatic was arrested in Buckingham Palace on Sth September, while seeking an interview with the Queen. He had an ordinary grease bottle, which he insisted on

presenting to Her Majesty, in order that, by looking in it, she might have a knowledge of all that was happening. Several Socialists, who persisted in addressing open air audiences at a convenient space in the heart of the East, End of London, were arrested on Sunday, 13th, for " obstructing traffic.” The arrests led nearly to a riot. The Social Democratic Federation have now determined to hold a mass meeting in the same place eveiy Sunday, and subscriptions are being made for a defence fund. By an accident at the Oatwell Colliery, at Ilkestoue, eight miles from Derby, on 16th September, 300 miners were entombed, aud rescued by way of the furnace shaft. Gold in large quantities was discovered on the Chinese side of the Amoor River, aud thousands of Siberian diggers rushed to the spot. The latest novelty in agrarian outrages is reported from Roscommon. A small farmer at Aallinasloe was evicted unjustly, as he thought, from a small tract of pastoral land. When the owner set about mowing the grass, the machine pieked up a crop cf pikeheadsi and was thereby ruined. Boycotting is increasing in Ireland, and it is being carried to greater length, than ever Persons obnoxious to their neighbours because of honest, independent action, are unable to dispose of their produce, even at a sacrifice in their market towns, and the entrance of some of the boycotted individuals in some of the Roman Catholic Churches in the County Cork to join in divine services, is made the signal for the congregation to arise en manse to quit the building. Occasionally the priest remonstrates with the people, but sometimes he denounces the boycotted party for showing himself in the church. San Francisco, September 26. A new star has been discovered in the nebulas of Andromeda. It is a glowing point of the.eighth magnitude, rounded by a cloudlike nebulous mass, from which it sprang. American astronomers say that the appearance of this new star throws doubt on some long accepted theories.

Details of the so-called abduction case—wherein Mr Stead, the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr Bramwell Booth, of the Salvation Army, Mrs Jarrett, Mrs Combes Mr Maury, and Mrs Jacques are defendants, and the girl Eliza Armstrong plaintiffmonopolised public interest to the neglect of politics both in London and elsewhere. The Bow Street Police Court was densely crowded. Within end without it was besieged by howling mobs, and it required the utmost efforts of the police to control the excited mob, who threatened to lynch Bramwell Booth and Mrs Jarrett, and were with difficulty restrained from breaking through the guard and attacking the occupants of several cabs as they arrived at ;he entrance of the Court. Mr Stead, was interviewed by the New York Herald’s London correspondent on 13th September, and the Pall Mall Gazette editor said to him, in substance “ Those who know nothing about me are naturally misrepresenting my action. There is no new creze with me. I have been writing and thinking of this matter for 14 years. I has been one of the dearest desires of my life to write another ‘ Unc’e Tom's Cabin ’ about this white slavery, and I have long been urging action upon the public men of my acquaintance. lam most anxious you should understand the absolute and crying need which impelled me in this agitation. Nothing was being done ; the law was inadequate, legislation inert, the press silent, magistracy corrupt ; and when I convinced myself that nothing could be hoped for from any of them, one course only lay before me, and I was determined to go straight to the masses and prove that the iniquities I denounced did indeed exist, by doing myself all I had asserted it was possible to do.” The correspondent said that Mr Stead’s attitude was mysterious. “ I have little to say,” said he, “ except as to my own feelings with regard to the case. Those people—Poland and the rest—fancy they have crushed me, but they have not. I have succeeded in my purpose beyond all 1 couid expect to hope for. I consider myself at this moment the most enviable man in England."