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Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXIII, Issue 12581, 30 September 1908, Page 5

At the annual meeting of the FeUding Bowling Club held last night 20 new members joined. The official opening is to be held on Octoljpr 21. The latent additions to the telephjnc exchange are No. 613, Mr Fred. H. Allen's residence, Wanganui East, and No. 616, Mrs J. Paul's residence, Wanganui East. A suggestion has been made — and it is | worthy the earnest consideration of the Press of the Dominion — that, in the event of the "gag" clauses being retained in the Second Ballot Bill, newspapers should absolutely refuse to publish a solitary word concerning a second election, and refuse all advertisements, dealing therewith. An. evidence of the durability of tvfara is furnished by the present condition of two survey pegs of that timber which "were placed, in the ground at Ohawe, near Hawera, in 1866 (says the Evening Foet). One peg, which was put into peaty soil, is as sound as the day on which it was driven. The other -was more exposed to ttte weather, and some of it is a little decayed, but on the whole it is in an excellent state of preservation. The pegs were taken the otiier day from land belonging to Mr James Livingston, a leading settler at Okawe, who has brought them to Wellington for presentation to the Biological Museum. Apparently the sneak thief or perpetrator of wanton mischief is not yet extinct. A resident of Gonville lately invested in •* boat which was properly moored on the riverside, opposite Mr Harper's property. Things were ship-shape at 7 o'clock last night, but this morning the boat and buoy (which were chained together and locked) were both found to be missing. An inspection of the moorings shows that they were tampered with. It is to be hoped that the offenders will h& n-adc to suffer for it, and we are informed that the owner of the boat (which wag new) will pay its value for any information which will lead to x, conviction Everyone knows that the village of Feilding is a centre of interest to the whole of the Dominion, wherefore we read with breathless interest the. smallest' item of news which its enterprising Press agents condescend to favour us with. To-day we received, per electric telegraph, the momentous news that the annual meeting of the Feilding Bowling Club was held last night. We now await the news that the Feilding Society for the Encouragement of Marbles has held its annual "bunscramble," at which a small boy nearly choked himself with a doughnut while too hurriedly rushing for the street to see a dog fight. Half-tragic and half-comic confusion was ' caused at one of the Paris police stations (says the correspondent ot the Daily Telegraph) by the presence of a corpse, a drunken woman, and a coffin. The police had brought the body of an unknown man, probably a tramp, who had died on. the banks^of the Seine, to the station, intending to have it conveyed to the morgue on the following morning. During tb,e night a drunken woman was shut np by mistake in the same room as the corpse. f She lay down beside it, quite unconscious of its presence, and slept soundly all night. In the morning the undertakers came with a coffin, which they set down alongside her, And, mistaking the woman for, the corpse, they were about to lift her into the coffin, when she bounded up with a scream, and ran into the street, where she. fainted. The undertaker's men also got such a fright that one of them was on the point of swooning. He thought that the corpse had come back to life. Both he and the woman were taken to a druggist's for attendance, and there, as the latter recovered, she, again, screamed each time she saw a blue coat. She seemed convinced that the police had intended to bury her alive. In his charge at the Supreme Court at Napier, Mr Justice Chapman re! erred in an interesting manner to the constitutional position of. Gravi Juries. Jn the course of his remarks io the Grand Jury, h© .sai^: — "We j',* frequently see Grand Juries reft rred to oy critics as an unnecessary and cumbrous procoaure, but the mere fact that in on/? locality section aiter session yon have a comparatively insignificant calendar doessJiot deteraiine the question, which is a constitutional question, and one of importance to- the whole community. Yon mighty go .through a generation or generations,, of quiet tin-es with no danger to the liberty of the subject, but the functions of the Grand Jury acquire marked importance in more troublesome times — such times, it is to be hoped, we will never see in .this country — and the custom is kept in~ existence for the .purpose of seeing that no man is put upon his trial by tlu mere action of officials; that no man is pat on his trial except that a Grand Jury of his countrymen are able to certify to the fact that it is right that he should be put upon his trial." Sir Joseph Carruthers, ex-Premier of New South Wales and an ex-President of the New South Wales Methodist Conference, who has just returned from a visit to the Old Country, went to hear most of the eminent preachers of the day, including the Eev. R. J. Campbell. Chatting to a Sydney Telegraph reporter last week Sir Joseph said he was specially interested in Mr Campbell because of the t seir made by his new theology, but m the sermons he heard him preach Mr Campbell delved very scantily into it. The sermons Sir Joseph heard were mainly on ethical lines, and were Aery forcible and courageous presentations of tho Christian duty of personal .service and personal consecration for the behoof ot" humanity. Once or twice Mr Campbell broke away, and his teachings weresojieTfhat tinged with theosophical tendencies, but what struck Sir Joseph most was the intensely spiritual and evangelical character of Mr Campbell's prayers. Whatever his preaching may be," said the ex-Premier, "his prayers are those of a man who seeks to enter into the innermost Presence, and recognises very clearly the need of a Divine Mediator in seeking personal access to God. ' Sir Joseph went on to say that Mr Campbell's prayers were for the most part directly addressed to Him — "O Saviour Christ" — and those not addressed to Him as such, but to the Trinity, were closed with the invocation, "Through Jesus Christ our Lord." As a preacher, it struck Sir Joseph that Mr Campbell's strength lay in his clear and forcible presentation of personal duty, and his impeachment of the sins that are peculiarly characteristic of the present generation, and characteristic, perhaps, of present-day English life — Mammonism, self-seeking and so forth. Mr Campbell intimated his intention of visiting Australia within a year or two.