FACTS, FANCIES, QUIPS & COMMENTS

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 24, 10 June 1908, Page 11

FACTS, FANCIES, QUIPS & COMMENTS

FROM THE AUSTRALIAN PAPERS.

One marriage shop in Sydney is located in a cheap coffee palace. There are thus all the facilities for marrying in haste. <S> «> <S> From the Australian military orders (1903): —“Regulation 35. The heading Union Jack is cancelled and Australian Ensign substituted.” Nationalism slowly asserts itself. <?■ & <s> The sooner the States generally realise, like Westralia and New South Wales, that Federal government at present means Melbourne government, the sooner will the remedy be applied. <S> <S> <S> The grand old woman of Cootamundra (N.S.W.) passed over one day last week, aged 94. Mrs. McClintock, the G.O.W. alluded to, arrived in N.S. Wales in 1337, and was the head of the McClintock clan in the district. She leaves 83 grandchildren, G 3 great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren. <s>«><?► In Nature's scheme everything has its use, though even the scientists have not yet discovered the mission of snakes and mosquitoes. ’Tis the same with human beings; the crankiest crank may do some good if it is only to accentuate the blessings of sanity. A telegram from Oodnadatta states that two natives had a fight about seven miles from Adelaide. The quarrel was over a lubra, and resulted in the death of both combatants. There would seem to be a good deal of human nature about a female blackfellow. <?><•><» The Japan “Times” is a humorous paper, published in Tokio. Its humour is mostly unconscious, but it is there. It recently printed: “Our business class as a whole is still governed largely by the principles of humanitarian morality. The disadvantage is obvious if they are to take active part in the commerce of the world. They should make every effort to cultivate the principles which the heartless commercial morality of the West dictates.” <S> <S> <s> Queensland Opposition leader Philp is a person who keeps pretending to want to drop out of things, but never drops out. He has offered to relinquish the leadership, his seat, his socks, and his soul if his party desire it. But he knows his party, and there is no retirement and no sacrifice. And Bob Philp has been the champion hanger-on of Bananaland politics, having had a continuous stretch of 12 years’ Ministerial pay. <?> <®> ❖ Our recent visitor, Dr David Starr Jordan, president of the Leland-Stanford University, is said to be ill. At a meeting of the Amateur Fishermen’s Association a resolution. of sympathy with the Prof, was carried, and it will be packed up and sent to him. The Prof, was referred to as one of the leading ichthyologists of the world, and some of the association took that to be the disease from which he is suffering. I suppose you wold die of ichthyology if you got enough of it. <S> <®> ❖ THE REFORMER. Bush Politician—“ You arsks me "Why I’m agin marriage, an’ I’ll tell yer,, feller men. I’m agin marriage ’cajise o’ the evil an’ the misery what it leads to. If it wasn’t.fer marriage there wouldn’t be any wife-beatin’, let me tell you!” • <s> <s> I ' < f ■ u A MATTER OF CONFUSION.

Magistrate (to '‘drunk”)—“How do you account for your condition 1”

Defendant—“ Well, your Worship, my landlady gave me wine jelly for dinner a week ago. Last night I had a little trifle, and they must have got mixed.”

<S> <S> . SOME TERRY EYING STATEMENTS. The fame of Lionel Terry has gone abroad, even unto the Cold Country, and the “British Australasian” breaks forth into falsehood: — Lionel Terry, the stalwart and crazy Oxford graduate, who shot a Chinese in cold blood with the object of helping to “keep the British pure,” has turned Seacliff Gaol, where he is confined, into a pantomime. He escaped again the other day for the fourth time, but was easily recaptured, it being next to impossible, of course, for a prisoner to get clear away from an island Stale. It costs the Government £4OO a year to look after him. He refuses to eat rice ■or any food grown in Maoriland. lie won’t eat with the other prisoners, but sits at a separate table in-the gaol library, with two personal attendants to wait upon him. Every day he.runs for hours around the exercise yard, the menials in weary pursuit. He is training for his own escape. He is punctilious in honour, and if he would only give his parole the gaolers would accept it with confidence, and get a little much-needed rest. But he has made it clearly understood that he means to escape, and the whole establishment is worn out watching him. Maoriland regards its cultured prisoner with awe because he is an English gentleman, but one paper has burst out at last with the eminently sane suggestion that, to save further trouble, the maniac should be tied up in a straitjacket. There is something beautiful about the statement that Maoriland “regards its cultured prisoner with’awe because lie is. an English gentjeuisui,” English gentlemen hjve been hanged in these parts . before now, with a long rope and a short shrift. <•> MAGISTRATE’S SYMPATHY WITH BANK CLERKS. At the Footseray Court, Richard Perey Vivian Nicholson was found guilty of having embezzled" £33 2/5 from the Commercial Bank. Herbert Gaunt said that ho counted Nicholson’s cash, ami found it £33 2/5 short. ' The Mayor: How long has the accused been in the service of the bank? Witness: Ten years. The Mayor: What salary was he drawing? —£115 per annum. The Mayor: 'lhe Bench in this case have decided to inflict a fine of £5, in default distress. While the accused must recognise that he must keep his hands off that which is not his. the salary he had received was most inadequate. Here was an officer having charge of nearly £4,000, and who had to keep up the appearance of a gentleman, and associate with gentlemen, yet he received a salary lower than that of a corporation labourer. However, the Bench trusts that this ease will be a life-long lesson to the defendant. <£<s><?> A MOTHER’S SAD PLIGHT. In Sydney, the other evening. Constable Lacey, on duty at the Treasury, discovered a male child, about three years old, opposite the Board of Health in Maquarie-strcct. The child was well dressed, and had evidently liven properly nourished. On the back of its-<M»llar the following note was found: — “To whom may get my child, —I hope you will lie good to it, for Gori’s sake. I have kept it till I could not. keep it any longer. I have no home, nor friends, and have no work to do. It has broken rny heart to do what I am doing, but I know if the State, gets it it will lie better off, for they will look after it. For God’s sake, pity a heart broken young mother.”

The child was taken to Ormond House, Paddington.