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New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 329, 8 August 1879, Page 3

I see that the Runcorn Methodists disclaim the most excellent prayer attributed to them. I must say I doubted if so good a thing could come out of Runcorn. A friend of mine assured me his wife heard the following in a Primitive Methodist Chape] in a large town in Yorkshire. In a very wet season, when the crops were rotting for want of sun, the minister was praying for rain. There was a good deal of rain and thunder at the time, and just when he was making his most earnest and eloquent appeal, there came with tomnts of rain a most terrific peal of thunder ; whereupon, checking his prayer, he astonished his audience by the indignant remonstrance, " Nay, Lord, this is too ridiculous." The result was that my friend's wife was so much impressed that she left the Methodists and became a Church woman. — Weekly Albion,

The bootmakers of Dublin went on strike on April 29th against a reduction of wages, which the masters declared they were obliged to insi&t on to meet the growing competition of English trade. The men re&olved to appeal to the public " against staivation wages."

An interesting incident is recalled by the honour which has been bestowed upon Dr. Newman, relating to the new Cardinal and the present Premier of England. On Saturday afternoons in the last of the first decade of the present century, two boys, aged respectively nine and rive, might have been seen playing in the grounds of Bloornsbury Square, London. The boys, both natives of the square, offered the most complete contrast to each other in appeaiance. The younger, whose head was profuse with long, black, glossy ringlets, was a child of rare Jewish type of beauty, and full of life and activity. The other was grave in demeanour, wore his hair close cut, and walked and talked and moved in a way which, in young people, is called " old-fashioned." He was of pure English race and Pnrit anical family. The names of the children denoted these differences as much as their appearances. The one was Benjamin D'lsracli, the other John Newman. Sixty-eight years have passed since then, and much has happened in the meantime, but nothing more wonderful than that the handsome little Jew boy should become a Christian and a Prime Minister of Proteetant England, and the Puritan lad a Catholic and a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church.