General News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 343, 14 November 1879, Page 17

General News .

Rev. Father F. X. Blanchet, of Jacksonville, Oregon, has added within a few weeks six to the number of converts he has already received into the Church. The names of the neophytes are Mr. A. J. Waters, Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Clawson, Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Wilkinson, and Mr. J. P. Burns, all residents of Southern Oregon. Their conversion is due to reading Catholic books and the perusal of the Catholic Sentinel, the excellent Catholic paper published at Portland. We learn from a correspondent of the Catholic Advocate that at Georgetown, Ky., on the 21st July, in the presence of Rev. Dr. Moore, of St. John's Church, Georgetown, Ky.. and Rev. Father Thomas Major, of St. Paul's Church, Lexington, Ky., Mrs. Emily J. Busby, Mrß. Willina B. Barclay, and Miss Minnie S. Downey, daughter and grant 1 * daughters of ex-Governor Robinson, made solemn profession of the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith. Two children of Mrs. Barclay were also baptized at the same time by Eev. Father Major, himself a convert to our holy Faith. — Are Maria, Granville, N.Y., has a boy fiend who bids fair to rival Jesse Pomeroy, the Massachusetts monstrosity. His name is Herbert Hamblet, and he is 14 years old. On Tuesday last he coaxed a 7-year old boy, named Joe McClure, away from school, and conducted him to Indian River, a lonely spot, where Hamblet informed his victim that he was then and there going to kill him. He proceeded to beat him in a most unmerciful manner, until his body was black and blue. He then cut off one of his ears, and also his right big toe. He indulged in many other diabolical tortures, keeping young McClure under his control from 9 o'clock in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. When McClure succeeded in returning home and told' his story, Hamblet was at once arrested. He admitted his guilt, and boldly asserted that he would do it again whenever an opportunity offered itself. He was thereupon committed to jail until bail, which was fixed at I,O'K) dols., could be procured. A statue to King Robert Bruce, the champion of Scotch independence, carved out of freestone from a native quarry by Mr. John Hutcninson, R.S.A., is ready lor erection in the town of Lochmaben, The htatue is 8 feet high, and is on a granite plinth pedestal. It represents the Conqueror of Bannockburn in his fighting gear with his shirt of mail and his massive sheathed broadsword clasped to his breast. On his head is the crown which he has won, and which c is resolved to maintain, and he is supposed to be presiding over the great Convention of the Estates of Scotland held in Arbroathin 1320. In his right hand he holds the famous protest to the Pope, of which the original is said to be preserved in the Edinburgh Register House, and which was instrumental in obtaining the desired recognition of Scotland as an independent kingdom. The passage is one of the grandest anc proudest incidents in the annals of Scotland, and artist and people may be congratulated on the completion of the monument.

The Rocldand (N.Y.) Courier is responsible for the following :—: — " There were two men got into a fight in front of the store the other day," said a north-end man at the supper table, " and I tell you it looked pietty hard for one of them. Thf biggest one grabbed a cartstake and drew it back. I thought sure he was going to knock the other's brains out, and I jumped in between them. "The family had listened with rapt attention, and as the head paused in his narrative, the young heir, whose respect for his father's bravery was immeasurable, proudly remarked : " He couldn't knock any brains out of you, could he, father?" The head of the family gazod long and earnestly at ihe heir, as if to detect evidence of a dawning humorist; but as the youth continued with great innocence to munch his fourth tart, he gasped and resumed his supper. M. Roller has deciphered the inscription on the sarcophagus of Ashmenezer, King of Sidon, now deposited ct the Louvre. Part of it runs thus : " A curse is pronounced against royal persons or others who should open this tomo, or lift the tomb which contains me or transport me in this tomb. They shall not be buried with the dead, they shall not lie in a tomb, they shall not leave any descendants, and the holy gods will deliver them into the hands of their enemies, who will chase them from their country." The JeivisJi World notes as a curious coincidence in regard to this curse, that the Duke de Luynes bought the sarcophagus aud presented it to the French Government. He and his only son met their deaths in the Papal war, in Italy, in 1859. Again, it was through the instrumentality of the Emperor Napoleon HI that it was brought to Paris, and deposited in the Louvre. He was routed at Sedan, and his budy reposes on foreign soil. His son met with an untimely death far away trom his home, and at the hands of his enemies. There is not a descendant left of Napoleon 111. or of the Duke de Luynes.

lwo priests were passing near the Place de la Bastille lately, on their way to the Lyons (Station, when they were hooted by a number of boys. The elder ecclesiastic said to one of them, " You would do better to go on your knees and say your p layers." This remark seemed to cause additional excitement, and the uichins were joined by some women. The situation of the piiusts was becoming critical, when a number of workmen returning from their shops endeavoured to piotecf them, but would nardly have succeeded but for the arrival of an inspector with a numb.-r of police. Tbe police had great difficulty in protecting them from violence.

A PIOMtTAHT clergyman, in Manchester, England, recently undertook a religious census of five hundred families in that city. Ht canvassed them hap-hasard, and ascertained that seventy-two belonged to the Church of England, seventy-five were Non-conform-ists, ninety-five were Catholics, and two-hundred and seventy-eight were of no religion. The Paris correspondent of the Tribune tells a strange story of the Zatowar. In 18«3 Cfptaiir Lambert of ,the fourth voltigeurs of rthe French imperial guard was expelled from his regiment. He ' decided to. drown > himself, hut his godfather convinced him that it would be better to try his fortune in some foreign' land. Bo he went to the Cape of Good, Hope, learned the, native dialects and became a purveyor of ammunition to the Zulus, and afterward obtained a commission in the Zulu army,.of which he finally became Commander-in-chief. He died in theserviceVTmt it is said that to him the Zulus owe their knowledge of military tactics. We reai! the 'following 'in* a contemporary :— " The Bishop of Lincoln has written to the Vicar of Stallingborough, near Grimsby, directing him not to administer the Holy Communiou to one of the churchwardens of his parish who has . married the sister of his lately deceased wife, and by so doing ' has broken the law of God, as interpreted by the authority of the Church.' " Very well ; but we shall be anxious to see what the Bishop of Lincoln will say, and still more what he will do, when the House of Commons shall pass, as it certainly will, the bill legalizing marriage with a deceased wife's Sister. — Univerte. Fevbe is now added to the starvation for the unfortunate people of the Peninsula. The epidemic is caused by the poisonous exhalations for which Italy has always been so fatally remarkable. The revolutionists, among other arguments against the temporal power, used to urge the malaria and maremma, which, they said, if the Pontiff were only dethroned, would soon be got rid of by the energy and engineering skill of a monarch of the House of Savoy. Garibaldi pledged himself to put a stop for ever to flood, pestilence, and famine. The facts, however, are that there were never such inundation, such deadly plague and such horrible want of the bare necessaries of life as the world has witnessed in Italy since religion was overthrown.— Universe.