General News.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 1, 2 May 1890, Page 11

General News.

Miss Bisland started on the same day as " Nellie Bly " to go aTound the world, but in the opposite direction. She represented the Cosmopolitan Magazine. She arrived in New York on January 25, about five days later than Nellie Bly. But she has attracted little attention, and her name is unknown. So great a thing is success, and often so unjust, that the equal merit of a slower movement is completely ignored. The moral, at least for would-be globe-girdlers, ii 8 8 — don't come in second.

Somebedy has figured up that the United States Senate contains rich members who are worth in the aggregate 84,000,000 Jol. Following is the financial estimate of the 17 members who belong to the rank of millionaires ■ Barbour ... 1,000,000d015. Plumb ... 1.000.000d01a Brown ... 3,500,000 „ Sawyer ... 3,000.000 „ Cameron ... 3,000,000 „ Sherman ... 2,000,000 „ Farewell . . 2,000,000 „ Squire . . 1,000,000 „ Hale ... 2,000 000 „ Stanford ... 30,000,000 „ Hearst ... 10,000.000 „ Stewart ... 1,000,000 „ Jone* (Nev.) 2,000,000 „ Stockbridge ... 1,000,000 „ McMillan ... 10,000,000 „ Brice ... 6.50 D.OOO „ Payne ... 5,000,000 „ Of these it is safe to say that no more than five or six jwould ever have found a place in the American House of Lords had it not been for the wealth which is fast becoming the essential qualification for election to that body.

A Munich correspondent gives some queer details in regard to Dr. Doellinger, the recently deceased leader of the " Old Catholic party in Germany — a party which had shrunk to one. Apart from other reasons, and they were many, this writer gives some facts concerning the sullen coldness of Dr. Doellinger that accounts for hia lack of followers : An Eaglish deacon of the Episcopal Church once went to see the great historian. He had been filled with admiration for the plan of Doellinger to unite the Greek, Russian and English Churches. After considerable parleying with the ancient housekeeper, who did her duty as Cerberus with dreadful consaientiousnesa, he succeeded in being admitted to the spreebzimmer of the man he so much admired. He had to wait for an hour before the Stiff vprobst made his appearance When he did see the visitor he looked at hiaa with a chilling expression in the eyes, and, without inquiring after the deacon's business, withdrew again, saying in an abstracted sort of a way that he was very, very busy. There are a good many cases like this. When his brother Maurice returned from Brazil, whence he had lied to escape the horror of being made a tailor, he had not seen Ignatius, his only living brother in about thirty-five years. When Maurice had introduced himself the learned theologian said wondering and absent-minded : " Well, well, you are my brother Maurice, then. Come some time when I am not so busy." But Maurice never came again.

Father Wall, of the Pitt&burg Cathedral, has begun a campaign against the habit of consulting fortune-tellers and wizards. In a sermon he says : ■' We find youths, young girls, and especially married women, making a practice of this sin. If you deliberately visit a a fortune-teller you are indulging in a mortal sin. If you go out of pure thoughtlessness it is not so bad, but it is a sin, nevertheless. It is the same thing as going to an idol and giving your heart to it. This is idolatry of the worst kind. 1 would like to impress on your mind that fortune-tellers compose the worst characters in the community. One class of the business is fortune-telling, and the other is the seduction and ruia of youth. To my own personal knowleige I know of persons who have been ruined by consulting these people. I warn all persons of the congregation, and hope you will extend this knowledge, that it is a mortal sin against the First Commandment, Avoid them and their nefarious business, for the desigas they have on the morality of youth." There is little doubt that the terrible allegations of Father Wall arc true, and it is also a fact tbat the diabolical practice is extending in this country. Paradoxical as it may seem, the occult art flourishes just in proportion to a decline of religious belief. It was when the ancient religious had come to be mocked at that the Pagan lloman Empire was overrun by these children of the devil, who induced people who did not believe in God to put faith in their jugglery. So, too, to-day those who compose the bulk of the fortunetelling clientele have lost faith in Christ, or are tending to that end. New York Freeman's Journal.

A correspondent of the Catholic limes, commenting on the Duke of Norfolk's speech at the Primrose Lodge meeting at Leeds, writes : " I gay nothing of the Duke's public attack on Irish bishops and priests, who, he said, had cauaed him pain and shame ; nothing of his bitter opposition to the Irish demand for Home Rule in local affairs ; nothing as to his Bending his carriages, and his sisters, and his cousins and his aunts to fight against the candidates whom the Irish Catholics (and many English Catholics, too,) support at byeelections. He may reconcile it to his conscience to opposa Home Rule, although every bishop in Ireland now supports the demand (except the Coadjutor of Clonfert). But is it not lamentable to see that the head of our Catholic laity, by becoming the tool of Protestant parsons, has hencetorth rendered himself powerless in all Catholic questions in England 1 His hangers-on may present him with his portrait, and he and his henchman of Bladensburg may pose as having influence at Rome ; but in all matters that affect Catholics in England the Duke of Norfolk baa lost the influence which was his by right, and which might have brought such advantage to our cause. Hence the powcrlessness and absurdities of that mutual ai miration society, which is called the " Catholic Union, ' and which is preside.! over by the Duke. Does his Grace ever remember that bis own honoured father was hunted from an English constituency and found a hospitable seat in that very Ireland of which the son is now so bitter a foe?"