AUCKLAND NOTES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 45, 26 August 1892, Page 7

AUCKLAND NOTES.

(From our own Correspondent.) August 11th, 1892. Db Egan, 0.5.8. returned to Auckland from Dunedin yesterday. To the regular attendants at St Patrick's on Sunday, it was at once made manifest that the " master hand " was again wielding the baton in the choir. The Festival Mass was performed, but not with that steadiness and precision characteristic of this choir, a fact, no doubt, attributable to the absence for soms time of the rev choirmaster. Miss Carrie Knight took all the soprano solos. This young lady possesses a fresh, pleasing voice of good range, her lower notee being of nice quality, but for some unacoontable reason she rarely exercises the latter. Miss Knight's sister will no doubt be remembered by most Dunedinites when singing at their Exhibition. In a conversation I had with Dr Egan, he spoke in the most enlogistic terms of the advance of Catholicity generally in Dunedin. The large attendances morning and evening at the cathedral, the great number of communicants ; and one thing more than any other, which attracted the keen observation of your late distinguished visitor was the provision made by your zealot bishop and clergy upon evenings of the week of some means to engage the youths and draw them away from those vioes and frivolities which are as rampant ia our colonial cities as they are within hearing of Bow Bells. Your chuir also came in for high praise; numbering, the Doctor told me, some forty members, Now, in matters musical, and I speak of some four years personal acquaintance, Dr Egan is one of the h*riest men to please I have ever met, so tb,3 choir of St Joseph's ought to feel proud at commendations from such a quarter. An art-union drawing, in aid of the fand of the Sacred Heart Church, Ponsonby, took place in the Ponsonby hall on Tuesday, August 9, under the supervision of Messrs D. Flyun, McGuire and Jones. Father Gillan was in attendance together with a large num--ber ot his parishioners. Word has been received from Sergeant- Major Pratt from Nelson, where he was recently transferred. In his new sphere of action this good officer will be able from time to time to see those young waifs of sooiety over whom Father Mahoney watches with paternal care, and who were sent thither from the streets of Auckland by the molted efforts of Father Hackett and the Sergeant-Major. '

The Corporation have erected in Queen street a number of large and handsome gas lamps, which shed a brilliant light on this erstwhile dark street. The petulant Mr John Bryce onoa sneered at Aucklandera for being too aesthetic ; he would be inclined to again say so if he were to see oar new lamp 9. lour Wellington correspondent, writing under date July 23rd, informs us that Lord and Lady Glasgow are very popular in Wellington. "Your own" lets the cat out of the bag by saying that this noble lord (who, be it remembered, made a bitter anti-Irish speech before leaving his native heatb) " has not complained about our climate." Report says that this noble Scot has a luxuriant crop of hair, whilst, on the other hand, the departed Oaslow wa* as bald as a babe. The Scot, therefore, feels no compunction in driving through Lambton Quay with his tile on the floor of the carriage ; but for obvious reasons the Englishman objected to that. Hence his unpopularity in the city of wind and quakes. For downright credulity, commend me to the local Puritanic element. No matter what " globe trotter " comes along, provided he has in his carpet-bag a diatribe on the Church of Borne, the iniquities practised in convents, etc., with the Temperance question as a standby, there need never arise a query as to credentials, because to this itinerant the hall-doors of the dissenters are thrown widely open. Now, as I write, they have had a narrow escape from one of this ilk whom they delighted in calling a son of the Radical and Temperance advocate, Sir Wilfrid Lawson. They billed him all over the city, " inspired " locals and " puff § " filled the daily papers concerning him and he was " boomed "by them properly— tea meetings, Bible classes galore. All these preparation^ ere he reached the Athens of the South. When, on arrival— cruel destiny— their pet, and supposed Lawson, was rudely seized by a gentleman in blue, and securely esconced in the police barrack. For the duped, and they richly deserved it, I say served them right. On Wednesday, August 10, Mr Hugh Poland and Miss B. Hand, a niece of the Very Rev Father Paul, Vicar- General of this diocese, were married at Helensville. The ceremony was performed by the bride's uncle, assisted by Rev Fathers Hackett, Lenihan, and Egan, of the Northern Wairoa. Mr Hugh Poland is a young gentltman well known in c ducational and athletic matters in Auckland. He visited Dunedia as vice-captain of the Auckland football team in 1889, where, no doubt, he will be lemembered as one of our best forwards. An old identity, Mr Daniel Lynch, senr., passed away to-day. He has been for many years a resident here, and was highly esteemed by all with whom he came in contact. One of his sons is a lawyer now practising in Westport. Daring the Fenian troubles in the sixties Mr Lynch paid a visit to Ireland, and upon landing in Cork he was arrested on suspicion of being an Irish-American, and was not released nntil he was able to prove he cam a from New Zealand. " Down with Balfour ;" "down with coercion," and "looting and hisses from the Iriah members." Such, the cable informs us, took place at the division. Aye, indeed, wherever there beats an Irish heart on this planet of ours ; from pole to pole, and from Orient to Occident, that hooting and that hissing is taken up again and again and hurled back with a vehemence like unto that at Fontenoy— but with this difference, that instead of " Remember Limerick " we say " Remember Mitchelstown and John Mandeville." Upon hearing the news in Auckland I heard an old Irishman of four ecore and eight exclaim, " Thank God that my life was spared to witness that downfall." And in the words of the immortal Emmet, "It was not to receive new taskmasters, but to expel old tyrants."