NEWS ITEMS

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 691, 10 December 1902, Page 4

NEWS ITEMS

Pin” pong lias been declared a gambling game by the Ohio State Legislature.

Lieutenant I’eai-y considers the climate of the Arctic regions admirable for consumptives.

At one polling booth in a Wellington suburb, the other day, a .horny-handed elector occupied the box for an hour. Striking out the two bottom lines had evidently tried him. He was fast asleep.

The far-famed Klingamitc raft is being requisitioned for by various committees up country for charity bazaars. A good idea. People will thu« see how totally inadequate and out oi date such appliances

arc. —Lnnce. Half the Customs oflicers stationed at Nikolaiev, on the Line!; Sea, have been dismissed for blackmailing foreign shipbrokers, who paid them to secure prompt loading and despatch of vessels. A Southern politician, who reiterated fourteen times in a short meeting that he was a “ self made” man, and the “architect o.' his own fortune,” was reminded by a caustic elector that he had “ borrowed the building material from the tax payers.” A mean man lias cropped up in 'Wellington. Stopped by a policeman, for h i.\ing no light on bis midnight bike, ho gave the mime and address of a wellknown man. Man was duly summoned. As he only wears one leg, and is nearly blind, lie satisfied the Bench that lie was not the scc-rclicr wauled.

\Y, 0, CiIT.CC! in ail matches for the i.ondon County G.C. this year, has an average of 100 runs per innings, and besides has taken 100 wickets. Ho is now in his fiftyfifth year, but has not been more fit for several seasons; much of the superfluous flesh has been removed.

The Wellington' correspondent of the Hawke’s Lay Herald states that Mr Fred l’irani has disposed of his interest in the Manawulu Standard, and is about to assume the editorial control of the Hutt and I’ctonc Chronicle ; but Mr l’irani desires us to give the statement an emphatic denial.— Manawatu Daily Times. Sweet girl canvassers were much in evidence at the polling booths on election day. One of them met with a reproof she had hardly looked for. It came from a frosty-haired veteran, who met her request to “ vote for ” with the stern remark, “ Young woman, when you're as old as I tun you’ll let people vote their own way.” And it is recorded that for quite five minutes she allowed the electors to vote unassisted. The Johannesburg correspondent of the Cologne Gazette, one of the most influential papers in Germany, remarks that the idea that the Boers will in a few years again take up arms is a mistaken one. “ I am fully convinced,” lie says, “ that this race will not fight unless driven to desperation. Lnglish schools can only do the Boors good, since they will there learn to enlarge their views and ideas. England

holds the destiny of South Africa and the British power in that in her own hands ; everything depends on her treatment of the Boers.”

A novel artillery test took place at Aldershot recently. By an ingenious method of painting the guns and limber the three piiinarv colors—red, blue and

yellow, they wore found to harmonise so

admirably with any sort of ground or background that at a short distance they wore difficult to locate. Some oflicers at Aldershot were invited to try and locate six guns so painted with field-glasses at a distance of about 3000 yards, end although

all the oflicers knew the direction in which the guns lay, not one was able to point all of them out.

In order to realise the extent to which the colony is affected by a rise or fall in the price of wool, it may be worth while to quote the figures given as the export for the past seven years : —ln 1896 the total export was 123,724,1891 b, of which Auckland contributed u,i/-8,03-lib ; 1897, total 127,V6t>,816ib (Auckland 6,870,6971 b) ; 1898.145,179,1081 b (Auckland 7,020,9061 b); 1900, 1-13,328,2341 b (Auckland 6,827,921 lb) ; 1901, 136.716,3111 b (Auckland 6,481,6741 b); 1902, l-12,210,5181b (Auckland 6,839,8601 b). From these returns it will be seen that every advance of Id per lb means u gain to the wool-growers of close on six hundred thousand pounds.— Waikato Times,

One drawback to tiio practice of medicine by women is (*avs the Medical Press)

" the unconscionable time they require to respond to a night call. A man jumps into his dressing-gown and trips lightly down the stairs, twisting his moustache into shape a< he goes. The woman doctor, on the other hand, has to go through numerous solemn rites before she dare show herself in public, and it may well happen that the time consumed in this femininely regarded indispensable prepaid ion appears to the sufferer and his friends to be unduly long. If women are to hold their own in medicine they will have to discover a means of obviating this and sundry other drawbacks incidental to their sax.”

In connection with the proposal made in Palmerston some time ago to oil the streets as a preventative against the dust storms which sometimes afflict the town, we may mention that Mr A. C. Mountain, city surveyor of Melbourne, has recently | been making inquiries to the value of > this process, and as a result iie is not j greatly impressed with the idea. When j the question was raised in Melbourne a few months ago, he endeavored to gain in- j formation as to its success in America, where it was stated to be largely used. A letter from Sacramento arrived by a recent mail, in width it was stated that it had been used or, the dusty roads in the vicinity of that city, but that it had only achieved a fair success. It was not to be j compared with water, and was much be- j bind several other kinds of roadway. This ! statement, coming from America where f

the average road is notoriously bad, does not augur much good from oiled roads in 1 New jdealaud,— Manawatu Tirnc.b j