LOCAL AND GENERAL

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 441, 15 April 1890, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

A special meeting of the Wharf Laborers’ Union is called for to-morrow (Wednesday) evening. At their mart at 10 to morrow morning Messrs Graham, Pitt, and Bennett will sell a case of druggist’s sundries. Messrs W. Clayton and A, Sawyer, both well known throughout the district-, have entered into partnership and purchased Mr W. King’s timber yard. A business advertisement will appear in our next issue.

The smoke concert in connection with the Poverty Bay Rowing Club has been postponed for a week owing to the visit of the Lord Fauntleroy company. Another (Maori prophet is said to have sprung up, and to be working his way south from the Povertyßay district. He was last heard of at Waipawa.

At the Police Court yesterday morning G. B. Worgan was discharged with a caution for drunkenness. He was also charged with having insufficient lawful means of support, and was remanded till Wednesday. There appears to have been a mistake in the telegram that the Gisborne horse Tim won the Waipukurau Hack Hurdles. He was beaten by a head by Newmarket. Tim walked in lame.

Hastings and Waipawa were the only fire brigades represented at the Napier Easter competition, besides thelosnl toniuv.— With the exception of the ladder race all the first prizes were taken by either Napier or the Spit.

When Captain Preece, R.M. of Napier, asked Mr McLean, solicitor in the McLeod case, to apologise for his use of the word “ farcical ” in application to the proceedings, the solicitor said he would not do so in open Court because it would not increase the respect for the Court. A writer in the Waipawa Mail, who professes to know all about it, says the real work of the Boundary Commission was done by the Surreyor-General and his officers, the other Commissioners being simply dummies, or, as one foolish member put it, " recording angels.” The City Bink opened again for the season on Saturday evening. There was a good number of tinkers present, and they seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. As the weather gets cooler the Rink ought to be largely patronised, affording as it does one of the cheapest and pleasantest means of evening recreation. The Gisborne Football Club opened their season on Saturday, sides being chosen on the ground by A. Steele and E. Matthews, representatives of the Gisborne Club being conspicuous by an almost entire absence. But there was a capital game played, the side of Matthews being much the stronger.

We have received the March number of Typo, which maintains its usual high standard of excellence. In a paragraph regarding a libel action against an Auckland “ society ” journal, the grand jury having thrown out the bill. Typo says that for publishing stuff not a bit worse the late John Baldwin got six months' imprisonment.

News was received by last mail from Melbourne of the death of Mr A. C. Tebbitt, formerly a much esteemed townsman of Gisborne. He died on March 22nd, at the residence of his brother-in-law, Dr Button. Deep regret was expressed in town on the arrival of the sad news, as Mr Tebbitt had, by his gentlemanly and straightforward ways, made a great number of friends. A recent telegram from San Francisco says Madame Patti opened her season at the Opera house on Tuesday night, and received an immense ovation. By a singular coincidence she appeared at the same theatre at which, and on the third anniversary of the day when the attempt was made to kill her by throwing a dynamite bomb hidden in a bouquet from the gallery on to the stage. John Hodge, the author of this dastardly outrage, was sent to prison for two years, and released on the expiration of that term. On hearing of the approaching return of Madame Patti, he made preparations for another attempt on her life, but went raving mad before her arrival. He is , now confined in Stockton Lunatic Asylum, 'Where he passes half hie time singing, •* Home, Sweet Home," and the- otherj half shrieking out the name of Patti;

At the Waipukurau races £3,412 was put through the totalisator. At Napier on Good Friday some thieves sneaked after the bakers and stole a lot of the buns after they had been left for customers. In Dublin recently three cases of dislocated jaws, through yawning, occurred in three months, two of the victims being postmen. A new thought reader, a Russian, is now causing a sensation in London, and his feats surpass those attempted by Irving Bishop and others.

Jubal Fleming, who recently went bankrupt, says he never lost anything by betting, and he made nearly £2OOO by his consultation transactions.

The first practical use of Edison’s phonograph in a newspaper office has been made in the Berlin National Zeitung. The editordictated to the machine, and it was then takon into the composing room, and the oompositors set up, with perfect accuracy, what the phonograph repeated. A Christchurch paper learns that the Clarnpett fraud was in a bad way in England, and having written to Christchurch imploring for sufficient means to bring him pack to New Zealand, £7O has actually been raised for the purpose. Some people deserve to be duped. On Saturday afternoon an inquest was held at Waerenga-a-hika into the circumstances attending the burning of two stacks of barley, the property of S. Oxenham, which wore insured in the New Zealand office for £135. Alter bearing the evidence of several witnesses the jury returned a verdict that the burning of the stack on Saturday night was accidental, but that the second fire was an act of incendiarism. In the course of a “ character sketch ” of Mr Parnell, an anonymous writer in the New Review indicates that the Irish leader is eminently superstitious in trivial matters. He refuses to remain in a room where three candles are burning, and he regards green as a peculiarly unlucky color, so much so that when the freedom of the city of Dublin was to be conferred upon him he requested that the lining of the casket should not be green but purple, the latter being his favorite color, and considered by him as very auspicious. His chief relaxation is machine making, and, if be reads at all, he is a student of specialist journals of the class of Engineering.

Mr Joseph Thomson, of Massi-land fame, lecturing at a Y.M.C. A. moating in Edinburgh before an audience of 2000 souls, rooently, said, after premising that his knowledge of the subject was the fruit of personal observation and not of heresay reports of missionary magazine narratives, that—" So far as our intercourse with the African race was concerned, instead of its being a blessing, it had been little better than an unmitigated curse to them. , . . The nature of our commerce with Africa had consisted chiefly in gin, gunpowder, and guns, alongside of which the good wa bad tried to achieve was hardly discernible. Taken as a whole, our trading stations were centres of corruption, moral and physical. Over the doorways of hundreds of traders might ba inscribed: —■ Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence;' only ■ clean straw for nothing ’ would have to be left out. Trading ships were laden with gin out of all proportion to the carriage of useful articles. The air seemed to reek with vile stuff, and the gin bottles and boxes met the eye at every step. One result of the introduction of gin, rum and firearms was seen in the backward condition of ths West Coast negro, who had been transformed into the most villainous and treacherous being in Africa."

A London correspondent writes:—Lieut. Colonel Carre, who has travelled extensively in Australasia, reports that if India intends to rely on the antipodes for a regular and sufficient supply of cavalry horses, she must take steps at once to ensure getting them. Melbourne, says Colonel Carre, is the port from which India at present receives its supply of Australian horses. The trade there is entirely in the hands of a syndicate, whose agents penetrate into South Australia and the borders of New South Wales. The climate, unfortunately, is unfavorable. The large landed proprietors have runs where pasture is plentiful in what are termed the good seasons, but in the dry portion of the year, and after continued droughts, the mares and their progeny are obliged to roam over large tracts, saeking a precarious livelihood on the dried-up herbage that remains above soil. Colonel Carrd avers that the northern island of New Zealand, above all the other colonies, is best adapted for horse breeding, and strongly recommends the Indian Government to send experienced officers to assist New Zealand and the other colonies in the breeding of suitable horses as remounts, and so place them in a position to compete with Victoria, which at present holds the monopoly.