Thank you for correcting the text in this article. Your corrections improve Papers Past searches for everyone. See the latest corrections.

This article contains searchable text which was automatically generated and may contain errors. Join the community and correct any errors you spot to help us improve Papers Past.

Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image
Article image

Selections from “ Truth ” and other papers.

[Datee to London, March 21.) SNOBBISHNESS AT THE EOBTH BHIDOE. It is a pity that a ceremony ot such national interest as that accompanying the opening ot the Forth Bridge should have been marred by an exhibition of that snobbishness which too often is seen when the attendance of Royality is vouchsafed. It might have been thought that, amongst ths guests invited to take part in the consummation of so wonderful an achievement of engineering skill, the first to have been asked would have been those who had taken a prominent share in the marvellous undertaking which ie now a completed success. I am assured, however, that such was not the case. In fact, certain members ot the Forth Bridge staff who had been holding responsible positions during the progress of the works, were not honored with an invitation at all. JUBILEE SINGING FBAUDS. Some * niggers ’ calling themselves Jubilee Singers have lately been making a very good thing out of ministers and congregations of various sects in Scotland, where they have been on tour from kirk to kirk and meetinghouse to meeting-house, making * a silver collection ’ at the door after each performance. In some instances the object of the collection was stated to be tbe education of two of the troupe as missionaries on the Congo; in others it was the London • Friendless and Fallen Female Rescue Society ’ —a receipt from which institution appears to have been the principal stock in trade ot the enterprise. Last week the Edinburgh Evening Despatch let a good deal of light upon tbe antecedents and character of the troupe, with the result that their agent at once quitted his lodgings in Dumfries without paying his bill, and the kirks are now unanimously against Jubilee singing. According to a statement made by one of ths gang at Aberdeen, Thomson, the intending missionary and ths leader of the movement, so far from being a freed slave had been a cook on board ship, and * had picked up nearly all his troop, especially the girls, in Liverpool,’

A SIGNIFICANT GIFT.

The French Government has just given a most significant proof of its good will towards Russia by communicating to the Government of the Czar the secret of its new smokeless powder. This powder is largely mads with sulphuric ether, imported from Germany; but the secret does not, of course, lie in that ingredient, the use of which ie well known. The Russians will at flrst employ imported workmen in the manufacture of the powder, and care has been taken to exclude Germans and Jewe from engagements tor this purpose.

A FKB3EVERINO SCOTCHMAN.

Nothing illustrates better the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum than the singular career of Mr William Arrol, the contractor tor the Forth Bridge, opened by the Prince of Wales. Mr Arrol is ons of those taw canny Soots who have preferred to Istay in Scotland to make his fortune, and he has not been long in achieving his object. He little dreamt when he once entered the auld town of Ayr, seeking occupation as a journeyman blacksmith, that thirty years afterwards the townsfolk would assemble in their thousands to do him honor, and present him with the freedom of the burgh, Mr Arrol’e career shows the advantage of genius and perseverance over education, and of this latter he could have had very little, seeing he commenced life as a * pteoer ’ in a cotton-mill at the age of eight. In 1868 he started business with a capital ot £B5, saved from hia wages. With this be bought an engine at £lB and a boiler at £25. For some times his staff consisted ot himself and a workman, Seventeen years after his staff consisted of 4,300, engaged on ths Forth Bridge 1 To-day the erstwhile blacksmith ought to be one ot the proudest men in Scotland to see the greatest engineering triumph of the century un fait aocompli, •jobt a,’ Now that Mr Biggar is dead, all men are saying all manner of good things ot him. While ha lived and more particularly during the earlier portion of his career, no abuse was thought toe ooat.a, no mud too foul, to fling at him. Fortunately he did not care much—or, rather, he did not care at all. He was the thickest skinned man every born even in the country of O'Connell, For this I honor him exceedingly. After a clear head and warm heart (and Mr Biggar possessed both), I don’t know any quality mon estimable than a thick skin, or rarer,

PABNKX’t WBBT COLLEAGUE Hie death it an event very much to be deplored. Mr Parnell has said ot him, * He was my flrtt. and, for a long Ums, my ooly oolleagus.' Thl» ia hietorlca) truth, ana

indeed it >1 in the highest degrea probable that if there had been no Biggar, there would have been no Parnell such as we now know him. It would have been hardly possible for Mr Parnell to have done all the work of those early rough times himself, and for a very considerable time Mr Bigger was the only man whom he could get to follow him. It was a very rough and arduous struggle, and none but thoroughly virile, thick skinned men could have waged it. There comes a time in every political campaign (at least, in every one that succeeds) when the campaigners can afford to become genteel, and I have no doubt that if Mr Biggar had lived to become Speaker of the Irish Legislature, he would have seen his way to becoming as fine a gentleman, it not as Mr Peel, at any rate as Lord Halsbury. A MONTH WITH ‘ HABD ’ FOB TWO OBANHE?. A more utterly indefensible decision was never delivered from the Bench than that of Mr Cooke at Marylebone Police Court last Friday, when he sentenced a carman, with 14 years’ good character to his credit, to a month’s hard labor for taking two oranges, value Id, from a case which he was carrying. I say ‘ taking,’ tor it is difficult to regard such an act as a theft. The man did not so regard it, for he did the thing openly with a constable looking at him. Hia employers, Messrs Pink and Son, at once condoned it, and to their credit be it told, they have written to explain that tbe prosecution was undertaken against their will by the railway company on whose premises the ‘crime’ was perpetrated. Tbe magistrate alone works himself into a state of virtuous indignation at thia trumpery offence, and gloats over bis

unfortunate victim by reminding him that, in addition to his * month,’ he has ‘ forfeited probably his situation, and certainly his good character.’ This is the way that criminals are multiplied and gaols filled. Has Mr Cooke, I wonder, any ides why the First Offenders' Act was passed ? A HESCIFUL JUDGE. Thank Heaven, however, there is here and there a black swan among magistrates who knows the value of mercy. Simultaneously with this case at Marylebone, Mr Montagu Williams had before him at Dalston a man who bad stolen a saw. It is true that the prisoner and his family were in the last stage of destitution, which the carman in the other csss was not. On tbe other hand, the MW was worth 6s, and the prisoner had been convicted before. Certain ladies, however, who knew the family represented the man's circumstances tn the magistrate, and Mr Williams discharged him with a lecture, under recognisances to come up for judgment when called upon. By a strokee of irony thia wise decision was reported next to Mr Cooks’s in the morning papers. I wish I could that Mr Cooke had profited by it. CHBISTIAN SOCIALISM.

Tbe Rev. D. Headlam preached a sermon on Christian 8 >oialum, in Bt. Agatha’s Church, Landport, on Sunday se’nnight, to a very large congregation, and hia views were so much to the taste of his hearers that ho was several times interrupted by loud applause, which all thn efforts of tho olergy and officials of the church were unable to restrain.

CHAT ABOUT PEOFLK. Mr Stead is again at work in connection with tho Pall Mall Gazette, Ha doos throe hours’ work in the morning, The * Mrs Partington ’ ot humorous tame, is now seventy-five years of age, and a faithful daughter is his companion and housekeeper. His hair is white, and his once smoothly-shaven face is now partially covered with a beard. Mark Twain has dedicated one of his books to John Smith, wherever he is found, and he will be interested to learn that tbe new London Post Office Directory contains sixteen and a half columns of Smiths, representing nearly seventeen hundred names. Thia does not include the aristocratic members ot the family who consider the *i' too common and substitute * y.' John Burns, of dock strike fame, has no intention of going to America, but he is far from being in gond health. He has received a host of letters congratulating him on hie speech on Stanley. Curiously enough Stanley himself read the telegraphed account of the speech with great interest, much admired it, and thought that the criticism, though strong, was perfectly fair. The Prince of Wales, on seeing the notice of Mr George Augnstus Sala's wedding, with his customary genial courtesy, sent a handsome present of game to the bride and groom in their cosy home at Victoria-street. Mr Bellamy, the author of the now famous work 1 Looking Backward,’ appeared the other day on the platform at Boston. He is one of tho founders, with others, of a party which calls itself ‘ Nationalist,* and which is more or less Socialistic in its tendencies. Mr Bellamy did not shrink on the platform from proposals and ideals as drastic and as sanguine as those in his famous work.

His speech, says a Boston reporter, * dosed with an eloquent picture of the peaceful and prosperous era which is to come when Nationalism having trinmphed, there shall be no tariffs, no race issue, no intemperance,. no labor question, no poverty.’ ‘ We note but one ommission in this beatific catalogue,* cynically comments a New York contemporary. Mr Bellamy should have added, 1 and no human nature.’

Dear, delightful, and ever fresh Uncle Remus is going to settle down into a serious newspaper editor. The other day there died one ot the most promising and popular men of the Southern States—Henry Grady. Grady was a journalist and editor of the Atlanta Constitution—one of the chief journals of the South. Joel Chandler Harris—whom Englianmen chiefly know as Unde Remus—takes the vacant chair. Let us hope this will not mean any cessation in those delightful stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and Brer Wolf, which have opened up to many of us a completely new and delightfully refreshing realm of humour. Ellen Terry’s life is very simple. She invariably wakes at half-put seven in the morning, and after a cup of tea sets to work to write her let-ers. In the morning she usually goes out for a drive, either into town j to shop or to Hampstead or Richmond. InJ the afternoon she reads, works, and is atw home to her intimate friends; at five o'clock she rest for an hour; then dines, and then goes down to the theatre. It takes her halfan hour to drive from Kensington there. She can’t live In the closeness of the town.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/GSCCG18900429.2.13

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 447, 29 April 1890, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,912

Selections from “ Truth ” and other papers. Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 447, 29 April 1890, Page 2

Selections from “ Truth ” and other papers. Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 447, 29 April 1890, Page 2

Help

Log in or create a Papers Past website account

Use your Papers Past website account to correct newspaper text.

By creating and using this account you agree to our terms of use.

Log in with RealMe®

If you’ve used a RealMe login somewhere else, you can use it here too. If you don’t already have a username and password, just click Log in and you can choose to create one.


Log in again to continue your work

Your session has expired.

Log in again with RealMe®


Alert