MELBOURNE TOWN TALK.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 642, 4 August 1891, Page 3

MELBOURNE TOWN TALK.

[By Standard Special Correspondent—- “ Telephones.”]

July 14. Day by day the chances cf the opposition grow smaller. Mr Munro’s latest find is a very severe blow, not only to the Gillies party, bnt to the particular pet of that party, Mr Bichard Speight. He has demonstrated that the Bailway Commissioners had been employing more men than they needed by forcing them to run the new lines without employing new hands. This they have proved easily able to do, thus practically owning up to past extravagance. He has also found that the Public Service Board have put on vast numbers of new people in excess of the actual requirements of the Civil Service, and the result is that confusion and dismay rule in every branch of the great circumlocution office. He is practically well supplied with money, will not part with a shilling, and to all demands instances past extravagance as a reason for present enonomy, until the very name of the late Government stinks in the mouths of its own supporters. It is quite within the limits of possibility that Mr Deakin will yet join the Munro Government, that is if it can keep itself afloat until the move would be decent, and if that be done the Conservative side may last a long while for an innings.

On Saturday last the Victorian Orchestra died a natural death, and not in a highly dignified manner, for the subscribers who had during the year troubled themselves very little about the bundles of transferable admissions they received for their money, began to use them up frantically as the days of possible ntility were numbered, and the last two or three concerts were thronged with people who all found fault with their entertainment, and all, without exception, consider that Government ought to carry on the concerts until they had used them all. This of course is impossible, and the subscribers, who, by postponing their attendance, made many of the last concerts fall flat, are as furious as the Committee and guarantors who say the brilliant things about each other.

There is a storm in a teacup over the unlucky coterie, male and female, who call themselves the Austral Salon. Some months ago they were silly enough to stigmatise the Australian natives as “boorish, unmannerly, and illiterate.” Thia was bad enough, hut one of the literary ladies alluded to them as “pigmies,” and this wholly unjustifiable taunt pot them on their mettle. As the Australian natives are principally relied upon for dances, and to do them justice generally dance very well, the Salon now finds itself high and dry concerning its ball. It is not easy to ask “ boorish, unmannerly, pigmies " to buy ball tickets, still lees so to induce them to consent,

Upon one thing we can congratulate ourselves, and that is upon the liberality with which all classes of people are preparing to help the Floods Relief Fund which up to the present time amounts to about ten thousand pounds. All sorts and conditions of men, actors, artiste, merchants, lawyers, members of Parliament, and trading societies have contributed. Amongst the donations we notice £lOO from the Citizens’ Life Assurance Co., and £lO 10s, first instalment of subscription from the company’s staff. Although all that amount has been subscribed a very great deal more is required, and unfortunately the tide of benevolence is already slackening. As usual the theatrical profession has come nobly to the front. Messrs Brough and Boucicault, who gave the first performance in aid of the sufferers, were able to eend £2lO 2s, proceeds of an excellent programme at the Bijou Theatre. Mr Williamson, sub-lessee of the Princess Theatre, made a [collection there which realised £124 odd. Mrs Palmer gives a concert where the local musical profession will do their level best to gain a good snm. Sir Chas, Halle and his wife follow suit, and several minor functions, including a Cinderella ball, are to be given with the same object. But the truth is that nothing short of fifty thousand pounds will give anything like adequate relief, and at this, time there seems to be no chance of getting £20,000, let alone the larger sum.

Ton need not be surprised if you hear that the flood has washed away the dividends of several Building Societies, and it is whispered that it will burst up one or two of them entirely. For the poor folk who have lost all are in no position to perforn their contracts. Take for instance the test case of a workman with £3 per week, who by dint of striving and saving and scraping has managed in the course of eight or ten years to accumulate a decent little home, of furniture costing lay £l5O, and has paid another £5O or £lOO off the price of a £5OO house. The latter wrecked and ruined by the flood is now a mere heap of soddened rubbish, worthless for all purposes of residence. The former has gone altogether. It is plain that his first pare will be bis clothes and food for hie family, his next some sort of provision for furniture, and it will be half a dozen years before he is able to take up the burden of paying instalments for a new house, As to repairing and re-erecting the old one he gopld not do it if ha tried. The Building Societies will have to undertake that work, but as the fences and outhouses are gone, the paper and plaster soddened and rotten, the weatherboards and roofs sprung, the windows and doors forceed out of place, and foundations sapped, the cost of rebuilding will be far more than the tenant’s forfeit. Consequently those who know the ground ar? looking about them sadly, and shares are not in fast demand.

All Melbourne is chattering to-day over the vagaries of a Mr West Erskine, of whom no one ever heard before, who has been informing the Chicago interviewers that seven colonies of Australia owe a billion sterling of which _ one fourth has been devoted to unproductive objects. As the two hundred and fifty thousand millions thus sat down by fhe gentleman to unproductive uses would give every man, woman, and child in all Australasia about £28,574 each, there is not a little wonder as to where the money has gone. The truth is these random statements do a great deal of harm when they are set going by ourselves. A fortnight ago the Argus stated that we had a deficit of £1,101,450, and the fact was at once cabled to England. Ever since then jt has been eating its words with all sorts of sauce, and grumbling in the finest style at all people who believe them.

A day or two ago a housewife bought a leg of mutton and duly put it into the oven to Jia|se, whiqh is about the only thing it ever occurs to the average housewife to do. It had not rested there more than a very few minutes when the butcher came in a hot haste and demanded the joint. She laughed at him. She bad paid for it, and would not be bothered. He had brought another, but she declined to look at it. Then he offered her ten shillings to boot, but by that time she gmelt a mouse, and could not be induced to listen. He raised his price again, but he bad to go as she remarked that what it was worth to him it was worth to her. He went irate, disconsolate and denunciatory, and she at once decided to probe her prize, thinking probably that it was stuffed with bank notes or had a few sovereigns concealed jn it; Bure enough she presently found the skewer strike a metallic substance, but it was Only a two pound weight he had dexterously thrust Into the joint to increase the weight and had forgotten to remove. He had cheated the housewife out of ninepenoe, but he will not for many a long day forget what it cost him in fine, costs and loss of custom, anq the magistrate lectured him in so highly Superior and truly moral a manner that it was Algood as a play to every one but the gnlucky knight of the cleaver.

An old joke was successfully tried on a Fitzroy resident last week. He has a hankering for mining shares, and is ready •• to put a bit in ” whenever any friends tell him of a good thing. A friend with sop? taystiry showed him a good specimen of coke, told him the output was unlimited, the profit mormons, and the market certain, He agreed to take 250 shares, and bis friend departed to describe the sell. One of the hearers set off at once to have first laugh at the dupe, and explained the transaction, TO bis horror his statement was received

with derision. “You’re all dashed smart, no doubt,” said the buyer of the shares in coke, “ but I'll see the thing through. Why the should not a coke mine be as good an investment as a coalmine?'’ And from this he would not budge, but of course he had his money paid over and no harm was done.

To morrow the new Bailway Amendment Bill will be brought in, It will naturally cut the power of the Commissioners down, and will assimilate their position very much to to that of Mr Eddy in New South Wales, He can do as he likes with the men under him, bnt he can do nothing with the men over him, and Mr Munro sees no reason why he should be bossed by the Chief Commissioner, as Sir Henry Parkes is not. More than that he is determined to take the responsibility of saying “ Take it or go,” and there will conse quently be a row royal.

One of the newest if not most edifying things in the entertainment line is a Pas de Quatre danced by Messrs Leslie, Danby, Storey and Webb, in the Gaiety burlesque of Buy Blas or the Blase Bone, in which their heads are made up as those of Sir Henry Parkes, Messrs Gillies, Deakin and Speight, and their lower portions are clad as ballet girls. It is not very nice and not very popular, but it shows the way the wind blows.

A good joke was played in the Assembly by the proprietors of a much advertised commodity. Every member received a letter in these words, “ Being assured that during the course of your arduous labors on behalf of the community at large you are in want of a useful stimulant which is very wholesome, I take the liberty of drawing your attention to the properties of” and here follows a description of the commodity in question, which is described as the most nourishing beverage at present known. Every letter enclosed a bronze cross hanging from a tricolor riband, and the Premier, believing that he was advancing the cause of temperance thereby, adorned bis button hole with this emblem, and wore it all the evening. The phrase about “ the arduous labors in the cause of the community ” tickled all the legislators, and goodness knows what might have happened to the caterer at Bellamy's upstairs if Mr Carter had not created a diversion by assuring the members that the trophy was exactly like that used for puffing a certain popular whisky. Then there was a general laugh, and the Premier’s decoration disappeared.

GENERAL NEWS. An unusual number of suicides have happened during the week in Victoria. Dr A. M. Armstrong, depressed through financial troubles, ended his life by taking carbolic acid in his consulting room. A girl named Lobby, aged 19, poisoned herself at Morwell, by taking a linament, saying that she wanted to be with Sister Mary, who had died a few days previously. A very valuable gold discovery is reported from Beaconsfield, Tasmania. It is an enormous ironstone formation, assaying over 2oz of gold per ton. A rich reef has also been discovered four miles north of Branxholme. Frederick Benairo, a mining speculator, was found dead in bed at the Federal Coffee Palace. He had lost heavily in speculations, and was much depressed by debt. Poison was found in his clothing. He leaves a young wife penniless. The s.e. Pioneer was wrecked off Trial Bay through collision with the steamer Koonya, The passengers and crew were saved. An attempt was mads to tow the vessel to Strahan, but she sank before reaching there. She was loaded with a valuable general cargo for the Zeehan goldfield, C. R. Pybus, a well known Sydney sharebroker, has absconded and is alleged to have misappropriated large sums of his clients’ money. One lady informed the police that he had taken between twelve and fifteen thousand pounds belonging to her, and also £2OOO from her son, A warrant was issued for his arrest, Notes to the value of nearly £lOOO were discovered by a laborer repairing a bridge near Brisbane. They w ere in a hole about a foot deep Covered with hay and almost reduced to pulp. They form part of £3BOO stolen from the Queensland National Bank in October, 1889, £l5OO of which was in gold. Although very high prices were charged nearly 1000 people assembled to witness the glove contest for a purse of £4OO and the Championship of Australia between J. Choynski, of San Francisco, and J, Goddard, the present holder of the championship. But for the extra prices the hall could scarcely have accommodated the numbers interested in the fight, and while a large crowd waited patiently the whole evening near ths club premises, others scaled the »roof, whence a shower of of water from one of the fire hoses failed to disloge them. The contest was of the most exciting description, and though in the second round the odds looked all in favour of Choynski, Qoddard made a really remarkable recovery, and forcing the fighting so distressed his opponent that early in the fourth round the encounter was determined. After two knoek-down blows received in quick succession Choynski was unable to rise, and the victory rested with Goddard. The 12 year old son of a bootmaker, named John Mathers, blew his brains out with a revolver at Prahran. The evidence showed that the poor boy had been treated with the utmost consideration by his parents, and in turn was an affectionate son. The unusual experience of a reproof had apparently so weighed on his sensitive mind that in a paroxysm of imaginary despair he had taken his lite.