MISCELANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1370, 5 March 1884, Page 2

MISCELANEOUS.

. «. A correspondent of the • Wakatipu Mail' at Upper Shotover reports the bringing into use for the first time of the Skippers ambulance recently, iv order to bring a miner named James Stepheuson down to the Wakatipu Hospital. The ambulance is a special made waggouettq, light but strong, so constructed that the body cau be lifted from the wheels, aud if necessary, carried in any ordinary sized doorway. Six men started, but after the first mile they became so accustomed to working the vehicle round some of the worst corners with ease that they found it was only necessary to have one driving and the other to lift the carriage on such occasions. It is stated that at any time in future a patient can be brought down with only two men in attendance. What an advantage this will be may be gathered from the same correspondent's statement that " for the last 20 years, at the very lowest average, it cost £50 to , bring a man to town, with seldom if ever less than 40 men and horses, and the work attached to it was sufficient to make the strongest man tremble when carrying the stretcher. Writing of the Selwyn election, the Timaru ' Herald' says : —^ As a fact Mr McLachlan obtained 58 more votes than Mr Lee did when he stood at the bead of the poll last year. He got enough to have won threo out of four elections under ordinary circumstances,, but the circumstances were not ordinary. Mr Wakefield had the feeling of the constituency thoroughly with him. They were determined to return anopponent of borrowing, extravagance, and taxation. In spite of the emergencies of the harvest, they gave a large poll by nearly 200 tbau had over been given in the district befoie. They let their

machines stand idle, they, left their crops" half cut or half carried, they found their way by hook or by crook to a polling place and there never was . seen such enthusiasm iv the quite town of Leeston. as when they cheered the iv turning officer's announcement that Mr Wakeh'eld had 479 votes, or* majority of 163/ " Atticus" in the Melbourne Leader has the following : — " Great has been; the consternation, especially in the select circles of Toorak, over the resignation of our Governor. No onedoubts but that there will be national moumiug because of his departure.. Under his regim?, Government House has become su<-h a pleasant plaoo.I You need not ask Mis Dte Trop bar opinion about the hospitality of thenoble lord, or inquire of young Howard* Theophilus Browne whether he has any memories of the gubernatorial winecellar; or cross examine the local politician, the intelligent foreigner, the distinguished vvisitorr r or even' dull old< Sheepskins, what are the glories of out vi -c regal feasts, and they merely shrug: shoulders aud look sad. The servile Jenkins has already shed his tributeof ink in acknowledgement of past : favors, and there will doubtless T>e* much heavy farewell dinner demonstration amongst the Tallpw Fat family. But I marvel that the noble lord did not. like the Eai/1 of Rosebery, observea discreet silence about the vessel in which he will leavo. The secret being: out the berths are ce rtain to bo rushed* as those of the Parramatta were by the colonial Georgeus Midas type, who will make any sacrifice for the privilege of liviug six weeks in hi» enchanting society." The London World says the real reason why Cardinal Manning and so many distinguished prelates from other countries have been called to Rome, is that Leo XIII wants to confer with them, in an informal manner, as to the best manner of ruling their respective churches, and yet remaining: on good terms with the different Governments under which they live. The present Pope is utterly unlike Pope Pius IX. The latter seemed to think that the more animosity that existed between the Church and the secular authorities of all lands, the more credit there was for the former. His successor is persuaded the church ought to assist the State in all matters in which her moral influence can do good. The Whitehall Eeview understands; that as leading counsel for the defence of O'Donnell, Mr Charles Russull, Q.C., received a retaining fee of 2000 guineas, drawn, bien entnndu from the coffer* of the Land League ; and adds that " so large a sum for the almost hopeless defence of a murderer, whose conviction seemed from the outset socertain, is, we can readly believe, without precedent in the history of the bar." ' Mercutio" Writes in the Auckland Herald: — " Jeopardous." There, the cat is out of the bag. That is the fourth word ending in " dous," for which I asked my youngreaders last week. " Senex" is the only correspondent who seems to have hit upon it, and takes it that he is an old boy. He writes to me that having no " pa" or " ma" to ask he was fain to find out the work for himself, so taking down his dictionary he began at A, and went patiently through the verbal bush until he reached the missing word. But had he looked a little more carefully he would have found what some one told him afterwards that frondous and hybridous both end in dous, so that it seems there are more than four words in the language with that termination. The number of Australians and New Zealandersat Cambridge at the present time is extraordinarily large. The Australasian Club there numbers 140 members. Baron Nordenskjold is understood to be contemplating as his next venture in exploration a voyage to the South Pole in 1885. This expedition would cost at least £200,100, as a ship of & special type would have to be built for its purposes. A Jewish synagogue in Philadelphia has taken a new departure of great significance on the woman question. Hitherto in Hebrew congregation* women have had no voice in the election of rabbi or any of the church business?, but the Philadelphia ha* accorded to them equal privileges with the male members, except the holdingof official positions. It ia expected that other synagogues will follow the example of this progressive congregation. More drunken people are arrested in Glasgow and Edinburgh on Sundays than on any other day in the week. The Imperial Government is still paying a pension to the widow of a naval officer who was killed at Trafalgar 78 ye ars ago.. Rev. J. T. Black, a prominent orthodox minister of Montreal, in a recent dircaurse in that city, as reported in the Montreal Witness, in reply to the question, Why has the Church never taken the lead of great moral movements in their infancy ? said : "The Church was a huge body, and as such moved slowly. By the very necessity laid upun her to preserve the peace within her own borders, and to do no injury to the consciences of her members, a new moral movement must be well under way before the Church, with united and harmonious front, could join in the grand march of progress. The Church, too, was an aged body, and as such was inclined to be conservative, and was a censor, and not a caterer. . . . Again, the Church's true work was not so much to inculcate particular items in moral reform as to inculcate the principles which lie at the root of all reforms. Iv tin's respect tho Church was not % i;r:ight errant, nryr: ing"-*-t- .11 at r/irtic-

ular abuses, but a sage teacher of those things which lead to sound moral life. All moral movements, too, had a social or political environment, or both; and it was only right that every inno-vations-should reach an assured vitality before it was accepted. . . - The Church, in every age, has enough to do in enforcing moral truths about "which all agree, instead of championing those things which are undergoing a probation: She was not the motive power in the engine of social progress. God" is the living tire and His Church v the controlling balance-wheel." A roan who may be said to have played a part in histroy, if the importance of events 1 is to be judged by that of their consequences, died receutly in a village near Paris. The party alluded to is the mason Badinguet, who enabled Prince Louis Napoleon to escape from prison at Ham in 1846, by lending him his working clothes, it was with the aid of this disguise that the Prince, dressed in a blouse canvas trousers, and cap, with a short pipe in his mouth, a plank on his shoulder, and splashes of mort* ar scattered oveu . his person, passed out of the prison gates and. took refuge in England. Badinguet was himself imprisoued when the escape of the f utara Emperor was discovered. On the foundation of the Empire he received a pension of £48 a year, a aura which would not stand for much out of Franco, hat which, at that time, before the enormous rise in prices which changed all the conditions of daily life in that capital, would seem a splendid windfall to one in his position. The name of the mason was applied to the Emperor by his enemies, and he is never spoken of, among the " advanced !' Republicans of the Belleville type, by any other name