MISCELLANEOUS.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1458, 17 October 1884, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS.

A charitable man in Melbourne sent a bundle of left off clothes to the Benevolent Asylum. He received a letter from one of the inmates shortly afterwards of which the following is a copy :~-." The hoss of this ere Assy In nt giv me a pare of inixpresables, and it would ni'ako vie ; faii-te to vnpra 'em. I

found jour name and ware you lived in win of the pokits. My wife lives up at Colli. igsvood Flat, aud cums to *_•»._) s'liit.'iao-*, aid I showed 'em to ha:*. She laffed so I thot she would h-ivt* a eliptic lit. She wants to noe if ;. iv lives and brethes a man with ,-s no bigger than that. She sais if there is lift oughter be taken up for vagrincy for avin no lorful nor visihel ■ v >atis of support. She coulden't get ' a > i our eldest son. So she sold 'em i'j. gii kiises. - If you hey another pare to spare, my wifo would like to pit 'ern up hy the side of the fireplace I') krep the tongs in. ' According to th 9 latest London payers, a diuner took plack a few days ago in. a Parisian restaurant, given by the ladies of the French Press. It was self sty led/ ?>• </' »<•.-■ d"s ba* belts. The President of th's hlue slocking banquet was Jeanne Thilde, the f.ir e.hti-e.-ss of the ' Gil Bias,' whose caustic pen makes her admired and feared. At her sides were seen I Madame Paul de Charry of the * Pays,' Carnesof the -Pati-ie/ Cami'le Del:tviHe of the ' Pressee ' and Opinion Nationale,' Georges de Payrebrune of the ,' Telegraphe.' Olympe A n do u ard the editress of the Pavilion' and Tinny more less known to fame. It ia a paragraph in the statues that only good lookin!» woman i_ay become members of this Society ; and most of the above named ladies, if uot actually beautiful, have all that subtle Parisian charm. M. Barbey d'Aurevilly, who his often overwhelmed all blue stockings with his acute and witty satire, received from the lady President an invitation to attend the banquet. He •declined in a most graceful and sarcastic letter. "Madame," he wrote •' it is'very difficult to be a St. Anthony, but one can always be a Ulysses." . ;•.-.,.. A considerable sum has been contributed, we learn from the London papers, towards the testimonial which it is proposed to present to Mr Spurgeoii in celebration of his fiftieth birthday i 1 _IQOO will be absorbed by the .JunilejE* Houseja structure erected at the rear Ipftue Metropolitan Tabernacle for facilitating the work of the •church. (i TJia- three determined to appropriate thi'bal nice are tht* Cjlpor--tagS' '^Asso'Hi^o 1, ". th.3 Alm-hmses EiidbwnWiit" Fund, both connected with ihe Tabernacle, and the chapel for Bis son, Mr Thomas Spurgeon, in Auckland, N-3.v Zed.md. An English lady of title has resolved to devote her life to the poor women and children of Bethual Green. •She now lives in a single room in the iieighborbood, and employs her whole time in visiting her poorer neighbors, 'with the object of first inspiring a love •of cleanliness i ■ the matrons and girls of the locality, and the ambition of j helping themselves to independence 'by work. Her system is thus des- I •cribed in the Queen newspaper : — j " She knocks at the door of the miser- { able room, laden, hot with provisions I •ami warm c othiug, as sometimes de- ; picted, but with soap and scrubbing ' brushes, a pail and broom. With these { she sets the housewife and daughters j to work scrubbing and cleaning the j floor and walls, while she p'inds the i children or watches the wretched; dinner cookiug on the fire. When the iob is over, she inquires the prices of their work by the hour, makes a business-like calculation of the time expended in cleaning the room, pays the price demanded, and bids the > people expect her again in a day or two. During the many weeks she has been pursuing the good work of cleanliness, she has never ni* t with the slightest opposition to her wishes, i nor in any one case have the brooms and brushes disappeared. j An enterprising American has initiated a new system of what is called among the congnoscenti "sobering up" This iugeuious person is the proprietor -of a Turkish bath, which he keeps open all night. When gentlemen drink a little too much at night, he explains, they come to him, and are put through a process which j enables them to recover in time for their business engagements on the I next day. " I have known men to be brought here who could not walk, and in a few hours we would send them away able to assume the most trying business responsibilities, and they would walk as well as Weston." Itis not surprising to hear that the house is crowded every night. The guests are afterwards conducted to the sleeping chamber, which contains 30 or 40 cots. In the morning they are called, and, after a cold shower bath, they are turned out " right as a trivet." The owner of tlie establishment then told the following story: — "Last spring a man who was about to be married to a rich young woman living in the suburbs, came into the city one morning to get his certificate. He was a timid sort of a person, and, before going to the county clerk to get what he wanted he took several drinks. He •met a friend in a saloon, and got very full. Somehow between him and Im friend the certificate was procured. He was to have been married at 6 o'clook, and he was brought here in a carriage about 2 o'clock so drunk that lie could not stand. His friend, who •was, also pretty well soaked, piteously bemoaned the fact that the wedding would have to be postponed, and both parties disgraced. But, sir, we put them through the process, and started them away by their train a little after 5 o'clock as sober and dignified a3 judges of the Supreme Bench. The oldest ship afloat in the British mercantile navy is a collier brig, belonging to South Shields, named Brotherly Love, and it is claimed that this is the identical vessel upon which the circumnavigator, Captain James Cook, served out his time as an apprentice.

The territory round about the Gulf of Carpentaria is now so largely and so prosperously occupied that the directors of the A.S.N Company have felt justified in exvnding their operations to that part of the Continent. The ; Company has entered into a contact 1 with the Queensland Government for j a weekly mail sur view between Cook tnvn, L'iiu svhiy L>U'ml, Normantoi i I Oi". •' v i -i !I . ! isS tri > was •ri 'c '■ -. '-i • *'; ''V ' '■ •-.-"'. '"itv o' Melbourne. The mail service is to be between Brisbane and Burketown, hut -hi* Gulf terminus will practicall* - he at Norinanton, whence a special teu- \ der will i-u.i tn coiijiii-r'nn wicli tin nail :•);. L'.'iiis vi uu i.toitunt province is being brought into rapid co.ntnuiiic'itiou witn t.ie holding cities of Australia. A soidier about to be sent on an expedition said to the ouicer dhectin,: the Shafts, Sir, I cannot g<>, b_--ans I I stutter.'' !' says the oitic-i-, ' vo: don't go to talk, but to light.' ' Ay, i»ut they'll it p put me on g g giuti v. and a man may go h.i 1 1 ... halt uin lie before I can say, wh wa who go s there?' 'Oh, tlutc Is no objection, for there wili be another sentry plui-en along with you, and he. can challenge tad you cuu fin-*/ ' Well, b b but I i y lie taken and run through before I can cry q q quarter.' ** Isaacs," he said, as he entered th store with the evening paper in hi'handi" " wool has gone oop two centsper pound." •' Yes, ladder." '"Mark everydings on dot gounter oop twenty percent." "But all dose goods vims cotton, fadder." " Dey vhas? Veil, dot makes no defreuce. I see dot tw«. button mills haf vailed, und der brice ov puttous must go oop. Isaacs, you vhas nefer a rich man until you lv- p your eyes oudt pehind you.'' — W.-.i.---*<reet Aews. *' Mr Conway writes that owirg to the attitude of the Outgo Ci-'cket Association, and to the refusal of the Auckland public to support foreign teams the English cricketers decline to visit New Zealand, preferii g to fill up their spare time in Queensland. — '* Warrior,' the Australian correspondent ol the Otago fVitntss writes that Beach has been engaged for £500 to give a series of rowing exhibitions in this colony," Sir Julius Vogel's Life Assurance Policies Bill, a necessary compliment to the Government Insurance Association Bill, has been printed. It is an elaborate measure of 40 clauses, and its provisions are applicable to policies issued either hy tiie Government Insurance Department or by private Companies. A large portion is devoted to provisions for enabling policy holders to mortgage their policies conditionally. Under the present law a mortgagee requires a policy to he absolutely assigned to him, and in the event ot' Lis being unscrupulous enough to take.cd.aiitnge, of. tliis to insist upon retaining the title fo the policy even after his claims a* mortgagee have been satisfied, a mortgagor could only have established his rigln to are-assignment at the cost of a law suit. An important feature of the Bill is that referring to protection of policies. O.ie alfcer- ' ation made by this Bill is that policies which couljd be pro too ted under a bankruptcy are not allowed to pass to the Trustee under a deed of arrangement by a general assignment of a debtor's property, or to become- liable for del>ts after tbe insured's death by ' a general direction iii a ,will to pay the \ testator's debts out of his property. At present debtors or their families sometimes lose their policies by not beii"; ■ aware that under a general assignment ' of their property or a general direction jin their wills their policies bacomo liable for their debts, thus losiug the protection throjgh mere ignorance of a techinical distinction. Another change is that the present sliding scale of protection is abandoned, and a life policy coming within the i conditi ns is absolutely protected .t once and for any amount up to £2000. unless it be made clear to the satisfac tion of a Judge that the policy was taken out with intent to defraud the insurer's creditiors. It is provided that the policy must beon the debtor's own life and that it must have either been seven years in existence, or it must be a policy the paymenl. of the premiums for which are spread over the lifetime, of the assured, or by the terms of the contract for a period at the least ten years. Section 05 gives the mati'ied women all such powers of effecting insurances and dealing with policies as unmarried women possess, with a proviso making it clear that their right to insure their husband's lives without any pucuniary interest herein is not infringed. Section 36 enables small insurances on the lives of clildren under 10 years of age to be effected by their parents. They are limited to amounts which do little more than pay the expense of burial. Tlie bill does uot renew the provisions of the former Acts as to settlement policies. The private Companies doing business iv New Zealand have not issued any policies under these Acts. The Government department have issued a considerable number, but these have proved a frequent source of annoyance and misunderstanding to the policy holder it is alleged. A very curious fifteenth century M. volume was sold iv aLondon auction room last week for £980. It consists of 257 folio leaves of vellum, and contains minatures of extraordinary beau y, illustrating the early history, of Normandy and early English history The tirst of the series represents the arrival of Duke Rollo at Rouen, and among others are the death of Edward the Co. iV-sser, the coronation of Harold, the landing of William the Conqnet'cr, the battle of Hastings, buriul of Harold's body at Walthain. Abbey, the funeral of William, the