The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-01-11 00:00:00

Nam

Iflistellantous
11^,7,1E rONEIGN, AND COLONIAL

VILLAWS LIFE IN LINCOLNSHIRE.—A corres-
pondent of the lAncela °merle writes this amusing
letter from the village of Bibby in Lincolnshire
We have now hail your paper brought round from Alford
the last six months, but we have had no news about its We
are not to be slighted In thia manner, for I mean to write
myself every week. If you have not been through our
village, come, and call at No. 2 about teatime, and I'll take I
you round. We have a pretty little church with • castellated
tower, and a flue dry burying ground, a neat school-house
and rectory, some very fine old (arm.houses, with their large
porches, pillars, &c. We have a park, and a few good farms,
one wheelwright's shop a rather large one), and two grocers'
shops with thatched roofs. A canter stops here to a
week and we also have a tinker and a tailor, a cobbler and
a nailer, and they all know me.
THE AltrituEa " BY MISTAKE" AT LIVERPOOL.
—On the 23rd of December, an old man named Lennon
—since dead—who resided ins cellar in Great How-
ard-street, Liverpool, was struck at his own door by
one of four men standing in the street, and who,
before repeating the blow, said that Lennon was the '
" wrong man" Lennon subsequently died from the
effect of the blow he received, and the coroner's jury
returned a verdict of "Wilful murder against some
person or persons unknown." It is now supposed that
Lennon was mistaken for his next door neighbour, a
master lumper named Mahoney, who had given great
offence to some of his men by threatening to discharge
them if they tmdc part in the proposed Fenian funeral
procession. The police incline to this opinion, and are
investigating the matter.

CHURCH HOLES IN NEW YORK.—The New
fork Examiner says :

A fashionable quartette choir costs from 1,000 dols. to
5,000 dots a year. Many of these performers, who lead the
worship of God on Sunday, are regularly engaged in the
places of amusement in and about the city. Few of them
are professors of religion, and few of them are professors of
propriety. They pay little attention to the services or to
the decorinn of the house of God. They have nothing to
do with the prayers, the reading of God's Word, or with the
preaching The part they bear in devotion they propose to
do artistically, according to contract, and nothing more. It
is the custom of some costly choirs, during the sermon, to
retire to an ante-room Ind enjoy themselves, while the per-
former, as they regard him at the other end of the house,
takes his part. AII artist Was secured, took her place in
the quartette choir, and charmed the audience by her
vocalisation. More than all, she charmed the people by her
modest and even diffident bearing. She had never sung in a
choir before, it was said, and the sympathetic ladies pitied
her enibarrassment. A course of Sundays revealed the fact
that this modest damsel bad been connected the whole
season with Niblo's troop, with whom she had been perform-
ing the Black Crook.

I ENV FIELD-MARSHAL—After a period of
service unexampled, we should think, in military
history, Sir John Burgoyne proposes at length to re-
tire from active duty, and few would deny that the
rank of Field-Marshal, to which he has just been
elevated, has been well and fairly earned. The length
of his career, indeed, appears almost incredible. It
commenced in the last century, and if at the time
when he entered the Army there were any officers in
it as old as he is now, their recollections might have
gone back to the days of Marlb Rough. When the
younw soldier received his first commission, the Duke
of Wellington was only in the eleventh year of his
service, and Buonaparte was but a Republican
General. Since that time seventy years have elapsed,
and Sir John Burgoyne still survives, not only hale
and vigorous' but actually on duty as before. It is,
indeed, not the least surprising feature in this un-
paralleled service that it should have been peiformed
without a break, and there is probably no other army
in the world which could produce a soldier who had
been on full pay ever since 1798.

A NICE POINT ! The Banffshire Journal
says :
We learn that Mr. M:Comble's black polled ox, which won
Co many prizes at the Birmingham and imithfield shows,
and which weighed alive 2,snzilb., and whose dead weight
was 1,9831 b., was likely to give some trouble even after his
post morte In had been performed. The salesman, in dis-
posing of the ox, conditioned that the head was to be re-
turned to the breeder Some little time elapsed before the
head was claimed, and then it appeared that the butcher
maintained that, though he had to give back the head, it
was not without remuneration, which had not been fixed,
and declined, for the time at least, to give it up under £l,OOO.
The telerraph communicated the demand to the North, but
of course Tillyfonr, though desirous of possessing the head
of so wonderful an animal, declined to pay the price fixed
by the butcher. Finally the latter abated his most extra-
ordinary demand, and the head was secured for Tillyfour,
but at a price much above what many farmers would pre-
sently be glad to get for the entire of some of their best
bullocks.

CARRYING Allms.—The practice of carrying re-
volvers, adopted, not by Fenians only, but by our
predatory class, demands some prompt and stringent
remedy (remarks the Low Times.) As it is, a man
may go about armed to the teeth, and the law does
not reach him. He cannot be disarmed, and the police
dare not detain him, even though it must be patent
that the weapon cannot be wanted for any good
purpose. Now, for this there is an easy and unobjec-
tionable remedy. Let a licence to carry arms be
granted by the justices, and make it penal to go about
armed without such a licence. No honest man would
object to the very trifling trouble it would entail upon
him in the procuring of his licence, and no other man
should be allowed to carry arms. It should be limited
to firearms and airguns, for these are the only
dangerous weapons. Any peace officer should be em-
powered to search a person reasonably suspected to be
carrying arms, and to take from any person not pro-
ducing his licence whatever weapons may be found
about him. In times like these good citizens must
submit to some inconveniences for the better restraint
of the bad.

TAKING A SANGUINE VIEW OF IT.—We (Cork
Examiner) have been informed by a gentleman who
has recently arrived from America, and on whose
veracity the strongest confidence may be placed, that
extensive transactions are carried on at the opposite
side of the Atlantic in the bonds of the Irish Republic.
He informed us that he was present at New York
when property in the neighbourhood of Queenstown
was sold to an enterprising Yankee, in anticipation of
its one day falling into the hands of the Fenians, who
consider themselves the rightful owners, and he was
aware that many other properties in the county if
Cork changed hands on the prospect of the liberation
of Ireland.

New YEAR'S Girrs !—The Paris paper, are
thrown into utter consternation by a recent measure
of the Government. They have had a New Year's
gift .4 a very peculiar kind. No less than seventeen
of them are to be prosecuted for offences against the
laws devised to keep the press in order. Their offence,
moreover, is not for making editorial comments, but
merely for summarising certain debates in the Legis-
lative Chamber. All or nothing is the rule of parlia-
mentary reporting in France. You must publish every
word of every speech, or nothing at aIL The present
onslaught on the journals has created an immense
sensation.

KING THRODORIIS AND THE SPIRITS. —A cor-
respondent of the Timm of India says :
.. . .

Abyssinia, the land of superstition, has of course its
Watches of Endor. I heard a good story the other day illus-
trating the popular feeling of the country against Theodor.,
and the result of our advent. The King, so the story said,
heard the news with a troubled countenance, and deter.
mined to consult the spirits of his fathers. They were sum-
moned and appeared before him. The King - roll me my
fate. Shall I conquer as I have always conquered? Spirits
—No ; thy time has come ; prepare thyself. The King—Let
me reign but three years more, and I will redeem the past.
Spirits—No. The King—But two years ; let roe reign but
two years. Spirits—No ! Not one year. Thou bast been
tried and found wanting. The blood of slaughtered thou-
sands cries aloud for vengeance. But stay There is yet
one chance. Relinquish sovereignty, return to thy country,
be again the tiller of the soil, earn thy bread by the sweat
of thy brow, and live. The King was very irate, and the
Spirits were directed to go to —, the place from whence
they came.

SELF-ACCUSATION OF M URDE R.—At Wigan,
Thomas Harrison, of Manchester, has been charged
on his own confession with the murder of his wife.
The confession was made on Sunday evening, and
under somewhat singular circumstances. For some
months revival services had been held at the theatre,
and during a sermon the prisoner walked on the stage,
and entered into conversation with one of the band
named John Hurst. Another man recognised the
prisoner, and advances were made of a friendly cha-
racter, but were declined. The prisoner then asked
Hurst to accompany him to a little room behind the
stage which serves the purposes of a green-room ; but
when here he refused to state the reason for wishing
this interview. After some minutes silence he asked
to be shown the stage-door, and as he was going out he
said, "I shall be ; I shall be going to before
morning." Hurst remonstrated with him, but the
prisoner said it was of no use, as he had murdered his
wife by cutting her throat. Hewn; afterwards appre-
hended, but before the bench he declared that his state-
' ment was false, and said his wife was living at Man-
chester. He was remanded for further inquiry.
- _ _ _

TIIE LOYAL IRISIL—Mr. Digby Seymour has
addressed a letter, enclosing a copy iif the following
proposed address to the Queen, to the best known em-
ployers of Irish labour, begging that they will facilitate
the object be has in view, by permitting the address
to lie for signature at any place under their authority
which they may deem most convenient for the
purpose :