SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE.

PORT OF LYTTELTON.

ARRIVED,

April 19 —Loch Naw, barque, from New castle. /

April 19 —Especulador, barque, from New castle.

April 20 —Rotorua, s.s., from Sydney, via Wellington. April 20 Alma, three-masted schooner, from Greymouth. April 20—Victoria, barque, from Newcastle.

SAILED.

April 20—Rotorua, s.s., for South.

The Albion Company’s ship Auckland, with 28 passengers and a cargo valued at £51,71.0, sailed from Port Chalmers, for London, on Thursday. The whaling barque Celestia arrived at the Bluff on Thursday, after a nine months’ cruise, with 56 tuns of sperm oil.

COMMERCIAL TELEGRAMS.

Auckland, Thursday,

Bunk of New Zealand (buyers), £24 : Colo nial, 525. 6d.; National, 775.; South British Insurance, 745.; New Zealand, 995.; Loan and Mercantile, £6 ss.

Wellington, Thursday. Produce prices :—Flour, Colonial, ,£l3 to £l3 205., Adelaide, ,£18; oats, 4s. 3d. to 4s. 6d.; bran, is. id:: wheat, 4s. to 4s. 3d.; hams, gd.; bacon, Bd.; cheese, 7^d.; maize, ss. 9d. to 65.; pollard, £7 ; potatoes, £3 15s. to £4 : butter, is.

Dunedin, Thursday.

Mr. J. D. Bradshaw reports the following:— Bank of New Zealand, ,£24 55.; Colonial Bank, £2 Ils. 6d.;. National Bank, ,£3 155.; Union Insuiance, 155.; Standard insurance, £1 £s.; National Insurance, ,£1 10s.; New Zealand Shipping, ,£3 155.; Guthrie and Lar nach’s, £2 7s. 6d.

POST OFFICE NOTICES.

Mails at - the Ashburton Post Office close as follows :

For Christchurch and North at 10.20 a.m., 4 p.m., and 7.30 p.m., daily. For Chertsey at 10.20 a.m. daily.

For Rakaia at 10.20 a.m., and 4 p.m. daily. ~ For' Ashburton South, Winslow, Hinds, Coldstream, Rangitata, Orari, Winchester, and Geraldine at 10.30 a.m. daily. For Ashton, Waterton, and Longbeach at 2-45 p.m. daily. For Temuka, Timaru and South at 10.30 a.m. and 3 p.m. daily.

The next outward San Francisco mail will close at Christchurch on Friday, the 26th.

The Evening Echo. SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1878.

We have no desire to cast reflections upon the telegraph officers in Ashbur ton, because we are willing to believe that in Mr. Douglas the public have a competent and painstaking servant. But when, publishing our paper at four o’clock in the afternoon, we receive at a quarter to five telegrams that have been despatched from Wellington at 1.35, we are forced to conclude that we have a cause of complaint against some one or other in the Telegraphic Department of the colony, It has been repeatedly said by way of sneer that New Zealand is over-officered, and that if every man were branded with the trade mark of

his special line of business, fifty per cent, of the male population of the colony would bear the broad arrow. This may or may not be true, but if it is, and the Telegraph Department is as well supplied with officers as this sneer insinuates, then a gross neglect of duty is manifest somewhere. The telegrams referred to were delivered to us on Thursday evening at 4.4s,'having'been received at the Ashburton station at 3.47 and 3.53, despatched from Welling ton at 1.35 and 1.50 respectively. These times speak for themselves, and require no comment. It is evident that the objectionable delay is not at Ashburton, but between the despatch from the head office at Wellington and receipt at the station here.

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The Christchurch Dog Show takes place next Wednesday at Tattersall’s, and there are now nearly 300 entries. A meeting of shareholders in the Templar Hall Company is called for Tuesday to elect a director in place of Mr Thomas Williams resigned, and for other business.

Mr. Gates’ large collection of en gravings, oleographs, etc., were on exhi bition to-day in the auction room of Mr. T. Bullock, and were inspected by a considerable number of admirers.

The Rev. Mr Westbrooke will preach the anniversary sermons of the Primi tive Methodist Sunday School in his chapel morning and evening. Prizes will be distributed among the deserving scholars in the afternoon.

For Monday there are a good many attractions in Christchurch, chief among them being the Autumn Meeting of the Jockey Club, which opens on that day, and the Odd-Fellows’ fete, to be held in the grounds of the Agricultural and Pastoral Association.

We understand that as yet no answer has been received from Dr Somerville in reply to the invitation to Ashburton tendered him by the Committee ap pointed last week. It is gratifying to be able to state that the meetings of the rev. gentleman in Christchurch are being attended with a large measure of success. Crowds have been present at his services in the Oddfellows’ Hall and the Theatre Royal. At the latter place last evening sveral hundreds of people were unable to gain admission. Last evening the tea and public meetings in celebration of the third

anniversary of the Ashburton Primitive Methodist Sunday School were held in the Library Hall. About four o’clock the scholars and other children sat

down to tea, and about half-past five the public were entertained at the same tables. At* both sederunts there was a good turn out, and fair justice was done to the good things provided by the ladies and gentlemen who had charge of the commissariat. The after meeting was also well attended, both by little ones and the general public. Addresses were delivered by the Rev. Mr. Westbrooke, the new pastor of the

Primitive Methodist Church, who on this occasion was chairman of the meet ing ; by Rev. W. B. Marten, Messrs. Watkins, Lill, and others. Several hymns were sung very sweetly by the children, under the management ot Mr. Horace Gates, who presided at the

harmonium ; and recitations by Misses Harriet Stokes, Clara Steel, and Amy Hurst, and Masters John Aston and Herbert Steel, added considerably to the evening’s enjoyment. A collection was taken in aid of the school funds,

realizing over £2. Votes of thanks concluded the meeting. The proverbial bull in a china shop recently became a too vigerous reality in Edinburgh. In the evening an in furiated bull entered a china shop at the Haymarket, and on the girl in charge coming out of the back of the shop to see what was the matter, it knocked her down. She was rescued in an insensible condition, and her re covery is still doubtful. As for the shop itself, the bull, before it was got out, smashed a great quantity of crock ery, and also, in some way not ex plained made a large hole in the floor. By the time the intruder was disposed of, the shop, as might have been ex pected was “an almost indescribable scene of confusion.”

CHISPA’S LETTER.

“ I am not yet so bald that you can see my brains. ” —Longfellow.

“ The fences are down, and the horses stray in.” As for my own tabernacle, when its lamp goes out, you may perform the rites of sepulture with all the pomp and circumstance of-—the undertaker, and plant my bones under the sods of the burying-ground; or, if civilisation has risen so high in the Britain of the South when I take leave of life, you may dispose of all that is mortal of Chispa with the swift, blast of a cremation" furnace: But-while my clay lives, and in that clay the old memories and associations that haunt

the soui of a Briton, you may hot dese crate the dust of the dead by making those sacred mounds a grazing field, nor leave the hallowed spot of “ God’s acre ” a playground for the beasts of the field. New Zealand is still young— her graveyards are not yet rich with the ashes of a hundred generations ; but in them rests the clay of those who fought the early battle with the unbroken wilderness, who put their hands to the pioneer’s plough, and looked not back. We may not perhaps be able to point to the monuments of men before whose names the world worships ; but men lie there whose work the new nation honors, if their names be forgotten. We live now, and dear ones* live with us, but we and they must go sooner or later. Shall Ashburton’s veneration for the honored dust that lies in God’s acre be measured by that sentence, — “ The fences are down, and the horses stray in ?” If so, then poor Ashburton.

He was a gem that Wesleyan—a humorist of the first order. Oh, that I but knew him, that 1 might shake his hand, and enjoy the leer of his eye. Who but an artist with the very soul of art within him could have raised in a night that “ gallery ” at the Bazaar ?

Who but an artist conceived the grand themes and spread them so tellingly along the eye-line—without pencil the outlines rose, neither brush, nor palette, nor easel, nor pigment, nor canvas, but there the works were —master strokes of

art. Mrs. C. looked on that picture of “ Woman’s Rights.” If ever that artist calls to see me in my own sweet den, let him do so when the old woman has lent her scrubbing-brush, for if her scrubbing-brush was not the lay figure

of his, may I never again see a clean doorstep. And that “Ruin of a Country

Seat!” Well, I gazed upon the subject. I was overcome. Fair ladies gazed and

realised the power of the artist—and the way out. But an urchin beside me allowed his feelings to carry him away. Realising at the first glance the artist’s

might and his loyalty to nature, he yelled in an ecstacy of glee, “ Why, if them ain’t Old P ’s breeches with the back busted. I’ve seen him wear ’em often.” The genius of that gallery will live for ever in the Ashburton

memory; and in the far future, when Macaulay’s New Zealander makes the prophesied inquiry, the artist’s name will be found on the roll of fame. Oh, that I could meet him !

“ Infancy.” It is a grand plea. Run up any bill you may; be as extravagant as a confiding storekeeper will permit you ; live like a lord, and spend like a prince, if you can secure the necessary “ tick ; ” if you are still on the hither side of legal “ infancy,” you are safe from the law’s grip, and the duns can only drag out of you what are not “luxuries.” Revel as you may in choice havanas, pour out the finest perfumes like water, sport the richest jeweliery, the rarest wardrobe of the hour—only the “ necessaries ” need to be paid for. Even your borrowed silver for the abso lution of your soul is a “ luxury” to the minor, the “infant” of the law. After the case of Starrs v. Orr, merchants had better write the motto, “ Poor Trust is dead —bad pay killed him” over the picture of a dead dog, and hang it in their stores; and learn the refrain of the Scotch maiden, “Oh for ane-and-twenty, Tam.”

Well, I am a married man, ancPl. can afford to advise A.B.C. band. L;T. Punch once gave “an advice to young men about to marry,” it was onb wojrd— “Don’t.” To those unfortunates of your “Wanted” .columns, I would simply add —“ Don’t- make asses of yourselves.” What woman cares for a fool of a man who would carry his “ heart on his sleeve for the birds to peck at”; and what man cares for a woman who consents at the first time of asking from the great crowd ?

A.B.C. have much to leamj 'or tftejr are terrible cynics: ’ “ Moderh ” habits are “ Industry, temperance, charity, etc.” ( From the days of the tables of stone oh Mount* Sinai, through all the Christian era up till now, 1 have, there been none with the graces A.B.C, pro fess to wear? Poor humanity; «ot, poor A.B.C !, lam ,so stuck up at the definition of modem habits that I must cave in. But would these were the habits of every individual in the modern universe on this same Good Friday.' ! Chispa.

TOTTIE’S GRAVE.

[From London Figaro .]

Tain’t much of a garden, I know, sir, But still ’tis the best we could do, For ’twas me and her mother that made it, And planted and tended it, too.

There’s many a grave hereabouts, sir, As is grander and finer than ours, With its headstone all sculptured so finely, i Its costly and beautiful flowers; For ours is quite homely and simple, And the plants are not costly nor rare, But there ain’t very many, I think, sir, As are tended with such loving care.

For she was our own little lassie. Nor ever another we had, But,the Lord thought it best for to take her, And ’tis useless to grieve or be' sad.'

So we bear our great loss without murmur, Tho’ we cherish her memory deaf, And we plant on her grave all the flowers She loved best when she was down here.

There’s the primrose and violet and pansy, From the woods where she loved to play, The buttercup, cowslip, and daisy, From the fields where she went every day.

We gather of each in its season, The heather, and bluebell, and fern, From the very same spot where she plucked them, And plant them all hei e in their turn. ■ And that wooden cross over yonder In my time of an evening I made, I know ’tis but rough and uncouth like, But it shows where our darling is 1 aid. And her mother and me often think, sir, She looks down on us from above, As we water and tend to her garden She sees our sweet labour of love.

AMERICAN INCIDENTS.

The death in London, a few days ago, of Captain Edward W. Schenley revives the recollection of his romantic elopement, thirty-five years ago, with a beautiful American girl, who was then stated to be the richest woman in the States. She was Miss Mary E. Crag han, a sixteen-year-old heiress in her own right to her mother’s estate of five or six millions in Pittsburg, Pennsyl vania, and was a pupil in the very select and very strict young ladies’ seminary then kept by Miss M‘Cloud on Staten Island. Schenley was a dashing officer in the British army, a handsome, well-preserved gentleman of 48, and a relative of M'Cloud, on ,a visit to this country. Through this relationship he made the acquaitnance of Miss Craghan, and they were soon secretely married and off to the old country. There was an immense sensa tion at the time, and the legislature -of Pennsylvania went so far out of- its head as to attempt to sequestrate the bride’s fortune. A reconciliation was soon effected, however, and for years nothing had been heard of the couple, except that they had been living happily and brilliantly in various European capitals, until the news of his death.

A divorce granted in Atchison, Kan sas, is the end, thus far, of a very curi ous marital history. Twelve years ago the parties were married. He was fifty, she was eighteen—a veritable “ old man’s darling.” Soon, however, she found he had another darling, and she sued for a divorce. He eloped, pend

THE EVENING ECHO, SATURDAY,



TO, SUBSCRIBERS. COMPLAINTS having been made to us by Subscribers and others of difficulty in procuring copies of the EVENING ECHO, we beg to inform our readers that we have appointed Mr Harry Staples to the charge of despatch and delivery in town of the E VENING ECHO , and beg to intimate that orders for ,the paper left at our office, or at Mr. Weston’s Press Agency, or given to Mr. Staples, will be attended to with punctuality. The EVENING ECHO will henceforth be published as early after 4 o’clock as possible, and all Advertisements for the day’s issue are requested to be sent in as early in the day as convenient. Furness and Dixon, Publishers Evening Echo. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. Weekly - - - - - 6d. Quarterly, in advance, ss. 6d., booked, 6s. 6d. Half-yearly' ~ 10s. ~ 13s. Single copy, One Penny.