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SANTA CLAUS TRAGEDY.

LAW GUARANTEE'S LOSSES.

rOUR LONDON LETTER. ,.

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r OUR LONDON LETTER. I [From Our Special Correspondent.] Saturday, the 15th inst., will be the first polling-day, and a dozen or so of contests in London will be decided on that date. No doubt the Government, in fixing- the date of the Dissolution for the 10th, were not above securing what tactical advantage they could. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that a Saturday poll is mofit favourable to them, and they want London and the great Lancashire constituencies to give a lead to the country. What kind of a lead they w\!¡ give remains to be seen. but tlio Govern- ment, being forced to fight, hps chcscn the day for beginning the battle. It the same in 1906, for Sir Henry Campbcll-Ban- nerman's Ministry had taken ollice before the Dissolution. Saturday then was the real opening day of the polling. There was, it is true, one election on the Fr:day, that at I Ipswich, but there 11313 always been sor.t< doubt whether that polling was strictly legal. Anyhow, it was the Saturday elections that gave the lead to the country, and the Government are nursing the hope that his- tory may be repeated. There are, indications that the contest in London will be one of the most strenuous ever known. Candidates and speakers are putting in an immense amount of work, and pil open-air meetings are being held at nearly every street corner every night. The open- air speaker it-, made, not born. Only by long practice can the difficulties attending the making of a political speech from a van be overcome. The man who attempts to work off a set and stylish oration is lost. What he has to do is not so much to make a speech as to keep his end up in a brisk and animated conversation with the voices" in the cr8wd. To succeed he must have a pleasant manner, an imperturbable temper, a gift of repartee, and any amount of facts and figures on the I tip of his tongue. And if he cannot answer i an awkward question effectively he needs to be able to turn; the laugh against his oppo- nent somehow or other. Perorations, flag- wagging, and beating the big drum are at a. discount in this election. Facts and figures are the things that tell, and a speaker must submit to having the thread of hia argument broken by questions as to the number of un- employed in Germany or America, the value of manufactured goods imported into this country, the effect of a tax upon wheat, and a number of other things; while there is generally in the crowd a drunken man who keeps up a running commentary, hostile or friendly, but always sufficiently embarras- sing. An exhibition of pictures of extraordi- nary interest is expected to set all London talking shortly when the excitement of the General Election is oyer. The pictures, which are the work, of a Danish artist, Mr. which are the work, of a Danish artist, Mr. Aare Bertelsen, will be shown in the Map t. Room of the Royal Geographical Society. They were painted hundreds of miles further north than any artist had ever been before, and it is claimed that they aN the first re- cords of what Arctic colourings are really I, like. Mr. Bertelsen was one of two artifits t who were members of the ill-fated Denmark expedition, the story of which is one of the tragedies of exploration. The expedition was conducted by Mylius Ericsen, who, with a German naval officer named Hagen, were separated from their companions by the breaking of the ice and were starved to death. They had handed the records of the expedition to an Eskimo, under whose dead body they were Afterwards found. The Eskimo ahso had died of starvation, but he had kept a diary in his own language in which wr recorded the deaths of the Euro- peans and his own terrible sufferings. m i., Bertelsen's pictures were painted in Peary Land, some of them being executed as far north as 83deg. The artist worked with his brush projecting through, a hole in his fur mittens, and the cold was so intense that his colours had to be mixed with benzine. Here is a case for sympathy indeed! The judges are overworked, and they declare that | only bv the appointment of more judges can their hard case be remedied. The judges work, according to the Lord Chancellor, five hours a day in five days of the week. Fancy 'a twenty-five hour working week! And this sort of penal servitude goes on for thirty-five and a-nalf or thirty-six weeks in the year, SO that Lite poor judges only get a miserable six- teen and -L a-half weeks as an apology for a holiday. Suppose this truly awful state of affairs prevailed among the members of any trade union—what a tremendous fuss would. be made about sweating and that sort of thing! But there is no trade union to .take up the cause of the. judges. Hard-working and honest, they are a comparatively small section of the community, and so nobody cares. The IoqM Chancellor is particularly cynical nnd hard-hearted. He even goes so far as to suggest that the jug should sit on Saturday as a regular thing, and so work off the arrears of business: Three hours on. Saturday,, he says, would be nearly the, Equivalent of the two extra judges asked for. He also hints that it might not be a bad, idea 'if they worked a little overtime. Fancy ,overtime at the end of a five-hour day! No wonder the judges are indignant. An interesting departure is to be made by the Post Office in London. It is a combina- tion postal and telephone service, by which anybody without the London postal are. wishing to send a message to a correspon- dent in London may send it by post to the Central Telegraph Office, London, whence it will be despatched to the addressee by telephone, provided he is a subscriber. There is, as everybody knows, no postal de- livery in London on Sundays, and the new system is designed to meet the requirements ,of those whose business is urgent. There are no doubt bases in which the absence of Suftdaj delivfif is iuwuTeuieut, but generally it is regarded as a boon and a blessing. The postal-telephone id-ea will be very limited in operation, as only those who are "on the telephone 'will be able to re- ceive messages. In mercy to the addressees, it is to be hoped that those sending the messages will state a reasonable time for delivery, as otherwise the postal authorities will ring a peal on the telephone bell at the unearthly hour of eight-thirty on a Sunday morning. One of the most substantial and interest- ing memorials of the Wcsleyan Twentieth Century Fund will be +he Church House which is now being bi; a upon the site of the old Westminster Aquarium. The Wes- leyans may well be grateful that the acquire- ment and utilisation cf the extremely valu- able site was in the hands of a business man like Sir Robert Perks. Originally the site cost £ 335,000, art of it was sold for £ 100,000, and, besides the portic-n on which the Church House 5a being built, there re- mains an area of about 23 000 feet to be let for building purposes. When this is dis- posed of, it is anticipated that the trustees will acquire the Church House site without cost, and will derive a considerable revenue in addition from rente. The building will be one of which the denomination may be proud. One of its features will be a large hall, to seat 8,000 persons, which will be principally used for Sunday services con- ducted by leading Wesleyan preachers. A. E. M.

CAT, KITTEN AND CANARY RESCUED.

BURGLAR'S HOT RECEPTION.

IN THE LINE QF FIRE.

NO .NEW YEAR HONOURS. /-:.,.,'

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NO DAMAGES FOR INJURIES.

CHURCH CONGREGATION STRIKE.

PERILS OF NIGER TO NILE JOURNEY…

PATHETIC FAREWELL LETTER.

'...,.:.ART. i..FINDAV-::'!…

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