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NOTS AND OOiiENTS.

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NOTS AND OOiiENTS. Notwithstanding the '"pooh-pooha" Wd the supercilious attitude of some of 0he wise^res who declared that there was no prospect of a contest in the L Hliond!h the School Board election has jome upor. us like an avalanche, sweep- ing everything before it. If you ask a RhonuJ. ratepayer anything about the war, he will immediately begin to talk about fv.-Iiool Board matters. Quite fight. to >. The "home" matters of the Largest parish in Wales are of infinitely greater importance to us than the quibble which have been used as a pre- tence leading the country to the ^verge cc war. The School Board's affairs ;t::cct the interests of every home md every' parent and every child in the listrict fT the present and for all time. One of the best features of these elec- tions u* cur district is the good-feeling which -valls among the candidates, as a rule, and between the sets of sup- porters 0t the various candidates. Even 1 h jWhere sectarianism crops in, as it- Aperhaf,4 ziecessar.,i-,r--does sometimes, there is tittle, if any, of the bitterness notice;here which unfortunately ^fprevaild in similar elections at many other pLvies. We are not reminding our- selves, others, of these things in k»Fder to thank God that we are not ai other :en," but simply mentioning a .satisfactory feature which helps to con- vert "rights" into "races." Hence, we shall, in the short period at our disposal ^between his and the election day-next I Saturday week—call on our Sporting Prophet and his co-adjutors, the turf correspondents, as usual, to avail 'themselves of their little opportunities 4ito shine before men in their respective lipeculiar capacities. i' It is satisfactory to find that the ad- vance in wages declared by the Sliding audit, on Saturday, is just what had bee^ expected by the men's leaders. The work, in so far as the receiving of -that audit was concerned, was, of course, purely formal, and yet it is what fixes .the attention of the outside public, al- most to the entire exclusion of what was, after all, the principal business of \the Sliding Scale Committee that day, <sjviz., the discussion of questions arising 'out of local disputes at individual col- lieries- These disputes have been pret- t'ty frequent of late, and are likely to become more and more frequent as time .goes on. Hitherto they have, with one or two notable exceptions, been settled ■ very promptly by the arbitrators to iwhom they were referred by the Joint ComnÜtee. As will be seen on perus- ing the report of the joint meeting held on Saturday,one of the exceptions is that of the dispute at the Penrhiw Colliery, but as yet the concern has not been sufficiently opened out by the present owners to make it an important matter to outsiders. With regard to the Albion I dispute (formally referred to arbitra- tors on Saturday), the question to be tors on Saturday), the question to be decided is the identity of a new seam of I t coal that has been struck. The No. 1 District of the South Wales Miners' I Association (known as Mabon's district), i had taken up the matter, as the colliery is in tliat district, and Mr Daronwy Isaac Lid been at the colliery in the in- t teresta of the workmen. Now, Mr W. Jenkins, J.P., of the Ocean Colliery Company, and Mr W. Brace will have to go thoroughly into it, and it is to be hoped the dispute will not assume the I proportions which the same question did l over a different seam some years ago, when the comparison between that and the Ynysvbwl seam was the knotty point. By the bye, the opening out of this new seam will involve the introduc- tion of a number of additional workmen at the Albion, as there are not too many now employed to deal with other and older portions of the colliery. -0- Please count them upon your finger- tips. There are at least five big ques- tions to be faced by the Pontypridd Dis- trict Council: — (1)—A Grave Question-tlitt, of tak- | ing over the duties of the Burial | Board; (2}-A Burning Question—that of i cheapening and popularising the | gas supply, which involves much J to be inquired into f (3)—A Moving Question—that of the i present opposition of the Council to the Tramway Extension Scheme, and the purchase of the rails and rolling-stock by the ) Council; 1 j (4)—A Pocket Question—that of the i Consolidation of Rates for the I purpose of saving cost in collec- tion and b (5)—The Great Drink Question—;1>. U i of the purchase of the W f j works. We have heard of them for years, and will probably hear much more of them in the near future. t -0-- New County Court Offices were j opened at Ystrad on Monday, in James's f. Lll. Our old friend, Mr C. J. John, wh<> was Î\.l' over 20 years at the Ponty- pridd office?, has been appointed chief clerk of the establishment, and all ar- rangements have been completed for entering and searching, etc. The new offices will afford considerable facilities to a large number of the inhabitants in the upper part of the Rhondda, who pre- viously had to travel to Pontypridd for the transaction of county court business. -0-- Welt w the fore in postal matters, Pontypridd invariably expects the quick- pi cst and the Lest. It will, therefore, merely elevate its cyL-brows when its in- habitants read the following item, fully believing that if there is any value in the suggestion, the Pontypridd postmas- ter will forthwith act upon .it: "A new development in postal deliveries is being tried at Grantham, where, in order to serve a group of villages, covering a cir- cuit of several miles, the Post-office has established a cycle post, A mounted postman loves the Giantham head post- office daily at 12.30 p.m., taking letters and parcels for delivery in Little Pon- ton, Grea.t Ponton, Rochford, Colster- worth, Stainby, Sewstern, Buckminster, and Skillington. The bicycle is spe- cially constructed for postal purposes, and is enamelled in "pillar-box red." The prompt delivery by this means is highly appreciated in the district served." Since the Treorky choirs appeared before Her Majesty the Queen, every- thing that pertains to Royalty is of ex- ceptional interest to the people of the Rhondda. Well, then, round the Queen this autumn, an unusually large num- ber of her children and grandchildren will gather. At Balmoral she has her little York great-grandchildren, as well as the three younger children of Prin- cess Henry of Battenberg; while the Duke and Duchess of York are already on a visit there. This year she has been deprived of the companionship of Prin- cess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, who is in Germany with Princess Christian, but the Hereditary Prince and Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg have arrived, the latter being, of course, the daughter of the Duke of Coburg. Her Majesty has not yet seen their small son, in whom she is naturally interested, and she is anxious, moreover, to talk over the sub- ject of the Duke of Albany's education with the Hereditary Prince of Hohen- lohe-Langenburg, who has been appoin- ted guardian of the young Prince. "Sop" for workingmen comes from all quarters, but Archbishop Temple com- bines the true description with the "ex- tra" thickening to such an extent as to make him worth quoting even to work- ingmen- In a recent address he said there was so much that was generous, so much that was unselfish, so much that was affectionate in that class, that it was impossible not to recognise there were very few who could compete with the working man in his unselfishness as regarded his own people, and very few who could compete with the unsel- fishness which characterised the poor in their relations with one another. The charity that took the form of giving pe- cuniary aid was more conspicuous in the upper classes, as they were called, than in the lower; but when they came to look at it dosely, it was far more general and far more self-sacrificing in the lower classes than anywhere else. In pro- portion to what they had to give the poor gave a great deal more than those who had a great deal. a 1900 not Leap Year, and we, are still going ahead in the race against Time! The solar year consists of 365 days 5 hours and 4 minutes. To ba- lance the extra hours and minutes an additional day is counted in every fourth year, but we are 44 minutes behind time upon this basis, or, in other words, the sun is gaining upon us to that extent every four years. At the close of the century we find that we have lost 6 hours and 24 minutes, but we do not have a leap year at the end of certain centuries for the very reason that then we should, through the extra day, be rushing ahead to the extent of 17 hours 36 minutes. Therefore, in order to restore the time equilibrium, we permit the losing pro- cess to go on for four centuries by omit- ting a leap year at the end of each of three centuries. Accepting the closing year of the fourth century as a leap year, we have so far recovered ourselves as to be only 96 minutes behind time in 400 years. The four centuries are calcula- ted from 1600 to 2000 A.D. -0- Ours is a country upon which the sun never sets, and in which the Rate-Col- lector and the School Attendance Officer never go to sleep, and yet we can afford to take points from Yankee- land. The "Children's Court" which has been established by the Illinois Legis- lature is an experiment that will be worth watching. Heretofore the law has made no distinction between juve- nile criminals and adult criminals, with the result that magistrates have often! exercised a discretion in dealing with youthful offenders that the law did not sanction. The Illinois Legislature has attempted to correct this practice by the establishment of a separate court for the trial of offenders less than 16 years old, and by adoption of a code suited to this class. Under this scheme no child under 12 years of age can be arrested or held in a police station. A place of de- tention for children must be specially provided, and when children are to be brought into court it must be by sum- mons served on their parents or guard- ians. Wide discretion is then allowed magistrates in dealing with youthful' offenders. --0- It had been thought just possible that our "unnecessary war" might have been averted, now that we had got clear of the month of September. Those who glory in War regard September as pe- culiarly the British War Month, and they point with pride to the singular fact that so many of the battles in which British arms have proved victorious were fought in the month of September. The "dogs of war" remind us that last year the pulse of the nation was beating 0 high with pardonable pride at the achievement of our troops in the Sou- dan, which culminated on September 2nd in the splendid victory at Omdur- man. In the early days of September, 1855, the country was in just such a state of anxiety as we experienced last vear. The British people were then feverishly awaiting news from the Cri- mea, where the greater portion of our army was engaged in laying siege to the Russian fortress of Sevastopol. News travelled slowly in those days, but at last our fathers heard that after months of toil and hardship British pluck and endurance had their reward in the fall of the stronghold on the 8th of Septem- ber. It was on the 14th of September, 1854, that our gallant army, comman- ded by Lord Raglan, landed on the shores of Crimea, and it was only a few days after, on the 20th of the same month, that the Russian hosts first met the allied army and suffered their first defeat at the Battle of the Alma. More recently still, it was in the grey dawn of early morning on the 13th of September, 1882, that Lord Wolsele/s army stormed the entrenchments of Tel-el- Kebir and scattered the army of Arabi Pacha to the four winds of the desert. It is pleasing to note that the special features of the "Chroniole" are attracting at urn, and eliciting compliments, not onl from all classes in this district, but also from men and women of distinction in various parts of Wales—yes, and America, New Zealand, and Africa, as we will be able to show later on. Writing with reference to the recent article on the birth-place of G^o son, the world-renowned (sculptor, the Rev. T. Gamon, of Fishguard—an eminent Welsh landscape painter-says:- "The incidents of an artist's life are always intensely interesting to me. I knew a little of Gibson's life—that he was a native of North Wales. (Was he a Welshman? 'Gib son,' of course, is English, his father must have been of English extraction), t.hat he and '^attained the highest position in his art- that he lived many years (the greatest and best part of his life) in Rome, and that he had died there. But it was news to me to learn he was in any way connected with the Baptist denomination. I shall be very tWankful for any furthe. contribution of yours on his life. It is strange (so it seems to me) that Wales has produced iiO few artists of eminence. There is another North Walian prominent in the world of art—Richard Wilson, "The WelA Claude Swaine." He was, if I right1 jr member, a native of Uanberis. e. too spent much of his time in Italy, iand followe to a great extent the Italian School of Land- scape Painting. Even South Wales can t, in having given to the world one excellent portrait painter, Thomas George, of Fish- guard. It is a pity that his should sink into utter oblivion. In his early d:;y he 'had to labour under great disadvantages but bv hard study and diligence, he attaine great proficiency, and produced perfect gem of art. He sank into an early grave in a foreign land, and may angels troop around and guard his grave until his ashes will be "K-kened by the blast of the Resurrectio Trump."

HAULING ACCIDENT AT PONTYPRIDD.

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ASSAULT ON A NELSON SERGEANT.

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