At the good old age of eighty-one Sir Henry Hawkins has retired from the bench. In him the Queen's Bench will lose its strongest judge. Even to the very end his courage was dauntless. Only quite lately, when on circuit, he sat from ten in the morning till eleven at night and even then didn't appear tired. One of his jeculinrities was that he would never go into Court until the thermometer in the Court house registered 70 degrees. Judging by what one knows of the general atmosphere of such places one can only marvel that he is alive at all.
His last sentence was characteristic of the min. 'The case was one of blackmailing, the men he had to deal with heartless scoundrels. 'To two of them he awarded 12 years' and to the other 7 years' penal servitude.
"RUTH" DOLL SHOW AT THE ALDERT HALL.
For the nineteenth time the proprietor of Truth has made an appeal for Christmas funds to buy toys and dolls for the London Hospitals and Workhouses. From quite o small beginning the fund has grown and grown until Haat year no love than 27,691 children were made happy by a present of some kind; and this year even 'a still larger number will have cause to bless Mrs. Voules, the wife of the enterprising editor of the paper, for to her all the organisation of the enterprise is due. Every year the show grows in size and beauty, There are about 90 large dolls and 100 large toys including dolis' houses, models of shops, rocking horses, é&c.; one of these is sent to each hospital, workhouse, workhouse infirmary, or orphanage in London, ''and," said Mrs. Voules, we now send' to nearly 200 insti tions." hon there are over 20,000 small toys of every imaginable description and abou 3,600 ordinary-sized dolls, These are bought out of the money of the fund and ate applied for by various ladies who undertake the task of dressing them. One lady, Miss Rawson, this year undertook 42 and many take more than 100. 'They hold. weekly—working-parties during the whole year," said Mrs. Voules. But 425 seems enormous," I said; I was told, however, that' the same ladies apply every year so they evidently enjoy their Inbour of love. The work is in all cases done exquisitely, one lady cent buted n Ballet of Dragon Flies in which some 12 dolls were dressed in hand-painted gauze, the wings being simply exquisite.
addition to all the dolls and toys, Mr. Tom Smith, the Cracker King, sends a contribution of 27,000 crackers, and an anonymous donor sends-11,000 sixpences, new from the mint, for the poor mites condemned to spend Christmas day in the Czar, wear the Cossack uniform with a Workhouses. A'together it isa grand idea difference, and being armed are mistaken and deserves all the support it gets. for regular soldiers, My informant tells J. K. me, however, that the men wear the 23rd December.
Chinese dragon in some form on their eaps—a sufficient indication that they are not Russian soldiers. It may be objected (room ovx OWN coRKESrOS:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.