Two important railway schemes hare been promulgated this week, one relating to England and the ther to India, The first ix for a working arrangement or combination between the Great Eastern, Great Northern and Great Central Railways. This is, of course, an extension of the recut abortive scheme for a Great Northern and Great ('antral combine. seems that it had alway been the intention eventually to include the Great Eastern, but they began with the two others because it was thought that these two could effect an arrangement without having recourse to Pat This view proved to be too sanguine, for the Railway Commissioners upset to be introduced into Parliament next year for " combination of all three, No doubt it will be opposed, partly on the ground that public interests will suffer by getting rid of competition; but the (companies make out a strong case show that the public will really gain enormously by the mutual working of the three systems, the fitting in of trains and so forth. The three Companies have a capital of over £176,000,000 bat their combined mileage is less than that of the Great Western, which has capital of only £103.000,000, and this fact is put forward as an exam of the waste that ix involved in the tive system. The new Indian yy scheme is embodied in the report of the Committee which hax been i into the finances of the Indian re sys. They recommend that. the Railway Board of India should be empowered to raise yearly fresh capital for railway purposes to the extent of £12,500,000—£7,500,000 in England and the rest in India, The scheme meets with decided favour in financial circles here, and it is interesting to find The Watch Committee of the Manchester Town Council have just created a sensation by prohibiting the appear-of Miss Mand Allan in their city. This lady's dances at the Palace Theatre have been one of the greatest sensations of the season in London. She has danced before the King and Queen and nearly all the members ters and Society leaders of both sexes have flocked to the "Palace" to see her. I have not been myself, but every-one I have spoken to who' has seen her declares that her dancing is absolutely refined and unobjectionable, It is a pity, however, that the posters and photographs of her hardly convey this impression in one respect. In the! famous Salome dance, with the head of John the Baptist, she appears in Oriental costume, of which the bodice, if one may call it so, of an arrangement the interstices of which the bare skin shows. Of course there is nothing necessarily immodest in opposed to the convey in this count however, on a by universal tenthoony modesty tea compared with many of the dances one sees in barleyue and uisical comedy. But the photographs—those sold in the shops and those which have been tranxferred to coloured posters on the wallx—suggest an appearance in the full glare of sunshine or limelight, which is quite another matter. However, Misx Allan protests with the utmost indignation against the slur cast upon her by the Manchester Councillors, and in London she meets with un rereel sympathy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.