PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

Mr Gilbert, chemist, of Queen-street, is going to England. He will do the Continong. Mr Bartley, of the Herald artistic staff, is going to Paris to study. He proposes to remain in the gay and giddy capital for a oouple of years. We are sorry to hear that Professor Schmitt, who has been for some time in indifferent health, is very unwell indeed at his country house at Wairoa South. Mr Brabazon (brother of Miss Clarice Brabazon), who has been for a long time in the service of the New Zealand Insurance Company in Auckland, is about to leave for Queensland. He is to have the management of the Company's Maryborough branch. Sorry to hear Tom Bracken is lying seriously ill at Dunedin of inflammation of the lungs. Thomas has quite recently published a new volume of poems, and now is a fitting time for friends and admirers to roll up and buy the book, and so give poor ' Paddy Murphy ' a helping hand just when he needs it most. Mr Edwin Hesketh, the well-known solicitor, officiated for the last time as organist and choirmaster at St. Mark's Eemuera, on Sunday. For thirty years has Mr Hesketh held office— and the offio9 has been a purely honorary one. Mr Hesketh's retirement is due to failing health. So popular and capable an organist will be much missed at St. Mark's.

Miss Sara Spilsbury, tired of town life and its hollownesses, has betaken herself to Taupaki, where she has bought a farm. The famous leopards — we mean dogs— accompany her. We trust Miss SpUsbury's new departure will prove a good one. Prosperity to her ! The Sydney solicitor Broad, sentenced a few years ago to five years' penal servitude, was guilty of a particularly heartless fraud. He appropriated .£2600, representing the life savings of a woman. He was ordered to return .£SOO of the plunder— in addition to getting penal servitude. New South Wales ought to take a leaf out of New Zealand's book and appoint a Public Trustee. Amy Vaughan is once more in Auckland, and, we regret to learn, in bad health. She was seriously ill at Wellington and has not yet fully recovered. And so her friends have decided to tender her a benefit. Amy Vaughan, while she was appearing in Auckland, was ever ready, to assist a charitable object,. Her rainy day has now come. We trust her many friends will rally round her on her benefit night and give her a ' bumper.' Charlie Vobb, who has been ruralisingatTauranga for some little time, writes us from that slumberous town to say that he has not been idle down there. He has been improving the shining hour in devising a novel and striking ventriloquial entertainment with which he proposes to tour Maoriland, afterwards proceeding to Australia. 'I am certain,' says Charlie, • the show will be a success, as I have spent a lot of time and trouble over it, and everything goes like clock work.'

• Labby ' * deprecates the breeding ] of hereditary legislators.' Glad to hear it. Harry Norman, formerly stage manager for Bland Holt, was married at Sydney the other day to Misa Elizabeth MoComas, of Sydney. Congratulations. Miss Augusta Dargon, who some time ago gave dramatis recitals in Auckland, talks of returning to the stage, and is thinking of a tour right through New Zealand. George Leitch is as funny as ever. When is he going into management on his own account again ? He would meet with a great reception right through .New Zealand. Labouchere says he has never yet been able to discover why a woman is paid leas than a man for doing the same work. N.Z. lady school-teachers would like to fathom that mystery, we expect. Both the Melbourne hangmen refused t« hang Mrs Knorr, and Jones, the senior hand, has suicided rather than execute a woman. Which seems to show that even a hangman has his feelings. He Hem Smith does not appear to be going 'Ome after all. He is talking of visiting Auckland to arrange for the purchase of Onehunga Ironworks. A company is to be formed with a capital of £60,000. So He Hem told the Taranaki Herald people the other day. When Walter Bentley was in Adelaide recently he invited the shepherds of that pious city to look in at the show, and help by their presence to promote or strengthen ' the nnion of eharch and stage.' Very few accepted. The average parson doesn't approve of the aforesaid union, and forbids the banns every time. Prince of Wales, speaking at the annual meeting of the Imperial Institute, remarked that ' the Institute had made a promising commencement.' So it has. Very promising. Sightseers don't care a button for it. The only time it gets a crowd is when a smoke concert, with songs by ' lion comiques,' is on.

Carnell, the Hawke's Bay man just made an M.H.E., proposes to make it illegal for Parliamentary candidates to employ canvassers, have committees or com-mittee-rooms, or use or cause to be used cabs or other conveyances on polling-day, except in the case of invalids. Poor Young Goodfellow. of Henderson, met with a disagreeable surprise on New Year's night. On returning from a picnic he found his cottage in ashes, and his furniture, clothing, valuable violin, specimen gam valued at .£3, and all his ready money destroyed. This was a facer for a man just struggling to make a home for himself. Since Dr. Jowett, Master of Balliol, Oxford, died, ' Jowett stories ' have been in order. Here's a good one. An undergraduate says to the doctor, ' I have searched everywhere in the writings of ancient and modern philosophers, and nowhere can I find reliable evidenoe of a God/ 'Mr ,' said Jowett curtly, ' you have either to find a God by five o'clock this afternoon or leave this college.' It was Jowett, by the way, who being accidentally locked in the College grounds one afternoon, appealed to a student at an upper window to come down and let him out. The student replied : ' The College rules | say " No man may remain in the gronnds [ after 4 p.m.' You are in the grounds after 4 p.m. Ergo you are no man, and therefore do not require my assistance.' Then he slammed down the window and went away, leaving the doctor to refleot that it is possible for even an undergraduate to be too logical.

' Her Worship the Mayor of Onehunga' is what they call Mrs Tatea now. By-the-bye, the lady has not, up to the time of writing, been sworn in as a magistrate. Walter Thorn, aged 11, suicided at St. Laurence (Q.) the other day. He left a letter behind him stating that he was ' tired of life.' Tired of life at eleven ! Possibly he had been spanked at school P Mr A.. W. Renall, of Masterton, (Wairarapa) has an invincible dislike to what he calls ' long-tailed titles.' Speaking at Masterton the other night Mr Renall said, in referring to Sir Robert Stout, ' I will never call him anything but plain mister, and I have told him so/ Sir Coldwater's reply is not recorded. Mrs Knorr, whose execution at Melbourne, is fixed for the 15th inst., addressed a letter to an old friend of her better days jußt before the murder trial commenced, imploring him, if the trial went against her, to care for her helpless little children— also to call at a certain dyer's shop, and get two ostrich feathers she had left to be curled, so that she might wear them in the dock. It was a letter ' fall of pathos and ostrioh feathers. ! Ernest Montgomery, the youth who ! so pluckily dived off the end of Queen- I street wharf the other evening, just as the : Tasmania was hauling off for Sydney, and | rescued Maggie Bell from drowning, is a brother of Mr E. H. Montgomery, of Manukau Gazette fame. The young lady rescued fell off the wharf while attempting to shake hands with someone on board the steamer. This is not the first time Ernest Montgomery has gone to the rescue of a drowning person. He tried his best to save Mrs Tucker, drowned at Albert-street Baths some years ago. He heard the unfortunate woman's cries, and without a moment's hesitation rushed to her assistance and brought her to the surface. Unfortunately she did not survive the shock sustained. The wharf rescue the other night was a still more plucky one, for the night was pitch dark.

Phil May is about to join the staff of London Punch— to which he is already a contribntor. 'Pinafore* Gilbert now charges a 20-guinea fee when anyone wants to interview him. Says his time is money. This is a good idea. Thinking of adopting it ourselves. Of all the mournful hurdy gurdys, and of all the melancholy ' physogs,' ever seen, none beat those of a visiting musioian (?) to Ellerslie on Boxing Day last. Grinding out her dirges this melancholy female nearly drove poor unfortunate punters crazy, and it was a great relief when a penciller gave the mournful female a bribe to clear. Ex Mayor Eden George, of Christohurch, did not add the usual link to the mayoral chain when he retired from office. He said he was going away, and that as he hadn't had a very good time as mayor, anyhow, he rather thought he wonld let the chain slide, or words to that effect. Apropos of which the Truth man rises to remark : * They will now speak of exMayor George and the missing link in one breath.' Thus Dr. Welsford, a London medico, writing to Pall Mall Gazette on ' medical quackery ' :— * If you enquire into the nature of these quack remedies you will find muoh the same thing. In the majority of the pills and potions bo extensively advertised, there is but only one aotive ingredient — Barbadoes aloes — one of the cheapest drugs in the market. By lying and spurious advertisements, people are induced to pay large sums of money for this common drug.'