Varieties.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, 27 August 1903, Page 7

Varieties.

BRET HASTE. fN 1880 Bret Harte arrived in L.udoh on his way to take up his duties as Consul at Glasgow. He -was the | juest of various literary, andiartistic folk living in and around the Metropolis, and was a great favourite in the highest Bohemian circles His duties very ebon called him to Glasgow. His first letter from thai Calvinißtic city was typical; he described bow he arrived in the dreary greyness and dirt, and how uninvitine and cold his rooms looked, bo that he left his keys for his landlady to unpack, and betook himself: to an hotel for dinner. ' -. When he came back he found his landlady standing on the doorstep with arms akimbo, and she said, 'l've unpacked yer kiefs (chests) and whaur's yer B:ble IN PRISON. Jn his book on ' Penal Servitude' just published, Lord William Nevill gives Bcme graphic sketches of. his fellowprisoners. There was an elderly Jewish prisoner, who said ' it was a terrible thing for a gentleman and an honest man like himself to have to work with all those murderers and thieves.' Menial tasks he abhorred, but he was pleased to see an aristocrat engaged in them. One day, when he was grumbling, as usual, about the food and ths attendance' (meaning the orderlies), an officer said to him : 'You are, always complaining about something. Remember wh at the Governor told you, that you are not at iha Hotel Cecil.' ' No,'he replied; 'but in some ways I am better off here than I should be there.' : ' How's that ?' asked the officer, astonished at such an admission from a man who waß never tired of abusing everything in the prison. ' Well,' he replied, ' I have nothing to pay here, and I rave a lord-in-waiting.' A COOL SHOT. Mr Maurice Low tells this Btory of the President of tha United States:—Roosevelt some years ago wsb hunting grizzly >• when he and his guide unexpectedly came upon a bear, who charged them. Boose-? velt is very shortsighted and carries three pairs of glasses, one to read with, one to walk with, and one to shoot with. When the bear charged Mr Rooßevelt was wearing his walking glasses, and, to quote the words of his guide in' telling the story, ' When I told him that the beast was upon him, he coolly took, off his glasses, folded them up, pat them away in his pocket, took out and wiped his shoot-' ing glasses,C and put them on as quietly and deliberately as if there was not a bear in the whole country. By the time .he had got his glasses adjusted,,the bear was near, but he pulled his gun and killed him "in his tracks, and did not seem .the leasjtbjt excited.'

:.■.'■>;;| SPION KOP. Thadkrog white trench-graveß on the summit move one more perhaps than any others in" South Africa. Tie men lie barfed, where they fell, in *he very trenches in which they fought and died, ;within sight of-the-goal .they fought to win and did not live to know that they had loßt. And you will hardly find in the world a grander sleeping place of the dead; the summit of a great hill where in every direction the:.eye.loßes itself in. distance, a vlewr of mountain "and river,hot to' fcfe surpassed. *Snd ; *"that nothing may be wanting the turf among the graves is covered with wild flowers—blue bibianas and golden everlastings. It is good to lie buried there. WHY TENNYSON WROTE ' CROSSING THE BAR.' As Tennyson's nurse waß sitting one day at his bedside, sharing to a degree the general anxiety about the patient, she said to him suddenly: * You have written a great many poems, sir, but I have never heard anybody say that there is a hymn among them all. I wish, sir, you would write a hymn while you a*© lying on your sick bed. It" might help and comfort many a poor sufferer.' The next morning, when the nurse had taken her quiet place at the: bedside, the poet handed her a ecrap of paper, saying, ' Here is the hymn you wished me to write.' She took it from his hands" with expressions of gratified thanks. It proved to be * Crossing the Bar,' the poem that was sung in Westminster Abbey at Tennyson's funeral, and which has touched so many hearts. CELESTIALS AND 'BARBARIANS.' Mr W. A. Pickering, who has travelled extensively in China, tells a story which llustrates the difference between the ancient civilisation of the East and the more modern growth of the West. Describing a visit to a Chinese gentleman he "says:—• What perplexed him most about Europeans, or ' barbarians/ as he quite innocently called us, was our amazing energy. Why should we trouble ourselves so much and take so much pains about anything on earth. To the phlegmatic literary Chinaman this waa* incomprehensible. Was anything worth such fuss and bother ? We had at great risk and difficulty made an expedition into the interior to eee the aboriginal tribes. What was the gocd of going to see savages ? I unfolded the mysteries of steam as a propeller. I told them, of our machinery. They seemed net to be impressed. Some of them bad seen and travelled on a steamer. Yes, but that was not much j to invent these material thing?, was that wonhy of a man's intellect? Sach novelties were merely ' mechanical,