NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 239, 13 October 1906, Page 9

NEWS, VIEWS, AND OPINIONS.

\; ~ it is a shame te lose the roBeatty r-nnrot-hv retnon of Haddon (5 .M. has banned and thrilled P*S_derations and inspired l^ 5 Dorothy doubtless PA Ss not luvishingly beautiW suffer domestic mearcer:i' id Zoi he- tender passion, but B i -p affair by her family, who ,eT SmHt somewhat anxious to » -f J*off- that she did not slip % nl ballroom, down that famous Tl„ and elope, but was i_jin a most com- ? 7, "'blis-vou-my-children" way; KSftad no cruel stepmother, that : -* 1 / Lr was not an oppressive tyr- ' "' SS Tier lover mis not adventurous M^Jil-or. at least, that he had ;!:dl t3on in winning her to display i :5 °SL: that the picture gallei? which she was said to fSKer waiting lover, was in :S? hiilt hy her husband long after B vTrv prosaic marriage, as were i^ ar [J "Dorothy Vernon steps," I _ g0 many thousands of visitors I upon with tender sentiments; Xv that the whole romance was an wtion of that uaost P lausible an . d f\ "-"ilrerpca"' whose writings in ; Snesaad elsewhere were so popular •f -Mion-lovcrs half or three-quarters I Soy ago. Portentous too is it \_ofc exposure of the hollowness of '- lisflid should come simultaneously ,\tt death of Dorothy's descendant, I TpAe of Rutland. We might, injj'aidnre with some degree of forti Sihe loss of all the legends of the •Lasaiid Vernon'families, and many ' ... of amilar character, were it not folk disquieting query, where all this That is what givaes '' /miiec. Voltaire abolished William ':'. fjj jj'uo*v in turn there are men do--3 (jni'n- half the stories about Voltaire •imseff to be myths. Columbus and the "Up Guards, and at ■gi" 'Kzarro's sword scratch in the m i Pocahontas, George Washington's ijfnv-tree and hatchet, and goodness ijlr knows how many 'more, have Lven femdiisd, denouricrd. Jeffrey even tint co far as to speak disrespectfully of iis Equator. Arc all our legends, rv -jnce-, ideals, thus to fare".' Yet we reumber that the very things for report- ; mi which Herodotus was called the Father of Lies have now been proved I late true, according to his word : while ikost every spadeful of sand which is tamed up in Egypt or Babylonia or toil reveals indubitable confirmation 'oH tales.which "higher critics'' had ia" before rclcgist.pd to the him ber _m oi fable. So it may he that ieono- / iisa will one day overtake the iconoi; : ist, and we may again be. permitted Ii thrill■ with fentimeut over the woes si joys and final triumph of Dorothy frmbD of Had'lca Hall. If King Edward wprc to throw yway M d a cigarette in a Londrm street. I h policeman ivould suspect the loyal : K'-liiinters who might scramble for it ii Majestatsbeleidi—sung—even if we Ipaha thing and the. policeman knew pi ii was. It is otherwise in Berlin. Chronicle's"' co-Vrespon- £ gwea %m. the "Frankfurter ZeitW tie talc oi sv young clerk, who is Ban officer of the.reserve. He picked ■fi cigarette-end thrown away by the Per. as a _ene_to, but the policeman fisted ujion making him give it up. m only want it for purposes of We" --aid the representative of Ber- •> W and order. The incident recalls a iloimtstuart Grant Duff's story of \* Ixn-rliPbman why got info trouble Jtalm when a policeman heard him W -fhe Emperor is a d d fool.'' WOns that the Russian Emperor ■ to were imavailing. "''T'Tion m one in Germany says *The Emperor ll.i iwV said th * policeman, * always means our Emperor." to sensation of the British Medical fc IvyT 5 Metin S at Toronto was c ihition by a doctor, connected JUo catsr-whosc bodies contain thee„ e„ transplanted into them. A,,- ---,,'*•« then- novel fittings. dcli,h - ,>. s . Jr " l »m partially o,,mbodv 'f*Taft^,/ *< :! x Srpat advunf '« "" l!i- - --': ' ;,IS - Wkl ' which U" pub%ss^' iU " iliar -,*! l3ias,! - !%i 'v is re i, ;°' U!K But ir ti!? ? imah > Jr fr «»* other Hiias a i e „ l!l1 ' doc< or. it is Tb ; eh - meu and pt^ ,t3ofb - i --ul<f,, i - ; • n** "f desevibH a no«*el ; a? fi<*- The : in it, 77 euiscm? »t had seven SfF'*a?i_S°' t_? in a hi S shop SH_*'shh . en gL b «f"-«f Portia 1 . 5 ' landed m 7' V", 1 ' 16 back <* each ' $ »-W Z 0t the «f the I V>W mm\r " Jhml n P Sf > that ■ m *aCkis n Dai " e of the &vm - ■_- ab out nL V X . P retl y busy dod.rr>'V. T ™ P , J™« trowd ontMdc I fol 'nearh rrafcovsaid th « *' * bought ~°r f ;1i on than M»«- -- - thas i fchv t Nervals of X fl' V VeiirJ ' w »-"'» in pig** «; to rW , VvJshetl l 0 pet fe t£d^ih Y ßf rl . a " !l ' The "ate £. f t0 and go to I v*"*«u*"*«- via Boulogne.

Villon's famous "'Ballade of the Fair ! Ladies of Old Time" concludes with a j sardonic inquiry after the snows of yesj ter-year. Those snows return not; but the ladies of old time revisit us jin books of beauty, and several of them l arc announced to appear in the course of the publishing season that is now about to open. Presumably it is the progress made with colour printing that - gives them their chance, and if it is i not it ought to be. A beautiful woman I cannot have justice done to her in a I- steel engraving or a process block; for .. beauty is not merely a matter of fea- ; tares, but depends largely upon the freshness of the complexion and the coli our of the. eyes and hair. When these - traits are not rendered we often wonder " what it was that our forefathers ad- - mired so intensely. Their taste, in all ' likelihood, was very much akin to curs. ' Whore it seems to differ the reason 1 generally is not that they admired what ■ we find commonplace, but that they saw what we are not permitted to see. The promised books of beauty should enable us, so to say, to "•start fair" with them ■ j and to realise some of the old love stor- ' I ies more vividly than hitherto. : j — j It used to be that astronomy, with its stupendous magnitude, incredible velocities, and inconceivable distances, ; seemed to make the greatest demand on man's belief. To-day it is physics,. We ' rtad, for instance, that Hertz's oscillations gave rise to 500,000,000 oscillations • per second. Where is the man who can conceive, of anything happening in the iive-hundrcdth-millionth part of a 1 second? But this is quite a long period ' compared to some of those now accepted 'as inevitable iv optics. According to ' Maxwell's great theory, a light-wave is ; a series of alternating electric currents - flowing in air or interplanetary space, and changing their direction 1.000,000,- ---■ 000,000,000 times per second. And this is supposed to be true of every form. of light coming from the sun, the electric ; lamp or a lucifer match. Who can think of anything happening in the thousand- ' million-millionth part of a second? To ' seriously try is to court mental derange- ' ment. i [ - Professor Roscoe in his autobiography 2 (Macmillan) says that during the Lanea- » shire, cotton famine, when he was local ; secretary to the meeting in that county ; of the British Association, a man came 3 to liiiu to announce his discovery of a. 1 substitute for cotton. '"What is it':" 1 The discoverer took from under his arm f a parcel which he unfolded displaying an cdcl-looking piece of cloth. "That,'' he "| said, "'is woven out of my sister's hair. " j Treated as T treat it" —be did not dis- ' j close the method—"l can get two crops *:."!> year oft' her head."' His recipe foT ? I forcing two such crops a- year from his 5 ! sister's head would, if effective, have r { been worth more to him than lhe crops ' I themselves. Ordinarily a woman's hair •j i- of slow growth. The daughter of a r | dear friend of mine, who had tbe most " : lnagnifkent hair, but lost it two years . j since in an extraordinary way, is far . i from having quite recovered if yet. Har- ' ! ing washed her hair, she went down to ' | the kitchen fire to dry it. when a young I and newly-engaged servant said to her I defiantly. "1 have as good hair ■•<- you!"' .{"My friend's daughter* turned and -stared at her in dumb imazement. thinking her i ' crazy. She probably was. for next mornx ing the young lady found that her hair. , j which she wore at night in a long thick \ I plait, had been deftly cut off close to the j rooi -vhile .she slept! 'j v , j The Chancellor of the Brit it a _xj_ ! chequer estimated in his Budget speech , j for n vied from tlie death duties, dur- , • ing tlie yeat ending on March .11, 1907, of £15,200,000, with an average of nearlily i'254,00r a week. In the eightecj \ weeks ended. August 4 last, he had re- , I ceived £5.070,000. with an average of ■ j .oJ'i.SOO. If his recfc'pt from thi- , i source of revenue were to continue at , i the sa.me rate during the remainder of ' | the financial year, the yield of the death • | duties would exceed the. estimate by t j about £:i,_00,000. This, however, is •! not probable. The Chancellor of th--» ,! Exchequer has already taken toll since ' j April last on two estates of £3,000,000 ; each, and estates of this amount are I very rare. In ISBS, when Mr Goschen, '(now Lord Goschen) was Chan- \. cellor. 'he received death duties 1, on two . estates exceeding £3.000,000 5 each, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach vas ! | able to announce in 1901 that duty to ; j the amount of £900,000, about the price '! of an ironclad, had been paid on one estate, that of Mr George Smith, of El- ' ' '.'in and Chicago, which must therefore •jiiava been worth at least £5,000.000. It ' j fell to the lot of Sir Michael also to 7 cake the duty on the estate of nearly ' ; equal value of Barou Moritz Hirsch, and oii the fortune of close upon -3.000,- ---' j 000 left by .Mr P. A. Vagyia-no. There j are probably aboul 140 or 150 persons jin Great Britain who have ea-ch absolute , | ownership of property to the value of |a- million or more. Of these perhaps ! ' j thirty-live or forty own more than two , ' 1 millions each, aud twelve or fifteen more ; ' J than three millions each. These figures i 'i do not. however, include entailed estate , -jin which the possessors have only a'life : 1 J interest. The average age at death of • the thirty richest men of the past j 1! twenty-seven years whose aggregate I '; wealth exceeded 75_ millions was j 1 | rather more than 7-! years. ! I i The Paris newspapers announce that i .j M. Gaston Meiiier has just returned to J i Paris from a cruise, in the North Sea, j iI in the course of which he met the Gcr- | , j man Emperor at Bergen, where he was the guest of his .Majesty at dinner on board the Imperial yacht. According to i the ''Matin.'' the Emperor. William , i opened the conversation at the table j with an allusion to a meeting he had j with the late M. Waldeek Rousseau four j years ugo in the same waters. '"'He was ; one of the statesmen who have made j the deepest impression on mc," said his j Majesty. '"I pity sincerely the country ■ ; which has lost him/ The Emperor is J stoic] to have shown the greatest ■ j familiarity with the smallest details of j French life. He touched very little upon I politics. He was led, however, to refer ,j to the tension which for a short time i last year existed between France and ! Germany, remarking. "My intentions • were misunderstood, my views distorted. ■ | The Press was the cause of this. It is ; often responsible for mam' evils." His ''Majesty then alluded to the war in i j Manchuria. According to the "Matin," ■. he showed preoccupation as to the eon- • sequences tlie struggle may have, and t ! did not hide his conviction that v new i j Power has arisen with which Europe - ; will, sooner or later, be obliged to ; i reckon, and perhaps even in her own imi i mediate- aliairs. ••TTho can say," his , | Majesty asked, and afterwards repeated • i the question, '"'that one day, when we ' are assembled iv conclave and discussing, • say, some Cretan affair, we shall not : | see a Japanese admiral make his appear- )! ance and demand to be admitted to the I international colloquy 1"