PARS ABOUT NOTABILITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 244, 12 October 1907, Page 11

PARS ABOUT NOTABILITIES.

The forthcoming marriage of Lord Cromer's son and heir, "viscount Erringh ton, and Lady Ruby Elliot, second t daughter of the Viceroy of India, is esa pecially interesting, as by it four Viceregal families will become connected . The bride-elect's mother. Lady Mihto, is I a sister of Earl Grey, Governor-General * of Canada, whose son and heir, Viscount ■ Howick, is married to Lady Mabel Pal- [ mer, daughter of the Earl" of Selborne, • Lord High Commissioner in South Africa. Marie Corelli, being asked by a friend . why she did not marry, and if it would , not to be nice to have a man about the house, decisively replied; "No; I have three pets at home which, together, an- . swer the same purpose. I have a dog which growls all the morning, a parrot ■ which swears ail the afternoon, and a cat which stays out at night." The King and Qneen of Spain are to visit England at the end of October. They will, of course, be the guests of Princess Henry of Battenberg in the Isle of Wight, and later on, they will honour the Duke and Duchess of Portland with a visit at Welbeck Abbey, where a house-pa_ty will be invited to meet them. It is not yet ■ certain whether the baby Prince of Asturias will accompany his parents. Hitherto the strict rule in Spain has been _ that their heir to the throne never leaves tne country. Joachim, the great" violinist, who died l ! the other day, had a fine crop of dark < j hair. He went to get it cut in London, ' | when the barber said; "Good crop' o" | hair, sir." Xo answer. "Looks as if it . might belong to one o' them German i fiddler chaps one 'ears so much about." ] General Booth se* up another striking . record in the tour which ended the other i day at Brighton. In visiting 200 towns t |he travelled nearly 1700 miles, and spoke ' . about one and a quarter mdlion words. - lit is a wonderful achievement for a m_ * of 79. But he must not think of giving 1 up ; he is young, as compared with Wesley, of whose mission and activities the . General's much remind one. Wesley was J near the end of his SSth year before his i labour euded. « Mr Spurgeon mm once censtred by ," someone for smoking. Iv 1874 he wrote i defending himself, as follows:—"I demur { altogether, and most positively, to the I statement that to smoke tobacco is . wrong. There is growing up in society 1 a Pharisaic system which adds to the ! : precepts of God the commandments of , | men. To that system I will not yield tor , one hour. The preservation of my liberty i may bring upon mc the upbraid—gs of ' many of the good and the sneers of the , self-righteous, but I shall endure both i with serenity so long as I feel clear in my conscience. When I have found intense pain relieved, a weary brain soothed, and calm and refreshing sleep obtain- . ed by smoking a cigar, I have felt grate- i fui to God." Major-General Sir Owen Tudor narrates among his "Memories" an incident ! j that occurred during the Viceroyalty in I , | India of Earl Canning —a period which _ : covered the Sepoy mutiny—which suggests that Hindustani should never bd ' handled save by adepts. At Lord Can- ■ nings durbar in November 1858. at the i close of the mutiny, the Viceroy made \ a long and dig—hed address to the chiefs . 'He spoke of the great Queen who had i , I desired him to decorate them: he thank-j ' led ail present for their services in the, 'mutiny: he particularly impressed uponl I the chiefs and princes their duty in tho ■ future of abolishing infanticide, of mak- 1 ! ing roads and railways in their tend- j ' I tories. and of moving in the paths of vir- 1 tne aud civilisation. It was a tine ad- j ] dress, but was unfortunately translated j■' •by the thou Foreign Secretary, who was j an indifferent Hindustani scholar. He bluntly said, to the horror of all those j • who knew the language, and to the visi-1 . 1 ble astonishment of tha chiefs: "The! Viceroy commands mt to say, "How d'ye ! i | do? You are a set of rascals. Reform! j - I Don't kill your female children. Make, j I roads and move on. Enough. You may j , ! £°-'" ' ' " Within a few days of the birth of the ; ] Czarevitch the infanfs life was insured 1 for half a million pounds." says a writer , i in the " Penny Magazine." This is aI ' comparatively small sum, for the Grand Duchess Olga. the eldest child, was in- , sured ofr £300.000 within ten days of ' i her birth. Moreover, a bai_lag accaunt j ' was opened tor the baby, and into it I ' is paid every three months a cheque on ' J the National Bank of Russia from the I ' Government which allows the three-year- _. old child £ 15.000 a year. The Czar also j ] made over to the infant foreign stock j ' which will bring in something like. ' — 300.000 a year, and which the ' Czarevitch will be free to enjoy as soon ■ i as he arrives at years or" discretion. It | ' is therefore Rider rather than over esti-, ! I mating the bona to say that the child— I_jto whom the greatest pleasure in life is j c the opening of the gigantic bos of toys j J which arrives from Paris every six weeks _ or so—is worth £315.000 a year." t ! The new Mayor of San Francisco, Mr. , Taylor, is a very literary Mayor, and he _ has friends among writers ia London i bound to him by kindred interests in rare editions, in variations of the texts of great poems, in hero-worship of all de- <, scriptions. America has sent her au- c . thors to be her official diplomatists at r I many Courts, but the experiment of put- J i tinga lover of things literary in the civic 1 chair is a new one. We shall (says the J " Illustrated London News"') watch its " working out with hope and with au eye t Ito our own future. We ourselves, tak- \ ! ing the hii)t, have sent Mr. Bryce to * I Wash—gto'ii in return for Mr. Russell. , 1 Lowell at the Court of St. James; and. c 'in time to come, it may be that our Man- o j sion House will be inhabited by a Barrie, * ! a —ipl—g or a Mallock. j '—' c The German Emperor's interest in * I everything that goes on in the world is ._ ! well-known; bat not everyone is aware r of the trouble he takes to keep in touch 1 with current affairs. According to a ' Munich paper the Kaiser reads at least _. | three papers every day changing the list i I several times a -week in order to become * fully acquainted with the ideas of all i ] political parties in the State. But this 6 by no means exhausts his appetite for in- ' formation. Every day the Ministry for * Foreign —flairs as wel las that of the t Interior has to provide newspaper cut- x titles properly named and dated and ! c pasted on slips ready for the Emperor's j \ perusal. These he carefully reads, making t marginal notes as he £roes along, and S they 3 are then scrupulously clas-, x ' sined, and put aside, ready ; _. j for immediate reference. Often, ] i I too, the Emperor, whose catholicity of. < interest and. insistence on method would I ( prove invaluable to many a journalist, i asks for cuttings relating to the particu- '- —r technical subjects in which for the \ time he is specially interested. j