Pars about Notabilities.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 149, 24 June 1911, Page 15

Pars about Notabilities.

• 6 i!f- Gilbey ' who attain *d his eightieth birthday the other day, "is the U.U.M. of the agricultural world. Country lovers have much reason to appreciate the work of Sir Walter Gllbey! He has been a strong man among agricultures, as, indeed, he is a strongman wherever he appears. There are few breeds of liv* stock which he has not done something to improve, and in regard to the revival or the hackney his part was the leading one. But the great cart-horse has also derived much benefit i\ attention he has given to it; and he has not disdained to turn his mind even to such cottagers' live stock as pigs and poultry. Sir Walter Gilbey has ever been a generous friend and kind supporter to those less fortunate than Life."

Admiral Lord Fisher, on his arrival m New York on the Baltic, charmed the reporters with his hilarity. "You young American reporters are very alert," he said, at the end of an interview. "You are not like the editors they tell about in Tallis-street. A newspaper proprietor in Tallis-street hired a new editor. That very night there was a fire in the Strand, a vast are, which all London turned out to see. The proprietor saw it himself, with its thrilling rescues, tragedies, and escapes, and early next morning he opened his paper with the pleasant expectation of reading a graphic account of the terrible conflagration. Not a line about the fire had his new editor printed. The man could hardly believe his eyea He tore in a taxicab to Tallis-street. He burst m on the editor like an explosion. 'Why didn't we have a story of the fire? , he asked. The new editor looked calmly through his spectacles and replied: <What was the use of printing anything about it? Everybody'in town was there to see the whole thing for themselves.'"

Among the other notabilities probably present at the Coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey was Sir Charles Tupper, the veteran Canadian statesman, who is now in his ninetieth year. He is the last of the "Fathers of Confederation," as the framers of the Constitution of Canada are called. Sir Charles first entered the medical profession, and until 1555 he was D r Tupper, in the enjoyment of a large practice in Nova Scotia, Then he went into Parliament and was soon Premier of Nova Scotia, ultimately attaining the Premiership of Canada itself. As a matter of fact, Sir Charles was the last Conservative Premier of. Canada ; and was ousted •from that position in 1896, when Sir Wilfrid Laurie r swept the polls with the Liberal party behind him.

The greatest Victorian portrait ipainter, Mr James Sant, R.A., recently celebrated his ninety-first birthday, and is spending the evening of his days at a house in Lancaster Gate, to which King Edward, his sisters, and his children, including our present Sovereign, went to be painted by his magic brush. Mr Sant was appointed principal Painter-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria in IS7I, but looks quite twenty years younger than he really is. He is without an infirmity save a slight deafness, although many jokes 'have been 'made apropos of his tendency to absent-mind-edness. He was even caught walking about the Grosvenor Gallery at a private view with his umbrella up, under the impression that it was raining. His tact is proverbial. A great lady, somewhat devoid of natural charm, was sitting for her portrait. Suddenly she said, "Mr.Sant, do you think I am a plain -woman?" "Madam," re-plied the artist, gravely, "no one would dare to criticize a countenance so remarkable as yours.'

A marriage has been arranged between I Princess Barbara Reuss, daughter of Prince Henry XXV. Reuss, and Count Siegfried yon Luttichau, a Protestant pastor, who is attached to the Diplomatic Service as chaplain of the German* Embassy at Constantinople. The an-1 nouncement of the betrothal has caused j much interest, as the marriage of a I clergyman with a Princess belonging to I a ruling German house is quite without | precedent. The pastor-diplomat is thir-■ ty-three years old and his fiancee twen-j ty-three. Princess Barbara Reuss is a! cousin of Queen Eleanor of Bulgaria. I

Directly the King left Buckingham Palace on May 8, tie Royal Standard was lowered and in its place was flown the standard of the Queen. This flag had not before been hoisted on the staff over the front of Buckingham Palace. It was •first flown at Marlborough House during an absence of the King at 'Sandringham. On the Queen's standard there appear the arms of Great Britain and Ireland, quartered with the arms of the Dukes of Cambridge (from whom the Queen is descended through her mother) and the Royal Family of Wurtemberg (from which the Queen is descended through her father, the Duke of Teck). Flying from the flagstaff at Marlborough House is the standard of Queen Alexandra. That is an impalement of the British and Danish Royal Standards.

Mr James Hodgkinson, of Manchester, the ex-mill boy, who has become famous by the sale 'to America for a million pounds of an invention which is expected to revolutionise the salt industry, is not the only working-man upon whom fortune has smiled in similar fashion.

Without going so far back as the days of Stephenson, Watts, or Arkwright, a modern parallel case is that of Mergenthaler, the inventor of the linotype machine. He was a weekly wage-earner in a factory when he hit upon the idea, and was a millionaire within less than a year afterwards.

Argand, who invented the burner named after him, was a working man, and so poor that his wife grudged the few pennies he spent on his experiments, lie, 'too, died a millionaire. Charles Depoele, 'the inventor of the under-running trolley for electric tramcars, was another workman whose idea netted him over a million sterling.

Not one million pounds only, but several, were the reward of Auguste Klootz, the working brickmaker who invented the artificial stone named after him, and with which' the streets of Berlin, Vienna, and many other continental cities are largely paved. W. L. Bundy, a workman himself, invented the workmen's time recorder, and was lifted from poverty to affluence in the course of a few months.

Then there was L. C. Crowell, the printer's labourer, who invented the Crowell folder, the contrivance which first made possible the present enormous editions of many-paged periodicals and newspapers. He, too, fortune from his invention, ■■'