TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13171, 18 July 1908, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

To have been a boy yet English never to have gone in Treasures, search, of buried treasure, says a good authority, is to have foregone the finest privilege of youth. Perhaps in a land where buried treasures are chiefly Maori implemen-s, with some bones of an ancient moa, youth may be pardoned if its fancy flies to other things. Now E-ng'.aud. as a June magazine article reminds us, has so many wp3l--authenticated stories of hidden ?old, ohurch plate, silver bells, still waiting discovery in various parts of the country, that treasure-seekers are quite justified in any dream of coming upon some such hoard. At Washington, a village by the Sussex Downs, there was a treasure long attended by a ghost. Hβ had buried in haste, and ' afterwards eeems to have repented at leisure, -wandering vaguely round certain farm buildings on a site which, had never been disturbed sinoe tine Norman Conquest. In 1866 the ground vas ploughed up, for the first time in history, and there wcv found an earthenware jar "containing all that poor ghost's silver pennies, some three thousand, of no date later than 1066; the presumption being that they were, hidden, from the conquering Normans 6O securely tibat no one saw -them at all for precisely eight hundred years. At Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire, much fire goldsmith's work is still supposed to lie where it was hidden from Parliamzntary troops,, in a very deep well. Tons of rubbish were hurled on it, besides a curse, which the lady of the castde pronounced upon him who should remove iher family plate. At Osborne, bow the King's estate, there once lived a good Royalist, Eustace Mann, who buried a Urge sum of money, before Parliament dispossessed him of his lands. On his happy return, with the Restoration, ihe had unluckily forgotten in which field the cache was made, and no subsequent owner has yet discovered the right spot. But hidden treasure has a carious wny of eluding the determined seeker, to be unearthed by chance. There was a farmer in Lancashire who ploughed over and over a field to which a treasure-legend was attached. No treasure was found. Yet, thirty years after, some labourers doing surface work came upon a chest of armlets, rings, and coins cf King Alfred's time—evidently the traditional buried tprtae. By this ruk», we must not look for results from the great organised search, now in progress at Tobermory Bay j . and the Spanish galleon, sunk sinoo 1588, witih her silver, and guns, and millions of Spanish dollars, may still rest undisturbed except in youthful dreams for as many centuries to come.' The English Court Employers of Appeal heard a and; rather extraordiPractical Jokes, nary case the othor ! _ day under the Workmen's Compensation Act. A man ■ named Fitageraid was employed filling bags with biscuits at a factory on the i bank of the Thames. One (bay, wihiio he was so engaged, two fellow employees attached the hook from a crane i to his necktie and hoisted him up. He J 'was drawn to a height of fifty feet, and then fell to the ground, receiving injuries which have crippled him for life. * Hβ claimed damages under ihe AVortmen's Compensation Act, on the ground that his injuries were received through an accident arising out of his employment, inasmuch'as it would not have happened bot"*far the employment. A County Court Judge found for the defendant .firm, on the ground there was no accident within the meaning of the Act, as tihe joke of Fitegerald's fellow-workmen was . intentional An appeal to* the Lords of Appeal met with the same fate. Counsel for Fitegerald argued that his client was liable by his employment to too risk of a practical joke, and that as there were as many fools ac there were negligent workmen, an employer should be held as responsible for the acts of one as for the acts of another. ' The Court dismissed tbe appeal without calling on the defence. They htdd! that the accident, could not be said) to arise cut of the man's employment, but was the result of a cruel practical ."joke which had been played on him. The workman in this - case w.is nofc called upon by . hie <raployer to place himself in a situation in which, a fool of a fellow workman was delighted to hoist him up. fFhe accident was duo-to a senseless act done by fellow workmen, and on every ground of common-sense the employer was not liable. Of oourse, it is extremely hard on the man that ho can get no redress for an injury of this nature, but it would be monstrous if tho employer were held responsible fer the act of a couple of foob who, 'ike the very amateur yachtsmen :'a "Punch," "ought to be in some home." There really ought to be some sort of penalty for dangerous practical jokes. % , A very interesting deLife in eoription of work in Submarines, the submarine branch of the American Navy appears in the New York "Post." The American Navy, it seems, has a better record' than the, British in the matter of accident*, and the Americana an justly proud of the way in which their men handle these dangerous machines. But the wmo* apparently dose not consider submarines as ctangerwi* a* people think. "In the history of our nary," says a naval officer, "w« have yet to lose a boat, and '.a* long as wo keep to simple plana, a one-design boat, and maintain 4iecip>

safe as though it were on the" surface. The losses of the French navy have been due to an attempt to work with a number of designs. The result has been nothing but confusion." It is contended that nothing but carelessness or an enemy's torpedo would render a submarine helpless while submerged. This, however, ignores accidents to machinery, such as the one which disabled] the British A 9. The elimination of the unfit is searching. The submersion of the vessel is an admirable test of nerve. It is done day after day, and the man who chows the least sign of fear never sets foot on a submarine again, and rightly so, for the moment a man. loses his head in a submarine, he becomes dangerous. One drop, however, is usually enough for a timid man. The work is said to be much more commonplace than a landsman would think. "You are jammed into a stuffy, hot, uncomfortable hole. You don't 6ee anything. You don't heap anything—but machinery.. You watch a pointer jumping on a dial and move your hands according to clocks. You are a machine, and you are running a machine. That's all." - There is nothing to be seen but machinery and the green water against the porthole. In short, the , whole business, which seems so thrilling to a landsman, id really rather tame. But these are the views of submarine officers, and naval men are given to depreciating their work. Wβ are cure only the most? modest account of the disaster to A 9 could be extracted from one of her heroic officers. In addition to the enterConcerning taining gossip about the. Famous customs of our grandMen, fathers' times, referred to in these columns tho other day, there are many interesting reminiscences of famous people in Sir Algernon West's new book. As Sir Algernon was Mr Gladstone's private secretary, there is a good deal about the great Liberal leader. . Probably no man ever made creator demands on a secretary. "His whole scheme of life was laid out so as never to waste a minute of it. There was never in his busy day an idle dawdlo by the fire; sauntering, as Lord Rosebery once said, was an. impossibility in him, mentally or physically. . . . A walk with Mr Gladstone, as I have often experienced, meant four miles an hour sharp, and I remember his regretting the day when he could only go up the Duke of York's .steps two at a time!" Of his power of detachment Sir Algernon gives an instance which will be new to most people. Half an hour before he delivered his great speech in introducing the measure for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, he was calmly reading Shakespeare, as if there were nothing in front of him. Sir Algernon asked how long' the speech was likely to bo, and Mr Gladstone looked up and said he thought it would be three hours: As a matter of fact it lasted three hours and ten'minutes. With regard to his consideration for others there ' is a story of an operation by Dγ Nettleship for cataract, which he underwent in his iast years. When he realised that by rubbing his eye he had imperilled the success of the operation, his first words were:—"l am so sorry, for Nettleship." There is. a story of tho Duke of Wellington, which strikes us as embodying the essence of optimism. His father's statue was about to be removed from Constitution Hill, and a visitor was complaining lachrymosely of the decision. "I am old, I ■m blind, I am deaf, I have no chili dren," said the Duke, "and now they are going to melt down my father, and J yet lam happy." Browning is the hero of an-anecdote which ought to be true, if it is not. "When he had become famous someone wanted very much to meet him. A kind friend j arranged a meeting, and the guest besieged Browning with questions and conversations during dinner, and even after dinner he continued buttonholing bis victim. 'Come,' said the poet, 'this will never do. They will say I am monopolising you.'"