TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 14292, 1 March 1912, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

One would like to know Stories whether aX the stories of fathered on the late Mr '•Labby." Labouchere in the English Press arc true, but they all read as though they ought to be. Ho is said to have arrived once at a Continental hotel, only to be told that there was no room. "Perhaps you don't know mc." said' ''L.ibby." The manager admitted that he did not. 'I am an elector of Middlesex.'' The only electors that the manager had ever heard of were ruling princes, so room wns speedily made for the Englishman. On another occasion a German Customs official threw all the contents of his trunk on the floor, and refused to put them back. Mr Labouchere sfiid he would stay where he was until this was done, and asked for a telegraph form. "To Prince Bismarck, Berlin," he wrote, "Regret cannot breakfast with your highness to-mor-row. Detained hero indefinitely." The things were put back in the trunk forthwith. His hdmour sometimes took the form of a playful hoax on his audience. H_ observed at a political meeting that the speakers generally succeeded in rousing warm cheers when they found refuge in classical quotations. When his turn came to address the audience, Mr Labouchere worked up an impressive peroration: "What we want." he paid, "is government for the masses by the masses, or, in tho words of tho old Greek classic, 'Zoo mou sas agapo.' " At this there was loud and prolonged cheering. The l umonst refrained from spoiling the effect by confessing that th© words translated meant, '• life of mc, I love thee," and formed the last line of Byron's poem, "Maid of Athens." Another story tells of him being accosted at the Law Courts while ho was waiting for a libel case to come on, by a countryman who asked where "Old Labby" was being "tried." Mr Lahouchere led the man into _ Court-room where a burly ruffian was being tried for a brutal offence, whispered " That's Labby," and disappeared. Among hie many activities Mr Labouchere was once proprietor of a theatro, and employed, before they became famous, Henry Irving, Charles Wyndham, and Ellen Terry. Years afterwards when Irving was at a dinner-table with dozens of th© most distinguished, men in London, he said to "Labby." "And to think I was once getting £5 a week from you." "Three pounds," said the other, and three pounds it had been.

Some weeks ago we exTho pressed surprise that a Poisonous man should choose to City. mako a living by cycling alone through the wastes of Australia, exposing himself to great discomfort and considerable danger. Bui Francis Birtles, the man who cycled round Australia for so Jong, would apparently reply by wondering how wo can stand tho thrice-breathed airs of town, when we might be pushing a machine from Fremantle to Adelaide. Ho has been back in civilisation for some weeks now, and ho does not like it at all, heat, deserts, rough food and dirty water, and attacks by savages, being preferable to a town full of bad air, bad food and degenerate people. So ho expressed himself last week to a representative of the Sydney ''Sun." He prefers drinking at waterholes with snakes and dingoes, and mating salt food and damper, to dining at a Sydney restaurant. The tribe that lives in Sydney is deadlier than the blacks who greeted him with spears. He complains that he is losing weight in Sydney at tho rate of four or five pounds a week. "Chiefly it's the f ood I can't get anything pure and wholesome to eat in this town. The tribe that lives in Sydnoy forces mo to subsist on preservatives, swallowing enormous amounts of boracic acid in everything I touch. My digestion won't stand boracio acid. Out on tho track it is different. Good food is the rule there. You can get sound salt goat in North Queensland, where tho goats are as big as calves. Salt goat, damper and water. Eggs, too; sometimes birds' eggs, but not always. Three poundß of good solid damper, fifteen eggs, and a gallon of water. That's a meal for a hungry man." Some people might say it Was a- meal for several hungry men. If you get mutton in the wilds, he explains, you know it's mutton, and if you get damper, you know it's damper, but if yoti are given cUrry and rice in Sydney, you are face to iace with a mystery. He objects to Sydney, air, Sydney clothes, and Sydney habits of going to bed and getting Up, and he thinks Sydney doctors should give up prescribing drugs, and order, instead, for their patients, salt goat, damper, and water, and a silk shirt and knickerbockers. It will not be surprising if we hear some day soon that Birtles is "out again on the old trail," where Health is waiting for him with salt goat and damper in one Hand, and a tin of muddy water in the other.