WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 12, 8 October 1921, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

Before they are through with their attempt to fleece the farmers' some of the shearers seem likely te lie shorn themselves through sheer stupidity. Senator Colt says that to let American ships through the Panama Canal without. tolls will ..ring the. knell of peace and good will. A ppointment of Senator Pearce as Australia's representative at. Washington i» criticised by the party leaders. —Mr. Best thinks, the best man should go, and Mr. AVatt wants some one who knows what/s what. A man’s appearance indicates how his business is prospering, and hie wife’s appearance shows how. much he is spending. .' M. Briand is fearsome to go to Washington in the fall as he is expecting a fall of his own, and some crash, too, judging by the size of the French deficit. It is fortunate there were no casualties as the result of the encounter of the lenders of the Statham and Veitch parties., In the event of the demise of either of the leaders the remaining member of the party would have had. no one to second the motion of condolence at the next party caucus.

Eighty thousand pounds for a picture, as has been given for Gainsborough's "Blue Boy,” according to a cable message, is the record bid in-a-London auction room. The next best was Romney’s portrait group of the Misses Beckford, which brought 1 £54.600 when sold by ths Duke of Hamilton in 1919. On that occasion the Duke, by the disposal of 8S lots out of his collections, netted £168,957 12s. in less, than three hours. Britain’s aristocracy now is reduced either to selling its mansions or trying to live on the proceeds of the bric-a-brao thev contain. Apparently the Duke of Westminster, who is supposed to derive fabulous wealth from his ground rents in Ixradon, is among the number feeling th* strain. In 1919 he put up Reynolds s picture of Mrs. Sidden© as ‘ The Tragio Muse” at Christie’s auction rooms, but withdrew it when the bidding ceased at 52,000 guineas. "The Blue Boy’ now sold is from tho’Duke of Westminsters collection, and is classed by many aM Gainsborough’s finest work.

What collectors pay for pictures an# what the. artist who painted them receives aro usually two very different matters. As a rule it is after a man is dead that his work soars in value. Occasionally a painter outlives his skill and. survives in beggary to see his early work selling at big prices. One day in the National Gallery I was looking at a landscape by Henri Harpigmes, the famous French landscape painter, and friend of Corot, when an attendant who c ‘ in’ the pictures informed me that in hte latter, days Monsieur Harpignire w almost starving in poverty, uhile his pictures, for which he had received little, were, being sought at high pmes by mib lionaires. In threadbare clothe the okl man would sometimes come into the gal terv and shake his fist at seines in rage and vexation: so peihaps after all it is At zme attar one is dead than botoi ?he date when Gainsborough painted "The Blue Boy,” somewhere about l<7o, he was charging 49 guineas . .. • lengths and 160 guineas fo f The picture was in one tor two hands before the Duke of Westminster s end will wait long enough.

A correspondent sends in the followtaf I ran elation of a Chinese rejection slip, would-be "We have read thy manuscript wit infinite delight. Never before have we revelled in such a masterpiece.- If we nrinted it Hie authorities would ordain P ?take it for a model, and henceforth never print Cl 7 ttog .u fe ™ r fin d As it would be impossible to find its equal within ten thousand years, wo are compelled, though shaken with sorrow to return your divine and for doing so, we beg. one thousand pardons.”

T encountered Dr. Bumpus.' . » ctete of the greatest excitement. It was all over this Southland land purchase of seventy years .ago, for which the Maoris, it . seems were never P perlv paid, and for which the bill with compound interest now comes to .£354,000. It seems that the maternal uncle’s first cousin, the late IL Lethery Blechington, in early contracted a misalliance with a you g woman who was tho last survivor of the Southland Morion race which a is well known, inhabited that part the country long before the Maori wm heard .of. Mr. Bletchington, married this young woman, but there, was no issue of the marriage, and the Doctor is to-dav the last surviving legal next-of-kin of the Morioris. An heirloom m the family of the late Mrs. Bletchington was a document handed .down from past generations, which showed:.that the Morioris were never paid m xtill tor (lie land. The payment was to be made in 100 bags of kumnras, and as the bags were received the tally was notched off on a stick, but only 25 notches were cut, and the value of these 75 remainings bags of kumaras is still owing to Dr. Bumpus by the South Island Maoris, nnd with compound interest at 5 per cent, daring the last five hundred year* now amounts to £768,619.155. ild. to September 90 lost. The Doctor showed m« the stick with the notches exactly as slated, and' as soon as the Maoris get the £354,000 he is going to take Out a writ of habeas corpus to seize it as a part-payment of his account as holder of. the first mortgage on Southland.

Overheard at the golf championships:— “Beg pardon, sir, but would you be kind enough to tell your wife not to talk vliile the players are driving off?” “I can’t do that, but I’ll move her away.” A MEETING. We met by chance—l do not know his name. Whither he went his war or whence he came again. He said no word but “Courage”; then again “Courage” he said, and gripped me by the hands. A moment—he was vanished in the throng That hurried homeward in the drizzling rain. I wonder if he knows and understands How suddenly the world was full of song; Laughter and hope had burst their prison bare, And life had lost its loneliness and pain.. My fears were underfoot. I saw the stars The blinding mists had hid this many it day, / And clear before me gleamed a greathighway, < Where yesterday I sought a path in, vain.” . —<E. Williams David, la tbo-YWolsh Outlook.-