WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 133, 21 February 1923, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By T. D. H.) The Duke of Bedford explains how wages and income tax leave nothing out of £40,250 a year.—lt looks as if the rest of us will have to a raise a subscription to keep the millionaire out of the poor-house. There are no English in Ireland now, and sotui perhaps there won’t be any Irish either. Now that the invisible aeroplane is invented we may expect the ghostly motor-oar that pedestrians can. walk through witliout being hurt. Mr. Scott Fell, in urging the Commonwealth to secure Captain Cook’s long-lost autograph diary at the auction sale in March has offered £2OO towards the cost. A leaf in Captain Cook’s handwriting, and supposed to bo out of this missing diary, was sold in London in July, 1911, for £451, and now there are 740 such folios in the book to be put up for sale next month. Americans have much the biggest purses in the world in these days, and if any rich American had a fancy for Captain Cook relics Australasia, may have to go deeply into its poekot to stand up against him. Students who want to see tho original manuscripts of Keats, Shelley, and Stevenson —for whom American collectors have a special fancy—to say nothing of a whole series of writers from Milton and Bacon to Du Maurier onwards —will have to go to the United States instead of the Britain that bore these famous people. The American dollar is very powerful, and it was only a couple of years ago that Mr. Henry Huntington, of Pasadena, gave £15,100 for a little volume ii inches by 3 inches containing Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis” and • “The Passionate Pilgrim,” together with “Epigrammes and Elegies,” by I.D. and C.M. The English newspapers publish much comment on the loss of unique first editions and manuscripts of famous books to American purchasers, but often nobody seems to put any particular store on the liooks until thev go. The Captain Cook autograph diary, about the existence of which there has been so much speculation by researchers into the history; of lacifie exploration, was all the time apparently hidden away neglected and unknown in the library left by a deceased ironmaster. Mr. Henry Bolckojv, of Marton Ha 1 !, near Middlesbrough. The little Shakespeare booklet, for which America gave its £15,000. was similarly locked up at Bri.twell Court, a country house in Buckinghamshire, to which admission was always refused and where no book-lover or student had over the remotest char co of seeing it. At Mr. Huntington’s palace at Pasadena, out of Los Angeles, visitors who love books are said to be always continuously welcomed by the librarian, and serious students there and elsewhere have no difficulty 7 in gaipmg access to the treasures that American money has winged away from Britain. In Britain’s historic homes the reception of such students is said to be often freezing in tho extreme. France. Mr. Lloyd George says, has adopted a policy of “cash or smash in the Ruhr. Dr. Bumpus says that an apt use of words like these that stick in one’s mind is the secret ot holding public attention. The L* o y a Georgian speech, the Doctor holds, could have been made exceedingly sticking indeed if the rich vein of tho “ash” series had been properly worked out Nature —or whoever it was that invented the English language—seemed to have the French occupation ot the Ruhr very specially in mind when devising the series ending in asii. There is no doubt., for instance, that this dash after cash is proving a hash, and our ally is rash in using the lash, and is gaining nothing but trash while risking a clash that in a. hash may end in a crash, with much bash and gash and slash on both sides. However, the French are determined to make a ©lash since the Germans will not fash themselves, and it has yet io be seen whose teeth will gnash and who will wear the sack-cloth and ash after the smash. A medical journal says that the progeny of a single fly during th e summer often amounts to 1,427,6J4— But just ' suppose it got married I The week-end had been spent at a seaside bach, and when the washedout looking bank clerk took up his position at the dreaded countci on Monday morning his face was devoid of expression, and there was a taiawav look in his eyes. Presently an elderly lady—the first client of the day — made her appearance, and sweetly asked “if he would be kind enough to give her a twenty-pound note in exchange for some smaller ones. Dreamily the clerk elevated his arm to the shelf, and in an extremely tired voice inquired: “What have you got? “Four fives,” came the answer, 'lake ’em away,” he replied with a note of disappointment in his tone. iou romp home.” The above story, which a correspondent sends me, reminds me of another one which a local banker tells about a fanner who came into the bank ano. cashed a cheque. The teller counted the notes out and the farmer watched dubiously. “You’re <sure that s right, he said, adding “It didn’t seem right when I watched you.” Once again the teller went through the money. “Quite correct,” he said. The farmer took the notes and proceeded laboriously to count them. M hen he got to the end he said: “You need to be more, careful, young feller. It’s only just right. Among our thirty-seven monarchs there has been only one bachelor, M illiain Itufus, and one old maid, Elizabeth. Edward \ and Edward VI were unmarried, but as one was murdered as a child and the other died at sixteen that- was not their fault. William Rufus however, seriously neglected his duty in not marrying during his fortj-foui years. Five of the marrigaes were barren, while at the other end was James II with his 15 children George 111 with 14, and Edward I and Edward 111 with 11 each. Overheard in a Wellington restaurant tho other afternoon. ‘Tell me, dearjj queried the sweet young thing in beaded fawn, of t-he. tired-looking youth next her, “whivt is a canard? Gazing earnestly at her, yet just failing to conceal the merest suspicion or a smile, he renlied: “Don't know what a canard is?’ Why, the very name conveys the meaning. A canard is something one canardly believe, bee. A SONG OF LOVE. “Ijovo wandered by the sad sßt waves”; “Love lit a dungeon cell ; Love struggled where the myrtle paves A hidden bosky dell; “Without a shudder or a fear, Love faced the joy blast I always thought it very queer Lovo gcA around so fast! “Love grieved beside the fountain in A garden green and old”; "Love wrestled with a deadly sin”; “Love flew across the wold”; Not oven movie heroes are Through all the dangers of Their risks on plane or cliff or car More overworked than I>ive 1 —Charlotte Becker, in the New York “Herald.”