WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 154, 17 March 1923, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T. D. H.)

Mr. Lloyd George says public men have the right to clear their names by writing memoirs.—And what a number seem to feel in need of itl .

Signor Mascagni, the veteran composer, has been challenged to a duel. —One would have thought him long past even a duo.

The Irish Republicans have ordered the Dublin picture theatres to close. — The kinema does seem superfluous when you can see much more exciting things at any street corner.

“On the 17th day of March Patrick was translated to Heaven,” says tho ancient scribe Ferdomnach, who in or about 807 transcribed St. Patrick s “Confession.” This is the earliest authority extant for fixing March 17 as the feast of St. Patrick, and those who wish to see tho u'ctual document will find it in the library of Trinity College, Dublin —provided, they get there before Mr. de Valera’s followers have a mind to burn down tho building. St. Patrick died in 461, and by even Ferdomnach’s time legend had already grown around him. Much was added still later, and the story, of St. Patrick using the shamrock to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity is a very recent addition. No shamrock grew in Ireland in St. Patrick s day, and the botanists say this plant, Tnfolium Repens, now’ used as an Irish emblem, was not introduced into that country until King William the Third ■ day. I

The Scottish gentleman in the cable n&ws who wanted £5OOO damages from his mother-in-law for turning him out of her house and causmg his wife to leave him, has something the same turn of mind as Mr. Alfred Charlemagne Lambart. Mr. Lambart when sixty years old, married Anne, Countess of Mexborough, in 1920, and left her three months later saying he had. found elsewhere the sympathy and con r solation he had sought m vain with her. He coolly demanded, however, that Lady Mexborough should provide him with maintenance. The Countess replied to this by beginning divorce proceedings against her elderly and. eccentric bridegroom, and intimating that she saw no reason why she should support him in luxury while he was living with somecne else. It is a hard world for the men.

A local interest attaches to the announcement that a French, shipping company is building a steamship 1000 feet, with a double hull, for it that one of the few double-hulled ships previously built left its bones _on our coast. A writer in the shipping journal “Fairplay”. jecaUs an early Glasgow steamer with two Hulls which ho says finislied as a sort of floating tearoom in the Clyde, off Glasgow o-reen. “Probably,” he adds, nobody fiving ever saw her, for she was evolved a good many years ago, but, according to the records, she was a Clyde passenger steamer with—n my memory serves-a paddle wheel between the two hulls. She was caled, I think, the Cigar. I forget what the cause of her failure was but she did prove unsuitable for the service and came to the end which I have in Sicafed.”

“Fairplav’s” correspondent was wide of the mark when he thought no one would be able to recall this sei, for even in. remote New’ Zealand there is at least one citizen whose memory can dip deep enough into- the past, and the paragraph has inspired Sir Walter Buchanan to forward me a few corrections: — ' “I was on board the steamer referred to in 1854,” writes Sir Walter, “when as a boy of 15 I was at school m Greenock. She was-as. desenbed-a steamer of two hulls with a paddlewheel between and a glass roofed deck for passenger shelter in the climate well described by the Greenock boy, who, when asked by the Sassenach, ‘ls it always raining here? replied, ‘Naw, whiles it snaws.’ ”

“The double hulled steamer, as stated,” adds Sir Walter Buchanan, “proved a failure, mainly because of insufficient speed. Her name, however was not Cigar as mentioned by ‘Faipilay, but the Alliance, in honour of the Anglo-French alliance against Russia in the war of that time —the war forever made famous by the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’ and ending with the siege of Sebastopol. The end of the double hulled Alliance, morover, was not by any means of the inglorious character depicted by ‘Fairplay.’ In consequence of her initial failure the two hulls were fitted together, and as a fast steamer of the ordinary paddle type she became famous as a successful blockade runner in the American war of rebellion of the seventies. Final capture and confiscation bv the American Union were, of course, inevitable, and as the result of subsequent sale the Alliance was transferred to this side of the world, under a New Zealand ownership, and finally wrecked on the Hokitika beach on her first local voyage.”

“H.8.V7.” writes: So the Hon. F. S. Jackson succeeds Sir George Younger as chief organiser of the Conservative Party! Jacker, an old Harrovian, as is A. C. AlacLaren, made a century for his school m his last LionHarrow match, some thirty years ago. Running back to the pavilion at Lord’s, after his great innings, he tossed aside adoring congratulators: “Thanks awfully; decent of you; and won’t it give the old man a lift!” His father became Lord Allerton shortly after —but history is silent as to whether it was in recognition of his son’s prowess at the wickets.

The regular orators on Sydney Domain’s soap boxes are frequently direct and pointed in repartee. “J.C.R.” says that one of them. A. D. Kay—who is a strenuous advocate of individual effort as opposed to Socialism, by the way—j 3 particularly quiok and caustic. In the midst of a glowing passage he was interrupted bv a sour-looking spectator with the remark: ‘Gam! You look like Mustyfur Camel. (The Turkish leader’s portrait had appeared in that day’s “Sun”). In no wise disconcerted, Kay retorted, “I suppose you mean Alustapha Kemal?” “Now, he went on, “do you know whom you remind me of?” “No,” said the other uneasily. “Well,” said Kay, “you very much resemble Balaam’s Ass, the one which the Bible tells us spoke to his master!” No more was heard from this interrupter.

ABSENCE. The Spring seems distant with her jasmine flowers. Tho gaunt bare trees with icicles are drest, Tlie snowbird in the cryptomeria coivers; Yet—is Spring far when Spring is m my breast?

And you seem far, too far for eye to see Your lantern and your lattices apart— i . j So many moons, so many hundred li— —— ' . Yet —aro you far when you are id my heart? From the Chinese of Pai Sa-Shun,