WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 176, 13 April 1923, Page 4

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T. D. H.) The Allies may have to be careful what they do about Turkey now that it has been mortgaged to America. The Chinese Navy has revolted — perhaps it was asked to go to sea. The Knockmealdown Mountains, where Liam Lynch, the Irish Republican, was captured, are a picturesque range between tho valleys of, Suir and tho Blackwater. On the highest point of the range is tho tomb of Major Eeles, an eccentric gentleman of considerable ability, a mighty huntsman in his day, and an early researcher into the mysteries of electricity. It is said tho major had his horse and his dog buried with him, but there is a dispute among the local historians on the point, and unless'Hie fate of Lord Carnarvon deters them they may have to have an excavation to settle it. It is accepted, however, that Major Eeles had original ideas on the subject of inexpensive cremation, for' he had a lightning rod driven through his body and erected, over his grave to attract the lightning in order that it might consume his remains. .

Travelling about in the neighbourhood of Clonmel and the Knockmealdown Mountains eighty years ago, Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, the übiquitous journalist who founded the "Art Journal,” found many scions of Irish Souses fallen on evil days, and seeing a. ruined mansion one day he got into conversation with an ancient herdsman who had formerly been a servant there, and who bewailed the extinction of tho real old Irish gentlemen. Speaking of his former master the old man said: “Oh, the last of them of any note is dead these thirty years and more; lie was a fine man intirely, one of the ould knights of the screw; men that never care what they did, and were always drinking and fighting. I don’t remember the mastlier in his prime, and more’s the pity u for I’ll never see such another. He* tattered over the acres like a hailstorm. Be dads, he was no man’s enemy, but his own : for lie never kep’ a shilling in his pocket, and yuined half the country at the back of it. He was a fine man with the ladies, and broke the hearts of twinty, - at the lasts; and if a word was said against him, he had the brother or the father of them at ten paces on the sod, in a jiffy; and, crack a bullet to end or a bullet to mend ’em. He was a fine man infirely.”

“Och, hone,” continued the herdsman, “he was no one’s enemy but his own 1 Only ho never kep’ the guineas. Sure enough, ho was the fine man! With such a generous spirit; as long as even he could get credit for a hogshead of wine it was running at the rate of a hunt, all day and all night; and though you misdoubt my words, its as thrue, be the dads! as the light of Heaven, that whenever any kind of dirty tradesman came to ask for his money (them tradesmen ’ somehow war always mighty troublesome to the rale ould sort), he wouldn’t be in the least degree offended, bub invite him to the run of the house as long as he was pleased to take it I and if he wouldn’t, the masther ’ud lock him up in the strong room, where the title deeds and plate used to be kept, when they war in.it; then feed him up like a fighting cock, until the pore mane crathur, with a heart like a mouse, would want to get back to his business; and then, to be sure, tho bill was compromised or something, and the fellow sent back as bo came, burning tho claret and wild fowl. Ah! He was no one’s inimy but his own!”

More about stoats come from Mr. NT. L. Buchanan, of Nelson, who tells of what seems to have been a great drive they made against the rats in Nelson province. "During the tirst week or so of December, 1903,” writes Mr. Buchanan, “there was a hurried trek of rats through the bush in the north-western corner of the South Island. Not the ordinaiy brown, socalled ‘Hanoverian’ rat, but a small, dark slate-coloured or black, rat, .which it has taken some persuasion to convince me is not the real ‘kiore.’ They suddenly appeared, apparently travelling from the south in a hurry, and passing through the small settlements at the Taitapu mines, and Mangarakau saw and flaxmills, and a somewhat scattered collection of small farms and other dwellings in the neighbourhood, in such numbers that the cats got tired of killing them.”

“Immediately following the rats,” adds Air. Buchanan, “came quite a little army of stoats, go many that one could nbt ride or walk along any of the bush tracks without seeing them crossmg the path every now and then. Rats and stoats passed on and 1 believe most of them perished in. the sea, but though I had lived in the same place for over five years previously without seeing a rar, or a stoat or weasel, after this, there were certainly no rats. These stoats, or their forbears, I suppose, had been turned out somewhere between Bluff and Kaikoura to hunt rabbits, '.and had finally found their way bacir into the bush’and engaged in a big drive of- rats.”—This bears witness to what “C.P.” wrote about the value of steats arid weasels in keeping down rats in counvry districts.

Sir Bernard Burko traced the descendants of the Plantagenets wellnigh as thoroughly as' au American genealogist has traced the descendants of Charlemagne, and with equally interesting results. He found that so early as 1637 a great-great-grandson of Al&rgaret Plantagenet, tho heiress of George, Duke of Clarence, was a cobbler in Newport, Shropshire. .Sir Bernard added that among the lineal descendants in tho nineteenth century ‘ of Edward of Woodstock, sixth son ot Edward 1., occur a butcher and a tollbar collector —the first a Air.. Joseph Smart, of Halesowen, who died m loco; tho latter a Air. George Alilmot, keeper of the turnpike gate at Coopers BaiiK, near Dudley, who died in 1843. Among the descendants of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of Edward 111., w® discover Air. Stephen Janies Penny, the late sexton at St. George’s, Hanover Square.—The Royal Family is more numerous than is commonly supposed.

“Now, ladies,” said the attendant as he strapped them in their places in the aeroplane, ’’there is one thing we insist upon. You must on no account attempt to speak to the pilot.” After roaring for ten minutes, the ’plane did the leaf-flutter, a couple of loops, and a. nose-dive. After straightening out again the pilot felt a tap on his elbow. “I’m sorry to break the rule, said the older lady, “but Ethel’s gone!” PORTRAIT. Your eyes and lips, the colour of your hair , Have vanished down the years beyond recall, And I remember this, that you were fair — . And that is all. Yet sometimes sudden sunlight in the rain, A burst of bird song down a forest aisle. And starshino on still water bring again Your faint quick smile. —O. T. Dari*.