WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 181, 28 April 1924, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

The story in the cable news of Prince George’s missing frock coat at his first public ceremony recalls a similar incident in Germany a year or two before the. war. On that occasion Prince Bulow was by a, night express to the south ot Germany to attend a royal funeral- Iha Prince retired for tho night, and his valet took away his clothes and was instructed to bring the appropriate garments for the funeral in the mornring. During tho night tor some> reason the express was divided into two portions and run as two separate trains with about an hour and a hall a. interval between. The division took place ail unbeknown to either the Prince or the valet, and tho result was that in the morning Prince Bulow in his pyjamas found he had no valet and no clothes. When the express, arrived at Munich tho local dignitaries, who were assembled in lull regalia to receive the great man, found him in dishevelled condition wrapped in a rug, and in this state he remained ovei the stationmaster' a lire until the other half of the _ express arrived. Even the divinity that hedges a king; has a way of disappearing when his majesty >s obliged by circumstances beyond his control to make a public appearance in a nightshirt and a blanket.

After spending twenty yeajs -and .£20,000 in trying to make artificial, diamonds, Sir Charles Parsons, we are told this morning, declares the task an impossible one. Herr Liebig, the great German chemist, who according to flip advertisements reduced an entire bullock into a tin of meat paste, once declared to a friend, “Soon I will present you with a diamond as thick as your finger.” Herr Liebig’s friends were still awaiting those diamonds up to the time of his death, but he may have had more favourable conditions for the study of carbonisation since then. As everybody knows all that is necessary to make diamonds is to find a way of crystallising charcoal. The Kohinoor in King George’s crown, the graphite in a lead pencil, and the charcoal obtained by burning wood arc all variant forms of carbon. Many elements can be crystallised without great difficulty, but, luckily for the possessors of diamonds, the secret of crystallising carbon has still to be- unravelled.

Sir Charles Parsons, the latest disgruntled diamond experimenter, is the inventor of the marine turbine engine, and is a son of that Earl of Rosso who will be long renowned in scientific annals for the astronomical discoveries effected by means of the enormous reflecting telescope built by him at Parsonstown, in Ireland. Despite tho potato famine and his trials and tribulations as an Irish landlord, Loid Rosse had enough in the way of rents coming in to indulge a taste for stargazing. He started making reflecting telescopes, and ended up in 1842 by setting up at his seat of Birr Castl'a a telescope with a tube seven feet in diameter and nearly sixty feet long. This telescope had a reflector six feet in diameter, and was at the time it was erected the largest ever constructed. With mingled feelings the Countess of Bosse and the Parsons watched th® expenditure of £20,000 of real money on this prodigious ornament to Birr Castle park. The great telescope proved most useful in studying the nebulae, which are now supposed to be infinitely remote universes of stars like that of which our earth and solar system form a tiny part.

The next Earl of Rosse continued the star-gazing and devoted his energies to investigating whether there was water in the moon or whether it is as dry as the United States is smpposed to be. Ireland has undoubtedly a lot to thank its old nobility for,for if the Earl of Rosse had not collected the rents and built his £20,000 telescope, Paddy, we may be sure, would only have spent the money in swipes, and some or him might even have boon content to stay on in tha bogs of King’s County ’ instead of emigrating to the United States and helping to make the politics of that enlightened country what they are. And the rest of us. too, might havo missed the astounding intelligence about the nebulae, and about our universe, solar system, stars and all being no more than a drop in Creation’s bucket. “I never did believe in this stargazing,” Mrs. Parkhain says, “sitting out iti the cold and getting a crick in tile back of your nec-k. And as for these gastronomical books, and what they say about these other worlds and worlds and worlds, its lowering to tha intellect to read such stuff, and hava people think of themselves as if they was just insects crawling over a brick. As soon as I found what it was all about. I had Herbert give up astronomy and take up the planner instead. As I said to Herbert’s poor Pa that’s dead and gone, ‘Parkham,' I said, ‘you quit this foolishness and send them books back to the library. Tho knoljular apotheosis ain’t wanted in no respectable, God-fearing home.’ ” Someone said to the Rev. Dr. Sandford, a former Bishop of Gibraltar, that Monte Carlo was the Riviera’s prettiest place. “Yes,” agreed the Bishop, “it does the Devil credit.” Canon Farrel was dining with Father Healy, and remarked, “I hear your whisky has a great reputation.” Father Healy pushed the bottle across the table. ‘Go,” he said, “seek the bubble reputation at the Canon s mouth.” “W.8.” writes from Nelson: “Lord John Russell’s reply to Sir Francis Burdett was pronounced by Mr. Gladstone to be the best repartee ever made in Parliament. Sir Francis, an ex-Radical, attacking his former associates with all the bitterness of a renegade, had said: ‘The most offensive thing in tho world is the cant of patriotism.’ Lord John replied, ‘I quite agree that the cant of patriotism is a very offensive thing, but the recant of patriotism is more offensive still.’ ” CATS AND MEN. Torn from his comfort by the kitchen blaze. Plunged forth upon the coldness and the night, Kim. the philosopher, arched to full height, Accepts the shift of fortune. AU hi* days z End thus. He has grown used to human ways. He knows that men, though strangely they delight In such caprices, yet desigu no spite And will to-morrow welcome him witfe praise. Sometimes he looks exactly as if ho must Be smiling at the thought that, soon or fate, Men to the darkness and the chill are thrust— Like cats the victims of descending fate. .... Nay, smile not. Kim ; for, once outside the door, Men come back to their House of Lite no more. —George S. Bryan, in the “Bookman.”