TELEGRAMS. CLEANLINESS OF OUR TRAMS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1909, Page 9

TELEGRAMS. CLEANLINESS OF OUR TRAMS.

[BY TELEGKAPH — SPECIAL TO THE POST.] AUCKLAND, This Day. A matter that struck the City Council representatives who recently went to Wellington, said the Deputy-Mayor (Mr. A. J. Entrican) at- the City Council meeting, was the cleanliness of the tramcars in that city as compared with tjhe Auckland cars.. There, he said, one man had only to clean six cars, and prizes were awarded to the man who did his work the best. The result was that the passengers found the seats shining, the windows cleaned, and everything in tip-top order. He hoped (o bring some pressure to bear on the Auckland Company to bring about similar results, or at least as near to .the Wellington cleanliness 'as possible. OATHS AND PERJURY. [BX TELEGRAPH — SPECIAL TO THE POST.] AUCKLAND, This Day. Apropos of the abolition of kissing the Bible in Britieh courts, and the substitution of the Scottish form of oath, it is interesting to note that not only are sanitary considerations all against' kinsing the Book, but it is not considered effective as a deterrent to perjury. Mr. C. C. Kettle, 5.M.., at all events, has not found it so. In speaking to a Herald reporter, Mr. Kettle snid he had for many years been in. favour of substituting the following eimple declaration for the oath ; "I promise that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." His experience was that .perjury, of which there was a deplorable amount, was not stopped by the present oath. The man ' who made up his mind to commit perjury would do so on forty Bibles. Mr. Kettle said he doubted if the oath was anything but a form to the great majority of witnesses. FEIIDING'S WATER SUPPLY. LOCAL ITEMS. [BX TELEGRAPH — SPECIAL TO THE POST.] ~ FEILDING, This Day. The Feilding Borough Council is still coquetting between the Oroua River and the Kiwitea stream as the future source of water supply for the borough. Councillors claim that difficulty in getting a long-promised interview with Mr. E. J. Riddiford concerning the Cheltenham pipe line is still slicking them up. The latest proposal before the council is a notice of motion from Councillor Tolley to call Mr. William Ferguson in for consultation on the subject. The local fruit harvest promises to be very good. By one vote, the Oroua County Council rejected a proposal to purchase a road roller, which it was proposed would be hired out to other local bodies part of the time-. PALMERSTON'S PROGRESS. ITS CLAIMS FOR A CHIEF POST OFFICE. [BY TELEGRAPH — SPECIAL TO THE POST.] PALMERSTON NORTH, This Day. Captain Haydon has been elected president of the Palmerston Chamber of Commerce for the current year, and Mr. M. A. Elliot vice-president. Advice has been received that Mr. C. Smith, manager of the Palmerston branch of the Bank of New Zealand, who has been absent in England for several months, is much improved in health, and is returning to New Zealand about Christmas time., In support of the case for the constitution of the Palmerston Post Office as a chief office, the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce has collected some instructive statistics showing the importance of Palmerston as a postal centre. They show that the amount handled by the local savings bank during the postal year 1909 was £265,257, an increase of £148,000 over the previous year. The deposits in hand at the end of the year were £141,635, an increase of £115,020 over 1908. The letters outward totalled 2,600,000, a hundred thousand more than in 1908. Articles received by post aggregated 3,256,276, an augmentation of over fifty per cent, for the year. Other figures quoted were : — Telegrams received, 158,532; telegrams lorwarded, 149,807; telephone bureau messages, 67,884. The staff at the local office now numbers 90 men.

Tphess association.! CENTASPHORUS PLUNKETI. CHRISTCHURCH, 3rd Dec. A new species of shark has been found near Kaikoura, and has been named Centasphorus Plunkeli by Mr. E. R. Waite, curator of the Christchurch Museum, and an authority on New Zealand fishes. The shark, which measures 4ft Bin in length, is only found in very deep waters, its chief habitat being around Japan. It is allied to the dogfish, and is not a man-eater. ■ — \

THE BOOKFELLOW. .♦' ■ - Written for The Post by A. G. Stephens. (Copyright. — All rights reserved).

A LIVELY OLD LADY. The Countess o£ Cardigan and Lancastre is eighty-four years of age. On Christmas £ye she will be eighty-five. A saving clause is unnecessary, for the Countess of Cardigan and -Lancastre "wills to live" to be 100. She is "enjoying herself thoroughly." She is "young at heart." She likes a good dinner. She can amuse herself with singing and playing. She is still capable of entertaining her friends, in both town and country. And she has just published the most scandalous memoirs of a generation. The Countess 'of Cardigan and Lancastre is nourished by some of the bluest blood in England. Her father was Spencer Horsey de Horsey, a commoner ot "better family" than most men with a gre**w title. Her mother was youngest daughter of the Earl ol Stradbroke. 1 Her Army brother was a Lieutenant-General. Her Navy brother was an Admiral. She does not refer to children, buit she has | buried two husbands, paid off £365,000 of mortgages, and spent £200,000 more in improving her landed estate. "I have seen everything worth seeing and known everybody worth knowing ; and in thfi pleasant evening of my dayM I am just as happy as 1 was sixty 'years ago." The Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre has had a good time. "What woman," she askfc, "'does not appreciate having a -thoroughly good time?" "All is vanity," she sums up with Solomon. "Yet life's little vanities are the sauce piquante of existence." A BOOK OF BLUE BLOOD. "My Recollection?," for the countess are just another little vanity, a fillip to her appetite to live. But to the members of a score of the "best families" in England the Countess's sauce is more than piquant; it is red pepper and the hottest variety oi chili. .Part of fashionable London is raving over her book. The remainder's devouring it vorac-'ously. There have been three "editions in three months : there may very well be thirty more. At 9s the Countess of Cardigan and 'Lancastre is like, to be "the best seller of the season." One can see for her a long career of diminished prices before she reaches the classic shelf of "Reynolds's Newspaper" and becomes an argument in the arsenal of the British plebs. How delightful for that kind of old lady at eighty-four ! All over the world, 'in all classes of society, "modern women" are striving to make their little bits of individuality valid. The heart of a potential queen beats under every brave bodice. » Some have beauty, some have brains; some are charitable and pious, others are merely unclcrtlhed suffragettes, intoxicated with their refusal of prison raiment. Most are swallowed by the greedy maw of Monster Man, and never i-ttain a separate* existence worth mentioning. And they writhe ! they revolt ! "They shako their bars and bite their chains, thoir hands are red and raw, Thon cowor like a frightened flock and cringe before the Law." Yet the lady who would stand in the limelight all the time has to enter upon plots and cogitations. When she loses Nature's pretty bait, what has she to tempt the world with ? There is a career open to talent ; but talent is not a weapon in every woman's armoury, i Still, to stand in the centre* of the stage, and keep on standing; to hook the wary fish and to keep on hooking; it' is the unavov/ed ideal of the "modern woman.*' SCALPING SOCIETY. The Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre has fired plumb to the centre of the target of publicity. At 84 she is the most talked-of woman in her world. She is to be relegated to the ranks of negligible dowagers! She has been— fhe has 6een — and she remembers. She has looked into other people's hearts and written. Her excoriating pen has flayed the skin from a thousand fashionable victims. From the Carlton Club to Buckingham, Palace there is a trail of blood. Your father ! his' mother ! my unlucky aunt ! their giddy uncle ! our revered grandmother ! The Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre has apparently scalped all her female enemies and a large number of her male friends. She is "enjoying life thoroughly," and stili she walks the streets unashamed," says a shocked British censor. The book is the abstract and brief chronicle of the old lady's "good time." She is very woman. In her preliminary portrait she has an air of the Monna Lisa, hoarding the instincts of a long line of secretive ancestresses, smiling subtly at her incommunicable wisdom, a daughter of Earth equipped to mar the laborious civilisation of men, a cat purring behind her claws. Other illustrations show the tufts of hair she has Tent from a noble victim. "I could have married a Prince of the Royal family of Spain, the Count de Monlemolin, who was at one time regarded as the rightful King of Spain."' And there in photographed facsimile is the Count's love-letter— one of several thafr the enamoured Spaniard wrote. Adeline, Countess of Cardigan, nad to give up the letters when she broke the engagement ; but she kept one — it had been "destroyed," doubtless. It turns up forty years after the Count is dead, proof positive. Yet the Countess adds the very envelope of the letter, back and front, m further photographed proof. % She has treasured letter and envelope since 27th February, 1849— a precious possession to hug to bed with. "ALL THE WIDOWERS WANTED ME." "Ho was a distingui&hed-looking man," reflects the Countess who might have been Countess de Montemolin ; and attractive — barring "the Bourbon eye." But the lady did not love him. It does not appear that she really loved any man but the Earl of Cardigan, and him she loved enthusiastically, madly. Lord Cardigan was "singularly handsome." He left Jits Countess^ all his possessions and the great country house of Deene, where he had spent twelve years as a widower .not unconsoled, for "ladies were always ready to stop at Deeno without thei* husbands." She married him in 1858* he died, ten years later. Then in 18Ta the widowed Countess saw in Paris Don Antonio Manuelo, Count de Lancastre, a Portuguese nobleman, and made another matrimonial alliance. Don Antonio died in 1898. "I think of him with affectionate remembrance." The second marriage displeased Queen Victoria, "who objected to widows marrying again, and, besides, disliked one of her subjects taking the title of Countess of Lancaster, which she herself was fond of using when she travelled incognuita." The Countess of Cardigan was not one to be daunted by a Queen's displeasure. Besides, the present King was her friend. He advised her not to marry Disraeli. True ; Eer uncle had said to her, "My, dear, you can't marry that d d old Jew." "But I had known Disraeli all my life, and I liked him very well. He had, however, one drawback as far as I was concerned, and that was his breath— the iU odour of politics, perhaps." So fche asked the King's advice, and the King kindly said that he did not think the marriage would be a happy one. Exit Disraeli. "The King," says the Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre». -"js s.-feprfi

artist. We have often discussed art together, and those who say that a tast»\ for High Art can only be acquired aro quite wrong, for the King is a bom artist." The friendship of the King is another bit of lace in the Countess's widow's cap. "His Majesty honoured me with constant visits, and I cannot write too enthusiastically about the pleasure I experienced from his agreeable visits and kind friendship." Indeed, the Countess has been much sought after. When she was a girl she went to a fortune-teller, who said to her : "My pretty young lady, you will not marry for several years, but when you do it will be- a widower. You will obtain much and lose much. You will marry again after your husband's death, and you will live to a great age." And it all came true. "Lord Cardigan was a widower, and nearly all the men who proposed to me were widowers."The Countess tells them off like the beads a rosary. There was Lord Sherbome, with ten" children. The Duke of Leeds, with eleven children. C. M. Talbot, afterwards Father of the House of Commons ; four children. Also Prince Soltykoff, the Duke of St. Albans, Harry Howard, and Disraeli — all widowers — "so I suppose I must have had some unaccountable fascina tion for bereaved husbands." Of course "i was a pretty girl, with a. slight but fine figure, and long hair that fell in curls below my knees." HASTE TO THE WEDDING. But only Lord Cardigan was the Countess's grand passion. She quarrelled with her family over him, for the first Lady Cardigan was still alive, though an invalid. And Adeline de Horsey met and rode with and corresponded with the Earl, regardless. Father and brothers protested ; but Adeline was a woman of thirty, and she left home and took a little house of her own in Norfolk-street, Park Lane. There, at seven o'clock in the morning of 12th July, 1858, before Adeline was up, she heard a loud knocking at h\jr stieet door; and the noise of unbarring bolts. She had just lime to get into a dressing-gown before Lord Cardigan came up to her ' room and took her in his arms and said, "My dearest, she's dead. Let's get married at once." "Then I knew that the trying period of our long probation was over, and we were free to be happy together at last."' "When Cardigan grew calmer lie told me he had just come from his wife's deathbed." Some months later the pair sailed away in Lord Cardigan's yacht, and were married at Gibraltar. They they went to Rome and received the Pope's blessing. Then the Countess of Cardigan returned to be chatelaine of "Deene House, in Northamptonshire, for fifty years of her "thoroughly enjoyable" existence. STORIES OF THE ARISTOCRACY. She tells , stories', does the Countess, with a wicked chuckle. The story of George 111., asked to invest stupid Lord' Westmorland with the* Order of tha Thistle: "Well, I'm afraid he'd think he was meant to eat it." ■ The story of Lord de Ros, that great gambler, who was found out cheating at cards, was -cut by society, and presently died. This epitaph was suggested as appropriate : Here lies Lorcl do Ros Waiting for the Last Trump ! Lord- and Lady Belfast lived at Cowes. She was called The Dragon on account' of her fiery temper. One day Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence said to Lord Belfast ■(who was enjoying a peaceful time during his wife's absence from home) : "Well, Bel, *we get on. very well without The Dragon, don't we?" — and afterwards the Belfasts were known aa Bel and Tho Dragon. Louis Napoleon had charming manners. When a guest at Lord Anglesey's place, Beaudesert, he was asked how he liked the house. He replied, "J'aime beaucoup Beaudesert, mais," turning to Lady Desart, "encore plus 1 la belle Desart." -Lady Waldegrave, who had four husbands, was at a Dublin theatre, and a gallery wit shouted, "There's Lady vWaldegrave ! Arrah, me lady, and which, of the four did ye like the best?" Instead of being covered with confusion, La-dy W. answered, "Why, the Irish, one, of course!" and gained loud applause. EIGHTY-FOUR HAPPY YEARS. A sweet old lady. She was a sweefi child, too ; or we may. infer so. "Children in my young days were much sweeter, more natural, and far better behaved. The horrible modern child,, with blase ideas and cynical self-con-ceit, did not exist years ago. We had our faults, but they were those of impulsive childhood, not the faults of the boy and girl of to-day, which are, I am afraid," says the distinguished moralist, "the result of the over-indulgence of a decadent and degenerate society." As a child, Adeline de Horsey went to breakfast at St. Dunstan's, in Regent's Park, with Lord Hertford, Thackeray's "Lord Steyne." Thackeray somewhat maligned him, she thinks now. True, he was a roue ; but "he wore his rue with a difference." "At least, lie always looked a great nobleman, never forgetting his manners, however much he neglected his morals — a refreshing contrast to the fast men of to-day." "There were all kinds of rumours about the orgies at St. Dunstan's after the opera," when the prettiest members of the corps de ballet went to sup with ' Lord Hertford. "Scandal said that once there the ladies discarded the conventional attire of the ballet, and waited on Lord Hertford and his friends at supper wearing less than what is considered good form to appear in as Salome. But what a change when the fashionable world came up to breakfast with his Lordship a few hours later ! The lawis were dewy fresh, and ladies, lights, and music had apparently vanished into the morning mists ; but unkind people used to say that the ballet slept away the fatigues of the night sately locked away in Blue Beard'a rooms." Then came the little Adeline to drink milk warm from Lord Hertford's beautiful Alderney cows — pastoral innocence I And seventy years later she looks bads fondly in reminiscence, and delays her* narrative of conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, to think how pleasant it all waa — heigho !— .resuming how pleasant it all is-^-aha ! — to this wonderful Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre, serenely preening herself in the setting sun, and gaily stabbing the ghosts of her enemies among the tombs of long ago.

The Star of Wellington Lodge of Good Templars celebrated its thirty-sixth anniversary with a banquet in the Socialist Hall, on Thursday, the gathering proving a great success. Mr. J. Hutcheson presided, and there was a crowded attendance. The following toasts were honoured :—": — " The Grand Lodge of New Zealand," proposed by Bro. E. A. Goodger, P.G.Sec, and responded to by Bro. A. B. Thomson, G.Coun. ; "The Welling, ton District Lodge," proposed by Bro. G. Potherick,', G.Sec, and responded to by Bro. T. Townsend, D.Coun. ; "The Star of Wellington Lodge," proposed by the Chairman, and responded to by Bro. E. A. Goodger, C.T. ; " Sister Lodges," proposed by Bro. R. Simpson, responded to by Bro. K. C. Travers ; " The Chairman," proposed by Bro. "R. H. Rigarlaford, G.T., and responded to -by the chairman. During the evening an excellent musical programme was contributed by Messrs. Cathcart, Delahunty, Kelly, and Newton, and -Misses Avery, and, & Gilbej^en*