TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Evening Star, Issue 12768, 22 March 1906, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

[From Our Special Correspondent.] LONDON, February 9. PUBLICAN AND PARSON. Dr Samuel Thackeray, the chaplain o. Gordon road Workhouse, Camberwell, las created a mild sensation among clericals here by blossoming forth as a full-olowi' publican. Brewery shares have, strange say, always been a favorite medium for ip vestment with English clerics, but I fan y that Dr Thackeray is the first genuine parson to become a licensee of a genuine pub lie-house. He has been granted the license of “ The Fish and Eels,” a well-known house „ at Harlow, in Essex, much frequented by London working men who make fishing their week-end hobby, and proposes to run the hotel himself as far as his clerical duties will .allow him to do so. He feels that there is useful work to be done by clergymen in solving wbat he calls the’ temperance question as apart from total abstinence. He doe* not agree with forcing everybpdy to be total abstainers, and intends to try to show that those who are called moderate drinkers are entitled to as much care and attention from the clergy as those who are drunkards, and- for whom there ia no proper remedy short of total abstinence. Dr Thackeray will try tooinduoe his visitors to spare some portion of their brief holiday for worship, but so far from tiring to interfere with their amusements, he proposes to provide the mears of enjoying such innocent games as are, in his opinion, suitable for the Sabbath and are in accordance with his ideas of which is his explanation of tho word “rest.” To an interviewer he said “ I shall do the best I can to induce those who come to see me to attend divine service somewhere. I cannot provide it myself, owing to my clerical duties, but if it were not for that hindrance I would arrange a service for all those who come down and spend the week end at the hotel, I shall probably try a few family prayers in the hotel, or something of that kind. And when they don’t attend to what I call the fundamental and principal idea of worship, I shall do my best to make them enjoy the rest of the day in such a way as will send them back to their duties in a better state of health and better morally and physically. I hope to be able to give a little time every evening to guests who come there, and I trust we shall be able to provide such amusements as are suitable. As occasion arises I shall dispense the liquor myself. I shall sit behind the bar and talk to my guests — talk to them about politics, and, if I can, put some useful ideas before them.” Tho doctor, by the way, has invented a new system of music, which reduces all music into one key. No one in future will have need to leanr to sing or play in twelve different keys- -only one key, C natural. In order to do that he had invented a new keyboard and a new system of musical notation. He is a great believer in the value of mnsic as an influence for good, and “ harmony ” will be a feature of the fishermen’s evening reunions at the “Fish and Eels.” THE LATEST “TUBE.” A new “ twopenny tube ” in to be opened in London in the counse of the next six or eight weeks, connecting Baker street station in the north with Waterloo station and Kennington on the south side of the river. The connection is badly needed. Means of transit between North and South London have improved greatly within the hist year or so, thanks to the advent of the motor bus, but it is still much easier lo travel cast or west, A tube, moreover, can servo a far larger public than a line of motor buses, useful as these latter vehicles undoubtedly are. When the new route is opened it will be possible, for the small sum of twopence, to travel four miles in about twelve minutes. The line runs under Portland place to Oxford Circus', where it pas-.es immediately over that of the Central London Railway (the original “twopenny tube”). From Oxford Circus to Piccadilly Circus the new tube passes under Regent street at a depth of about 90ft, and thence by way of tho Haymarket to Trafalgar square. Here, save for the iron railings from which the stairway is entered, there is no sien of a station, the whole structure at this point being beneath the street’s surface, tiie stalls leading direct to the flocking hall and tho lifts. In this way the symmetry of Trafalgar square remains unmarred. The Embankment station at the river end of Northumberland avenue is intended to serve the purpose ma”ily of an “interchange” with the District Railway at Charing Cross, with which it communicates by subway, tho platforms of the one station being thus reached direct from those of the other. At Hungerford Bridge the tube passes under the Thames, emerging at Waterloo, where it connects with the London and South-western line, and also with the City and South London tube. When the new lipe is opened it will thus be possible to travel underground from Baker street to dapham Common. Every precaution has been taken to guard against fire. As on the Central Tube, every carriage is built almost entirely of steel, while, by a chemical process, the small quantity of wood used has been rendered non-inflam-mable, The jarrah (Australian) timber of which the sleepers are made is also impervious to fire, while the platforms are constructed wholly of concrete and iron. It is claimed for the new tube, moreover, that the vibration so common upon similar lines has been reduced to a minimum. The signalling system is automatic, the signals being controlled by track circuits which “ protect ” each train as soon as it gets on the line. There are seven intefmediate stations on the route, and the time between each will be about a minute and a-half. A novel color scheme has been introduced in the decoration of the stations, each of which has its own distinctive color. The idea is that passengers will find it easier to identify a station by its red, pink, blue, or green hue than by searching for its name on the station walls. Special attention has been paid to the ventilation problem, which the engineers claim to have solved satisfactorily. There will be a continuou.- service of trains on week days, and a train every four minutes on’Sundays. The new “twopenny tube ” should be very popular.

A PERILOUS VOYAGE. Ballooning at any time is a pastime freely spiced with danger, but in such boisterous wintry weather as we have experienced in the British Isles of late aerial trips involve such grave risks that one is inclined to call those who indulge in them something lees flattering than “intrepid.” last Saturday Me?srs Pollock and Dale, two members of the ’ English Aero Club, successfully accomplished the journey from England to France in a balloon of 50,000 ft pas capacity. They started from Wandsworth in half a gale, and they had not got clear of Mother Earth when the ripping cord became entangled in the valve corxf, and before they could be freed a nasty tear had been made in the bottom of the balloon. The aeronauts, however, decided to disregard the tear, and were soon soaring France-wards at the rate of thirty miles an hour. As then neared the Channel they ran into a biting blizzard, and rising higher and higher until 7,000 ft above the earth found themselves in a donee mass of icecold cloud, with mow falling in considerable quantity. Three hours after the start the coast of France became dimly visible, and as the baHoon had now descended to within a few hundred feet of the sea, flte steep cliffs ah ad ernmed the aeronauts to di"charge more ballast. They apparently rather over-did this part of the business, for their ship swiftly rose to a height of 10,000 ft, which took the travellers into a reg'on of much discomfort, it bein<r intensely cold, and hail falling heavily? goon ♦he balloon began to descend, and as ballast was rumun-r short it was resolved to make an end of the journey at the earliest opportunity. This was easier decided upon thin done, for they dropped into a furious m w squall. The baQcon was whirled about Hke a paper bag, and driven violently onward and downward. More ballast had to go. but there was no time to direburgf* it in the orthodox manner, so a conn!© of bags were let go bodily, and the bai’oon shot up again j«rt in time to escape by a few yards the tbps of the outlying trees of a large wood. Beyond this the travell rs found a suitable patch of open country, and after several narrow escapes from coming to grief against trees and fences managed to reach earth again Btfeiy, baring travelled about 140 miles in

ten minutes under four Lours. No doubt they will gain great kudos for their feat among aeronauts, but there was surely something akin to madness in undertaking such a journey in such weather. And be it said the balloonists exposed other people’ besides themselves to danger. It is bad enough for wayfarers to find themselves suddenly smothered in fine, sand poured down by balloonists, but when it comes to ballast bags being dropped bodily, the public have good grounds for entering a ■vehement protest against aerial voyagers. RUGBY ECHOES. Wales gave the New Zealand system of seven pack-forwards another trial in tho match against Scotland last Saturday, but though they beat tho Scots by 9 points to 3, they are by no means satisfied with their own display. On the day's Km they were lucky to win by a .oargm < t 6 points. “ The Welsh seven,” says Gwynn NichoUs, ‘‘played a very lerenmia J game, but too much was expected of them against the big and powerful opposing eight. The extra man in the pack gave to the Scots the ascendancy which is so essential to tho success of Welsh barirs. Until we have had more club experience of this new formation, -,ve cvnuot aAi. cl to experiment further in c. r national games.” Gwynn NichoUs emits, however, to point out that tie 'Welsh team did not adopt the “All Blasts"’ fermation in its entirety. The .New Zealand team had a wing forward, a scrum half, amd two flying*halves or In e-eighths, with three three-quarters, whereas Wales stuck to their four-three-quarter sysr.-u:, and merely sandwiched in an ..vita hall back with no definite position tv dimes. it was a compromise between two sy-lcne, and, Kite most compromises, it left a good deal to be desired. The extra hack did not know what to do with himself, and hampered rather than assisted the combination of the back division. Wales owed their victory bn Saturday more to the feebleness cf the Scottish three-quar-ter line than to their new formation. The Welsh scores were the reward of alertness and “ opnaortunism ” rather than combination. The Scotchmen, on the other hand, vyith anything like an effective attacking line, would have done far better, and might have won the match. The presence of a man with the ability and dash of Dr Fell might well have turned the scale. K. G. M‘Leod was the only Scots three-quarter to give anything like a decent display, and he was only moderate. Purvee was more or less starved, while Sloan and Church were distinctly failures. The Scotch halves, Simson and Munro, each played a good game, and the forwards reproduced the fine form they showed against the New Zealanders at Leith. They fairly wore down tho Welsh pack, and were very unfortunate in having so weak a three-quarter line behind them. Wales scored two tries in the first spell, and a third midway through the second half, while shortly before the end M‘Leod registered Scotland’s only score by dropping a beautiful, goal. The match drew an attendance of 30,000 people to the Cardiff ground, but the intense excitement which marked the Wales-New Zealand match was conspicuous by its absence, and in comparison with that memorable contest 'Saturday’s game was nuite a tamo affair.