NEWS OF THE WORLD

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 August 1920, Page 8

NEWS OF THE WORLD

ACTORS' LONGEVITY. Few professions,, not even the law. supply more example of healthy longgevity than tlie stage, remarks a Haiiy Chronicle" writer. Sir Squire Bancroft has entered his eightieth year, a slim and upright f gure, who may be seen any fine Cray traversing his beloved Piccadilly. And there are others. Sir John Hare is 76, and it was only the other clay that he was delighting us with Goldfinch in "A Pair of Spectacles." A week cr two ago Miss Kate Terry emerged from a retirement wh ch ha 1 'lasted half a century. Then there is Miss Genevieve Ward, who this year celebrated her 83rd anniversary. Mrs. Kendal is comparatively youthful, for she was born in 1849; but Lady Bancroft, who was known to playgoers of sixty years ago, as Miss Wilton, is her senior by a decade. BARGAINS IN BOOTS. All New York flocked to the Grand Central Palace last month, where Alfred J. Du Pont, the great powder magnate, staged a sale of boots and shoes on a scale unparalleled in the history of- the world. To a public, rendered desperate by the inordinately high cost of shoe leather," he offered five million dollars, worth of boots at cost or less than cost. The stock, as brought to New York, filled several long trains. It represented the end of the powder magnate's enterprise in the boot business. He is pres : dent and principal owner of the Nemours Trading Corporation

which contracted for the entire output of four of the largest boot factories in New England. All this output more than a million pairs of shies and boots —the corporation offered the public at lower prices than rule to-day at the factories, much to the dismay of the boot dealers oi New York, who are charging the pub lie from thirty shillings to four pounds per pair. THE DOCTOR'S BEER. After hearing the emphatic denials of the landlord, Frederick Bleakman, of the Anchor Inn, Kempsey, the Worcester magistrates . dismissed a sumomns against him fo: sell ng ctrmlc during prohibited hours. Dr. Leslie Fletcher, who was sum omned for consuming the liquor, insist ed, however, that he went to the house one morning during prohibited ho.us and asked for, and was served with, a glass of beer. He wrote to the village constable, saying: "I hear gossip that I have been taking alcohol in prohibited hours. I wish ,to inform you that this is true, and that I have been supplied with alcohol during pro hibited hours on several other occas ions, and I am not the only one." Mr. A. A. Maund, solicitor for Mr.

Bleakman, put it to the doctor that ha had had to apologise to Miss Bleakman for something ho had said about ( her, and asked the doctor if this statement was not a lie. The doctor retorted : "If you call m« a liar I will call you a liar. i will fight this. ] will fidit the devil if I want to, and I will drink as much beer as I like." Mr. Maund : Is it not notorious that you are constantly making slanderous statements about people in Kempsey ? —Yes, but there are some notorious people in Kempsey. When, in face of their decision in re

ga'rd to Mr. Bleakman, the Bench decided that the case against the doctor need not be proceeded with, he exclaimed : "This, is .frightful. I have drinking in prohibited hours for three years." A PLUCKY SCHOOLGIRL. Georgina Friedman, a ten-year-old schoolgirl of Deephaven, a summer re sort at I ake Minnetonka, recently sav ed her life by flagging a speeding trol ley car with her red sweater after her foot caught in the "frog" of a.switch. The girl was on her way to school when the heel'of her shoe jammed iv

the "frog" as she crossed the tracks. In face of the speeding car, which was coming towards her at a rate of 50 miles an hour, she tore off her red sweater and waved it as a danger signal.' 1 The motorman stopped the car a few inches from the girl. When all was over and her foot free from the rail, she collapsed. kitchener, u death. The Hie stoiy ox Lord Kitchener, written ov his iriend and. private mciet.ii j, ,-ir u..-;gj Arthui, j.ni putjiisnecl in uuee v... t .mes by iUCJiiUaii, Lonuon, suppuc. „ lict.te sicteiigtit on the death v,i nia lordship. Auu trie "arrangements had been made for Kitchener's visit to Russia "ior a lew days it seemed as if '.he fateful journey would not take place," owing to a suggested postponement which, as Kitchener telegraphed, wiuild have made the visit out of the question. The fates had decreed etherwise, and on the 4th June he left London to join the Hampshire st iScapa Flow. There was a curious incident at King's Cross station. "Kitchener, as usual, entered the carriage immediately in order to escape observation. Then something unusual happened. He came back on the platform, and

said very quietly-—and a little sadly—to a friend, 'Look after things while I am away' ; thereupon, as if unable to explain to himself the impulse which prompted him to have a last word, lie quickly regained his seat, and locked away out of the window until the train started." As to the loss of the Hampshire itself, Sir George offers no explanation which has not already been given. There is, however, a suggestion in his briefly dramatic story of the loss of the cruiser which cannot escape notice. The secret of Kitchener's journey had been betrayed, he affirms, and, accepting the Admiralty view that the ship was mined, the assumption is that the Germans, having learned of his intended journey, mined the channels in the neighbourhood of Scapa.

■ EARL HIDES I^ T FARM. A strong taste for ad.enture, intensified by school d'scipline,. was apparently the cause of an escapade of the two sons of the Marquis of Bute. The boys—the Earl of Dumfries, a"vd 13, and Lord Robert Crichtov Stuart, aged 11—disappeared from St Gregory's College, Downside, Somerset, and a hue and cry was started. They set out to walk to Wellsffcur their objective was apparently farther away than they had. thought. A farmer near the village of Binegar was surprised at nightfall by two boys who knocked at his door and asked to be put up~for the night. The farmer hospitably agreed, and while telephones

■were busy and telegrams were being sent all over the country the truants were asleep at the farmhouse a feft miles away.. The next morning they rose early, completed their walk to Veils, tools train to London, and eventually reach ed the house of a relative in*the West End.