MUSIC AND MUSCLE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 401, 4 October 1911, Page 5

MUSIC AND MUSCLE.

— .. „ HAMILTON SENSATION.

Something of a sensation was caused in the Waikato on Saturday, when a young music master, as we!! known in Auckland as further south, was administered a ■ public horsewhipping by an irate father, a gentleman well known in the King Country as roads engineer. The musician, though a married man, is alleged to have written an extraordinary letter to the mother of a pupil with whom he had become infatuated. In this letter he declared his love for the daughter. If. by this confession, the ardent lover hoped to gain the assistance of the mother, he signally failed. The musician later made indiscreet statements respecting the mother of the lady he professed to adore. These alleged reflections in turn reached the ears of the husband, a man of impressive physical proportions. Incensed at what had happened, and apprised of the nature of the original confession of love fur his daughter by a married man, the worthy sire armed himself with a rawhide whip, and sallied forth in search of the music master. Tracing him to a livery stable, he learned that his quarry was out driving. A four hours' wait for the young man's return only served as further fuel to fire the paternal wrath. Then the opportunity for punishment came, and the indignant sire took no half measures. Passers by in the street of the country town were treated to the unusual sight of one full-grown man flogging another. The raw-hide whip was used unmercifully, and the young man for once forgot that he claimed to be a member of the profession which has made a science of harmonica! sounds, Chastisement continued till whipper and whipped were tired. Then the music master sought obscurity.

The Begum of Bhopal was determined to make the most of her Western visit. She lately spent a fortnight in Geneva, and shopped surprisingly while there. According to the correspondent of the. Daily Chronicle in that city, she arrived with <B2 boxes and left with 243, which filled two large trucks and were crammed with Swiss goods of all kinds. She cleared out some jewellers?' shops, the message states, and bought 4022 gold and silver watches. A round number of thousands would have been open to doubt, but the particularity of that additional 22 is remarkably plausible. It is pleasant to think of a Hans or a Fritz, sunning himself in his doorway in the intervals of selling trinkets, to whom appears the Begum with a casual demand for a thousand or so of his Lest time pieces. The correspondent's comment that "such a customer has not visited Geneva since the time of Byron" gives, surely, a disappointingly inadequate idea of Fritz's emotions.

aged wandering singer, rhymster and storyteller, who was said to be a descendant of one famed in the days of minstrelsy, died recently in the hospital in County Meath, Ireland. He was the last of the old school of so-called poets who lived by story telling and verse making a farmhouse firesides. His name wa=? Thomas Smith, and, according to report, one of his ancestors wore cap and bells and served as a jester to a prince. In his boyhood Smith wore a faded doublet of alternating stripes of yellow and blue, which had been handed down to him as a r:olic of bis great grandfather's fame as a countryside funmaker. His stories for the most part had to do with the fairies, and always presented the good fairy in the part of straightening tangles and easing the path to happy marriage. His visits throughout the country were made with scheduled regularity, and an evening with the poet was the occasion for a gathering of young folk. Like most poets, he was not thrifty, and died poor.