PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9118, 28 July 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Lord Lonsdale is pushing steadily toward the North Pole. Nothing but the weather can prevent him from reaching his destination.

John Gennadius, Greek Minister, asse: that the Greeks of to-day are as stro physically as their famous ancestors classic times.

Princess Beatrice Battenburg is taking a variety of internal and outward methods for the reduction of her obesity, which threatens to become abnormal.

Within the last few months three of the leading dukes of Scotland — Sutherland, Hamilton, and Argyll—have been almost at death's door and have recovered.

There has, we now find, been a mistake about Edgar Allen Poe. For four years previous to his death he was perfectly temperate. Indeed, he refused a glass of spirits the day before he died. Queen Victoria is very fond of straw hats. She recently had a photograph taken of herself as she sat at breakfast surrounded by her family. On her head was a most remarkable straw hat, the most striking object in the picture. Mr. Parnell has a very fine collection of books on engineering in his library, and, when he is at Avondale, the Irish leader spends the greater part of his time in the study of these works, of which he is passionately fond. Mr. Ruskin, who has gone back to the sea-sde after', his sight-seeing in London, is meditating a prolonged Swiss tour. He will probably revisit some of his old Alpine haunts, with a view to reviving his impressions for some of the later chapters of " Praeterita." '

One of the White House secretaries declares that President Cleveland spends more hours in studying Bills which are sent to him by Congress than his predecessors spent minutes. He will receive nobody's assurance as to the merits of a Bill until he has given it study himself. Mrs. Clement Lozier, who died lately, aged 75, was one of the leading lady physicians of New York. She commenced practice when about 36, and gradually made an income of about 20,000d015. per annum. It was principally through her exertions that the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women was founded.

Ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, who will visit England for the first time this season, has an income of £200,000 a year, but is always in debt. She maintains no house in Paris, but always resides at a hotel. She spends vast sums on horses. Her executive ability is clearly shown by the ease with which she constantly spends more than her enormous income amounts to.

The Duke of Edinburgh, who was recently poisoned by bad water at Gibraltar, has long had a passion for quack medicines. He is something of a hypochondriac and is always dosing himself with some patent nostrum. It must have been water of a very powerful kind which was able to affect a system which has been so thoroughly saturated with all kinds of strange mixtures.

Mr. Swinburne is a rather short man, with scanty red beard and a very thick crop of hair. Lately he has suffered from increasing deafness. His most intimate friend is Mr. Theodore Watts, with whom he lives, and whose influence upon him has. been very noticeable. The outset of his career bore a remarkable resemblance to the early life of Shelley. As a boy at Eton he suffered much the same persecution as Shelley endured at the same place, on account of his democratic ideas and eccentric ways. The Jewish World says:—lt is not generally known that the new tenor, Alberti, who has recently made a considerable sensation on the Continent, is a Jew. His real name is Krzywinossmall wonder that he changed it—and he is a native of Bremberg. His father was, until very recently, a humble journeyman furrier at Gnesen; and Alberti himself was for a long time a clerk in the same town, and afterwards occupied a similar position in a Berlin counting-house. His remarkable voice attracted the attention of the Prussian singer, Padilla, and, with the assistance of his employer, Alberti was induced to put himself in training for the operatic stage. At Berlin, Moscow, and Konigsberg he has performed with immense success, and is just now attracting crowded houses at the Prague opera.