PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8556, 2 May 1891, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

The Empress Eugenie has recovered from her indisposition. Mr. Rudyard Kipling's portrait is being painted by Mr. John Collier. John G. Whittier's birthday gifts include a barrel of pitch pine kindling from Alabama.

The painful fact is made public that the poet Tennyson has always employed a rhyming dictionary to aid him in framing his beautiful poems. Charles Bradlaugh, M.P., was a tailor's shop-walker when he was a young man, and first came into notice as a member of a country debating class. Mr. James Payn has joined the staff of Punch. If we mistake not, says the Athenreum, his first joke in Mr. Punch's pages has been cracked this week.

Prof. W. A. Tilden, Manson College, Birmingham, and Mr. David Howard have been elected president and treasurer respectively of the Institute of Chemistry. Cardinal Edward Howard, Arch priest of St. Peter's, Rome, a relative of the Duke of Norfolk, and who was formerly an officer in the 2nd Life Guards, is sixty-one years fo age. Dennis Crosby, residing at 198, Causewayside, Edinburgh—an old man of 97 —was burned to death by his clothes becoming ignited while he was warming himself at the fire. Paulus, the famous singer of Boulangism, has refused an offer of 30,000f a month to sing at Berlin. He replied: "Magnificent offer in the case of any other country, but in Berlin—!"

Miss Kate Drexel has taken the black veil. She expects to devote her life to caring for Indians and coloured people. She will use the income from her fortune of £1,400,000 for this work.

It has been decided that the command of the London Scottish Rifles, vacant by the retirement of Colonel Lumsden, shall be given to Major Nicol, who has been for many years an active officer of the corps. It is maintained in the Russian Embassy in Paris that the Grand Duchess Sergins, who is a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and a daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse, has either embraced the Russian faith or will do so in a day or two. Kossuth's physician and former secretary reports that the patriot is in the best of health, and that, although eighty-nine years old, Kossuth works at his desk eight hours daily and finishes the day with a game of billiards, which he plays with a steady hand and generally wins. The death in England of Mr. Rider Haggard's only son, says a New York" correspondent, has caused the novelist to cancel all his arrangements for a lecturing tour with his wife. They are now on their return journey to Europe from the city of Mexico, whither they will not return for two years The Queen has just used her prerogative to create a baby baronet. It is an honour designed for a grandfather that has been visited on a grandson. This is Sir Coleridge Arthur Fitzroy Kennard, Bart. His grandfather,, the late Mr. Coleridge J. Kennard, formerly M.P. for Salisbury, died, it will bo remenbered, just before the baronetcy had been conferred on him. The boy is five years old. * It is surprising, but nevertheless true, that Charles Keene, the English caricaturist, who within the memory of man never treated himself to a new coat, whose sole indulgences were the Arts Club and a " shag" of tobacco, which he stuffed into his little black " cutty pipe," and who had no shyness in owning that he did not spend £200 a year, died worth no less a sum than £30,000.

A favourite recreation of the late Mr. Bradlaugh before Parliament engrossed his attention was a game of chess. s He was a, proficientin this mostmentally trying game, and took keen interest in a brain-combat with a chess-player worthy his steel. Mr. Bradlaugh was probably to be seen at his best when engaged in a chess-contest at Pursell'3 in the city. His intellectual faculities on the alert, his thoughtful brow the best part of his face— on such occasions a fine study. It was eminently characteristic of his naturally combative nature that even in his hours of leisure he should have sought relaxation in the engrossing and arduous pastime of chess.