PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9943, 5 October 1895, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Professor Drummond'b health is in a very precarious skate, and is causing his friends considerable anxiety. Captain Wiggins, the Siberian explorer, has left the Tyne on hit eleventh voyage. He commands a vessel of 600 tons. " Edna Lyall" has completed the peal at St. Saviour's, Eastbourne, by giving three more bells, which have been named after characters that will be familiar to her readers — "Donovan," "Erica," and "Hugo." Bismarck is reported to be greatly broken in health and spirits. At a recent dinner given him by some intimate friends, he said, pathetically :—" You have said that a long life is a great blessnig. But it is not always so. I have had more than enough. 1 My wife has loft me." John D. Rockefeller, the Standard Oil King, is now, it is said, the richest man in America. His fortune has reached the \ furious figure of 145.000,000 dollars. Before She end of the year it will have reached the sum of 150,000,000 million dollars. People who claim to know say that, his wealth is growing at the rate of 15,000,000' dollars a year. Pierola, the at one time rebel leader, who has just been elected President of Peru, is reported to be a tall, handsome, and wellproportioned man. His hair is iron-grey, and on the top of his forehead is a long perfectly white lock, which ia in curious contrast with the others. In point of elaborate courtesy of manners Pierola is a Spanish gentleman of the old school. Formerly he was a professor of philosophy in a Lima seminary. Five years ago Mr. Israel Zangwill, the popular author and writer of " Without Prejudice," in one of the magazines, occupied the position of a schoolmaster in the East End of London. His success has nob made him forget his old haunts, for new he often takes the chair at lectures held at a Jewish workmen's club in Whitechapel. In appearance Mr. Zansrwill resembles Disraeli, or, as Mr. Zangwill has it, the great! statesman resembled him. It is doubtful whether Mr. Gladstone has physically benefited greatly by bis retirement from politics. He shows signs, it cannot be denied, of physical shrinkage, whilst his complexion and hands have acquired that peculiar alabaster whiteness which sometimes overtakes the very aged. Nor has he any longer the old firm stride and jaunty carriage of the head. He is not bent, like Mr. Villiers, bub his face is, if anything, that of an older man than the Father of the House. Mr. Villiers, by the way, has been bent double for upwards of twenty years. Dr. John Hall, the well-known Presbyterian minister of New York, is generally reputed to be by far the wealthiest clergyman in the world. His congregation is largely made up of millionaires and wealthy city men, ana it has been said that he receives altogether as much as £20,000 a ye>".r. The doctor has repeatedly and emphatically denied this fact, but he cannot be so very badly off. A member of his congregation who has just died left the doctor in his will an annuity of £000 a year, in appreciation of his services. There are fewer men in the new Parliament than in the old who began life at the bottom of the social ladder ; and most of these self-made men seem to be on the side of the Unionists. Sir William Arrol, who was returned for South Ayrshire, is a case in point. Sir William was born in 1839, and his parents were working people in Glasgow. At the age of eight he was put to work in a cotton-mill, and later on became apprentice to a blacksmith. Here he learned the uses and the manipulation of iron, and in due course became a foreman in Messrs. Laidlaw's works at Glasgow. From these works he went to start the firm of William Arrol and Company, and so finely did the concern prosper under his management that it secured the contract for the building of the Forth Bridge—a rive years' job, with a turnover of a million and a half of money. The firm also reconstructed the Tay Bridge, and supplied the steelwork for the lately finished Tower Bridge. Mr. Arrol was knighted in 1890. He is pre-eminently the type of man whom the House of Commons delight to welcome. His career makes an attractive chapter in the romance of modern industry.