PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9991, 30 November 1895, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Before her. new story came out Miss Brad- , don' had realised the historic ' ambition of Sir Walter , Scott, who vowed he' would make £100,000 by fiction before he ceased writing; ; Mr. David Williamson has been appointed editor of tho Windsor Magazine, published by Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden. Mr. Williamson has been a member of the editorial staff at the Illustrated London News offico for some time,

Mr. Clement K. Shorter, who has the unique distinction of being editor of four periodicals—the Illustrated London News, the English Illustrated Magazine, tho Sketch, and the Album—is engaged to be married to Miss Dora Sigerson, tho daughter of Dr. Sigerson, Professor of Botany ab the Royal College of Dublin. Princess Marie of Orleans, wife of Princo Waldeuiar, is an enthusiastic fire-woman. As soon as a fire breaks out in the neighbourhood she hastens to the spot and gives all the assistancce in hor power. She has had her photograph taken in uniform, with helmet and axe, and has dedicated it to her "colleagues," the firemen of Copenhagen. The Duke of Cambridge does nob like newspapers. He has a great objection to any little occurrence in his career being chronicled. Tho last story is that whilst he was cover-shooting a fox suddenly sprang up. Tho keeper suggested that tho Duke should shoot it. Tho Duke replied, "I am sure I won't; if I did I should have all tho halfpenny papers down upon me." Tho Bumraor home of Professor Bell, the telephone inventor and millionaire, is on an estate of 15,000 acres in Cape Breton. The professor seems to have all tho instincts of the true fisherman. On one of the neighbouring lakes he has a house-boat propolled by a steam launch, with a trapdoor cut in the floor of his dining-room, so that he can fish, if the fancy strikes him, while at the table. M. Paul du Chaillu, the famous explorer, is still a bachelor, but, he says, " I have had more offors than most men. Once, in Africa, the king of a tribe, who loved me dearly, offered mo a choice of eight hundred and fifty-three women. 'Sire,'said I, 'to take one would leave eight hundred and fifty-two joalous women on the earth.' His solution was immediate. 'Take 'em all,' said he. But lam a bachelor still."

The expenses at the Vatican are very heavy, one authority estimating them at £1000 a day ; but when the immense number of cardinals, chamberlains, servants, and the personnel of the many Papal institutions who live within the walls of the palace are remembered, it does not seem to be an outrageous cost. The Pope is a keen man of business; not one item of expenditure escapes his eye, and he pays tho bills from a coffer, the key of which never leaves him. Baron Adolphe Rothschild, the head of the Paris House of the great family of financiers, has a lovely chateau in the suburbs of Geneva, on the shores of Lake Lemyi. He and the Baroness live there during the summer and spend the winter only in Paris. The Baron and Baroness, who are now advanced in years, live, generally speaking, very quietly in the " Pavilion de Pregny," and keep hardly any company. The Baron himself, who is seventy-two, has bub indifferent health.

The Sultan of Turkey is looking worn and haggard with the anxiety of the present crisis. When he appears, as he does once in every seven days, before the public gaze, his slight figure is enveloped in a pale brown overcoat. He walks like a man whose health is shattered, and it is quite sad to watch tho pale, wan, and careworn face, half covered by a thin, brown board tinged with grey, and surmounted by a' plain, red fez, which only sorves to emphasise his pallor, Mazzantini, who as a bull-fighter makes £20,000 a year, was a porter on the Great Northern Railway of Spain. He was strong and handsome and full of pluck, and ho said to himself, " I want to make money. In Spain there are only two ways—to be a tenor or a bull-fighter. I can't sing, but I know I can kill a bull." He began as one of the gang of assistants at small shows; he soon acquired skill, and to-day, whenever he travels, his is a royal progress; his diamonds are the envy of prima donnas, he has his town mansion and his shooting-box, and his villa at the seaside.