PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10037, 25 January 1896, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Lord Lonsdale's hobby is to collect whips. Some in his possession are worth over £100 each.

The new English poet-laureate has a brother in Sydney, Mr. Henry Austin, a well-known woolbroker.

Dr. Donaldson Smith, the American exploror, lias arrived in England from Africa, where he met with tribes which had neyer before seen a white man. One tribe was under sft in height and quite naked. Miss Khoda Broughton is now in her fifty-third year. It is amusing to recall tho story of her first book. "Cometh Up As a Flower" was published without the knowlodge of her parents, and when it came to the rectory Mrs. Broughton would not allow her daughter to read it. According to Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour and Lord Rosebery are tho only young men of the present day who buy books and read them. Lord Rosebery is the most ardent of book-lovers, caring every whit as much for the beauty of the outside as the inside of his volumes; he perfectly revels in broad margins, vellum leaves, and historical leathers. To gather the material for the book of Arthur Roberts'" Reminiscences,"published the other day, Mr. Morton had to follow his subject about for months like a dog. All the information was gathered at odd times and in odd places—in the dressing-room at the theatre, at) the wings, driving in cabs, over gaipes of billiards. "To toll Mr. Arthur Roberts that he must give me information," said Mr. Morton, "was a sure way to get nothing." Sir Georgo Lewis owes his great reputation as a raconteur largely to his memory. When he is going to dinnor with the Prince of Wale?, for instance, ho will scan down the call-book at his office, opening it at, say, ten years ago. A glance, so Success says, at the names will recall to him any strange or amusing incident in connection with those former clients, and thus armed with curious facts, which notoriously are stranger than fiction, he has no rival usually in the storytelling over tho walnuts and tho wine.

Tho French painter Bonnard, who is at work on a great design for a coiling of tho now Sorbonne, has a home in Paris very English in aspect. The wall-papers are designed by William Morris and Walter Crane; a canvas of Sargent has a place beside drawings of Okusai and a marble of Rodin. But the master of the house has his portmanteaus always packed. Ho spends a winter in Algeria, a spring in Spain, an autumn in Italy, and a summer on the|Lac d'Aiinecy, as the mood dictates, and the Paris house serves to fill up tho uncertain interim.

Captain Sitwell, of the Northumberland Fusiliers, ho was chosen to go with the regimental volunteers to Ashanti, is known among his comrades by the sobriquet of " Mail Jack," owing to his reckless bravery. He has no sympathy with playing at soldiers, and during the manoeuvres is greatly opposod to taking circuitous routes by way of bridgos, gates, and gaps. The soldier, he says, "ought to act in the manoeuvres as though ho wore in real warfare. On one occasion Captain Sitweli led his whole company through the AMershot Canal, though the other officers and men deviated in search of bridges. He is very popular with his subordinates, and might reasonably answer to the name formerly bestowed on Lord WoUeley by the Ashantees, "The man who wouldn't stop." An amusing yarn is going round the London Stock Exchange and the press in connection with the last settlement. A country parson, it is reported, wrote to Mr. Barnato in terms something like the following " Respected Sir,—As the vicar of ,my aim has always been investment and not speculation, When your bank came out 1 regarded the shares as an investment, and I purchased 400 at £4, sinking my little all in them—and a great deal more. They have now fallen to £2, and lam undone. My parish I cannot face as a bankrupt, and what am I to do? I throw myself on your mercy." Mr. Barnato, so the story goes, was deeply moved by this touching appeal, and wrote back that in the painful circumstances of the case he would buy back from the clergyman tho 400 shares at £4—the price he had paid for them. Immediately on receipt of this generous reply, the guileless country parson at once wired to his brokers : " Buy 400 Barrato Banks at 2, and send round to Barnato Brothers, who will give you 4 for them."