PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10319, 19 December 1896, Page 5 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Sip.. Horace Darwin, a son of the late Charles Darwin, has consented to take the office of .Mayor of Cambridge. All the Queen's daughters were taught to jwim when very young. The daughters of the Prince of Wales could swim before they could read. A bulky bridal trousseau was that of Princess Henrietta of Belgium, who was recently wedded to the Due de Vendome. Ii filled 170 trunks, and weighed 11 tons. The Duchess of Cleveland, mother of Lord Ro-ebery, who recently celebrated her 77th birthday, is an ardent and constant traveller. She has only lately returned to London from the Cape of Good Hope and the Transvaal. The Countess Tolstoi, who is an accomplished and beautiful woman, is unusually fond of gay society but to please her eccentric husband she denies herself social pleasures, and acts as private secretary to the novelist. One of the wealthiest heiresses in England is the Hon. Ella Williamson, the daughter of Lord Ashton. Lord Ashton has no sons, and only one daughter. Miss Williamson will one day inherit about £70,000 a year and a fine place in Lancashire.

The visit of the Shahzada to England was expensive—to India. In the home charges of the Indian Government for the year ending March 31, 1897, the following item appears : "JExpenses of the visit to England of His Highness the Shahzada Nuziullah Khan, £25,403." The Silver cannidato for the American Presidency, Mr. W. J. Bryan, was the recipient almost daily during his candidature of quantities of cigars and cases of nine; but, as he neither smokes nor drinks, jo gave the cigars to newspaper correspondents, arid poured the wine into the aeareat sink. Mdme. Zola has never read any of her husband's books. But the "apostle of realism" is not at all disturbed by her indifference to his writings. Ho says that he married, not on account of Ills wife's intellect, but of her heart, and thinks it is a mistake for any literary mail to choose a wife on any other grounds.

When Dr. Nanson loft his homo to go and find the North Pole, ho took with him a phonograph. into which his wife had sung a sonjj and his infant daughter had yelled. He arrived safo in Christiunia, to find this infant squealer a charming; wee maiden of nearly four, with a sweet voice, which bids fair to equal in* charm that of her mother, The Princess of Wales positively revels in lid' dairy. Its walls are decorated with tilo, which the Prince thoughtfully brought with him from Bombay—tiles of dark ornamented tvi'h a design of roses, shamrock. and llii-t mtd the motto, "leh Li ri." Tim din also contains a long milk|Mii, artistic iliy ornamented by the bru~h of the Marchioness of Lome, a beautifully mounted head of the Princess i.ivouritf deceased Alderney, and a silver ilium expressly modelled for the hand of Koy;,Uy. • ■ ' ■ "*" ' ' Ihe Rev. W. E. Clark, 9f Apia, Samoa, blanks that the religious side of Robert * Lnui.« Stevenson's character has not received 'hie recognition. He says that on every Sunday night Mr. Stevenson conducted family worship, in which a chapter from the S.tmoan Bible was read verse by verse by the members of,'the Household, followed by the Lord's • Prayer from the English Prayer Book. Then one of the < Samoans prayed in t.he vernacular; and finally Mr.' Stevenson read a prayer which he himself had composed during the week. Conan Doyle writes- this graphic description of Lord Cromer, the . British Minister to Caito ; "Astrong, florid face, with a close-oroppod, soldierly, grey moustache; tho expression good-humoured and inscrutable. This is Lord Cromer, whom Egypt has changed from a major of gunners to a peer of thg realm, while he in turn changed it from a province of the East to one of the West. One has but to look it him to read the secreii of his success as a diplomatist. His clem: head, hja bravo heart, his physical health, and his nerves of iron, are all impressed upon you in that momentary glance at his carriage," V '■ •.'