PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11241, 9 December 1899, Page 5 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

The Birmingham Municipal School of Art has-a distinguished teacher of needlework. She is none other than Miss May Morris, a daughter of William Morris, and perhaps the "greatest living English authority on embroidery.

Mr. Mavgoliouth, who has just been ordained, and who holds the position of Professor of Arabic at Oxford, carried off every possible university scholarship in classics in his scholastic days—the Craven, the Hertford, the Ireland, and the Derby.

Madame Sarah Bernhardt intends to celebrate her birthday this year in the most eccentric fashion. She announces that she is going to appear before her guests in "a costume appropriate to circumstances and suitable to her years." It is whispered that " Madame" is busy preparing the get-up of a sweet grandmother.

A Boer who lives at Wynberg, in Gape Colony, is the husband of an English peeress, lie is Mr. Pieter Pieterse, who in 1892 married ihe widow of the eighth Earl of Stamford. Tliis lady was a Miss Solomon, whose mother was an African native. She married the eighth Earl of Stamford (before his accession to the title) as his third wife. As her husband succeeded to the earldom of Stamford without the estates, she has always resided in South Africa, although she retains the title by courtesy.

It is not generally known that President Kruger's wife is of the same family as Cardinal Richelieu. His Honor has been wedded twice, and both his wives were chosen from the Du Plessis family, which is not only one of tho oldest families in South Africa, its founder having gone to the Cape in the seventeenth century, but the family to which Richelieu belonged. Mr. Krugor by his first marriage had one child, who died young; indeed, his first marriage was quite a romance in its way— Boers are not; a race given to idyllic courtships. By his second wife, as to whose health Mr. Chamberlain was once so solicitous, he has had 16 children. His grandchildren number IC4!

Guerrita, of Cordova, the most popular toreador of the day, before whose sword 3000 victims have fallen, has retired from the profession. He is still in the prime of life, so that no failure of physical powers contains him to give up his proud position. His resolve is ascribed to what might well be called a conversion. Some weeks ago ho attended tho festival of Nuestra Dama del Pilar, and as he gazed upon the imago of the Virgin, gorgeous in gold and jewels, an unfamiliar sense of wrong-doing is said to have come upon him. He thought of the' blood he had spilt, and of the injuries he had indirectly caused to his colleagues. He went home, summoned his family together, and solemnly submitted his head to tho scissors, which snipped off the lock of hair marking the true torero. Conejito, Bebe Chico, and Juan do Los Gallos followed their chief's example, and the arena will see them no more.

Professor A. Gray, F.R.S., who Las just been appointed to succeed Lord Kelvin in the Chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, is at present Professor of Physics in the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Professor Gray hails from the picturesque district of Lochgelly, Fifeshire, where he was born some 52 years ago. After being educated privately for several years, he went to Glasgow University. His college career was a great success, and his splendid achievements were crowned in 1876 by his election to the Eglinton Fellowship in' Mathematics at his Alma Mater. In due course he became private secretary to Sir W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and from 1875 to 1884 he acted as his assistant. Lord Kelvin has frequently acknowledged in public the excellent work done by Professor Gray during that period. At the establishment of the University College at Bangor in 1884 he wis elected Professor in Physics, an appointment which he j has held up to the present time. In 1896 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. His best work is on "The Theory and , Practice of Absolute Measurements in Electricity and Magnetism," in two volumes,