GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1106, 12 May 1893, Page 14

GOSSIP.

Edna Lyell, author of the famous ' Donovan,' has a new story in Good Words, entitled, «To Bight the Wrong.' It is a much more ambitious attempt than she has made hitherto, as she describes the Civil War and bringsno less a personage than Crom. well on the scene.

The Australian edition of the Review of Reviews {A pril) contains the first of a series of articles on the leading newspapers of .New Zealand, being a sequel series to that already published of the great Australian dailies. The papers dealt with this month are Otago Daily Times and Otago Witness concerning which some veiy interesting information is given. Portraits of Messrs Geo. and W. Fen wick, Sir Julius Vogel, and W. A. Cutten are also given. Other frew Zealand papers will be dealt with in succeeding numbers of the Review.

W. T. Steal asserts that he sometimes writes under the influence of a disembodied spirit answering to the name of Julia, which grips his hand and guides the pen, his own brain not being responsible for what is traced, nor even cognisant of what is coming. Stead will probably end in a lunatic asylum. His original contributions to the Review of Reviews are getting more ' stodgy' and stupid every month.

' My father insisted that my sister Katie and I should teach the polka step to him and Mr Leach,' writes Mamie Dickens in the second of her papers on 'My Father as I Recall Him.' 'My father was as much in earnest about learning to take that wonderful step correctly as though there were nothing of greater importance in the world. Often he would practise gravely in a corner without either partner or music, and I remember one cold winter's night his awakening with the fear that he had forgotten the step so strong upon him that, jumping out of bed, by the scant illumination of the old-fashioned rushlight, and to his own whistling, he diligently rehearsed its <; one, two—one, two," until he was once more secure in his knowledge. My father was certainly not what, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, would be called a " good dancer." I doubt whether he had ever received any instruction in the " noble art" other than that which my sister and I gave him. In later years I remember trying to teach him the schottische, a dance which he particularly admired and desired to learn. But although he was so fond of dancing, except at family gatherings in his own or his most intimate friend's house, I never remember seeing him participate.'