HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1204, 29 March 1895, Page 10

HERE AND THERE.

Although Mr G-, A, Salads recently published "Reminiscences" have been somewhat severely dealt with by the reviewers, they contain some vary good stories scattered here and .there throughout the book. For instance, Jiere 13 a curious incident of his visit to Australia:—A few days after I landed in Melbourne in 1885 a venerable lady called upon me at Menzies* Hotel and informed Sue that she had me in her arms at the baptismal font. She was very talkative and very nice, and I think she did not go away . some' slightly substantial .on my part of the honour which (she had done me in the Winter of 1828; [But oddly enough it chanced that dining th£t se}f -same evening at Government House with the then governor of Victoria, Sir Henry Loch, I incidentally /alluded to the visit paid me by the nice old Dear me 1" quoth his Excellency, " a nice old lady, such as you describe, calletl on me a short time after my arrival in the Colony, and she informed me that she had held me in her arms at the baptismal font ever so many years ago'!"" ."V-.>

SOME SALA STORIES.

Mb Sana's mother was a public singer and teacher of music, and a great favourite with the aristocracy, who liberally • patronised her benefit concerts. Mr Sala tells a curious story of Paganini, whom Madame Sala had engaged to play at a fee of fifty guineas at one of her concerts. Madame Sala went, wi% her little son, to pay the popular violinist: his ;fee»but;half hoping that he would decline tb> take Jt v To her dismay, however, the old man* grabbed eagerly at the pile of gold, and, as Mr Sala puts it," washed his hands in it" with keen zest." But as ,the visitors were departing withv heavy'heaifts, Paganini rushed out on the landirtg/and put a piece of paper into turned out to be a banl ;hOte the amount of his fee.

A PAGANINI STORY.

Sala, as a lad, saw more of Paris than most boys, and on one occasion spent some time there with;his mother, who was pursuing her vocation. During' his. visit an accident occurreu, which has become a stock anecdote, but which Mr' Sala now professes to give in its authentic form: — Lady Harriet D'Orsay was really the heroine of a story which has been told in at least twenty forms of twenty different ladies of fashion,., : , at a stall at a vente de ctiarite, or,bazaar, held in aid of the. funds of some asylum or another, when up the young Duke of Orleans,-, son and heir of King Loui3 Philippe.;, jafcer some polite small talk,' began'to extol the beauty of her hair; and, indeed, her Henrietta Maria coiffure had never; looked glossier or softer than 4t'did this day; ; «' oh," said his Boyal Highness, "if I could only possess one of those enchanting ringlets !" " How much would Monseigneur, give for one?" asked-Lady Harriet, gravely. " Five thousand francs ?" thousand francs 1" repeated the Duke ; "a mere bagatelle !". "Six thousand francs ?" " Anything, so charming a lady chcse to ask." "I will not be extortionate," pursued Lady Harriet; "we will say five thousand." And. then she very composedly produced a dainty little pair of scissors; Snipped off the adorable Henrietta Maria; ringlet; wrapped it in silver paper and handed it, with a smile and a curtsey full of graceful dignity, to the Duke. "His'Boyal Highness looked very straight down hisnose: and returning Lady Harriet's salute, stalked, somewhat gloomily, away. But his Privy Purse duly forwarded the money next day.

THE PRICE OF A RINGLET, i * : _ !i

During the Civil "War in America Mr Sala acted as special correspondent to his journal. He has dealt " with this chapter in his career many times before, but we do not remember that he has previously told the following charming electioneering story :-—At Montreal, at the height of some electoral contest for the representation of the city, one of the candidates had convened a meeting of negro electors, who, in the early stages of the ] evening, seemed far from favourable to him. He went on speaking, however, and dwelt over and over again on the then burning tariff question,: telling his hearers that what they chiefly needed was a carefully adjusted system of ad valorem duties. Now it chanced that there had just entered the hall a young nigger-waiter from an adjacent restaurant, who held under his arm another waiter--but a dumb one—a japanned tin tray, in fact. The negroes are very fond- of 'rhythm.;' they like sound, without troubling themselves much concerning sense, and somehow or another the words ad valorem tickled the ears of the young darkey from the restaurant. " Ad valorum, ad valorum, ad valorum I" he repeated in rapid crescendo, rapping meanwhile the japanned tin tray with a door-key. It was as though he had sounded the loud timbrel in Egypt's Dark Sea. "Ad valorum, ad valorum I" the whole audience began to shout, to scream and to yell, clapping meanwhile their hands and stamping their feet on the ground; and then there arose an aged negro of great influence in political circles at Montreal, who thus addressed his hearers:—" My brudders, we must all vote fo* eld A<* Yatani~bully for you,

" GOOD OLD ; . VALOEDM.

Ad The candidate was returned by a thumping majority, and was ever after known in darkey circles as " Good old Ad Valorum."

A SOLDIEE OF FORTUNE.

Tj ider of the Malagasy forces, Colonel Shervinton, was once a subject of Her Majesty. He comes of a good old Irish stock and his forebears for three generations past have been men of the sword. His great-grandfather did yeoman service for his country at the siege of Quebec, his grandfather helped under Wellington to drive the French across the Pyrenees, and his father led back the remnant of his shattered company in the 46th Eegiment on the glorious day of Inkerman. The colonel himself has a magnificent record. He commanded the Cape Mounted Eifles in the Basuto war, was several times wounded, had three horses shot under him, and was strongly recommended for the Victoria Cross, which he would unquestionably have been given had he remained in the colonial ranks. Having at the close of the war transferred his sword to the service of the Madagascar Queen, the coveted V.C. was withheld, although this in no way detracts from his gallant story.

The streets and terraces and avenues in London named after the i Georges still number 92. Thpre used to be 124 of them. "York" comes ;E.next with 82, 19 more bearing the same name having been changed in recent years. "William" naturally has been less popular, but there are still 56 thoroughfares called after him. The name of Her Majesty has been much in request, there being until lately 109 streets, etc., called " Victoria." Seventeen of these have been altered, but there still remain 92. As regards the great ground landlords, there are still 38 " Bedfords." There were formerly 58. There are 40 streets called " Warwick," 29 called " Eutland," and 22 called "Percy." The " Cadogans " num. ber nine, and there are only three "Westminsters."

3URIOSITIE! OF STREET MENCLATUI

Beethoven had taken much interest in Weber, and seeing Sir Julius Benedict, who was his pupil, at a music publisher's, he inquired how Weber was getting on with his opera. Benedict thus describes the famous composer " His lofty vaulted forehead had grey and white hair encircling it in the most picturesque disorder, a square lion's nose, a broad chin and noble, yet soft, mouth. Over his cheeks, seamed with scars from the smaUpox, was spread a high colour. - From under the bushy, closely compressed ! eyebrows, flashed a pair of piercing eyes. His thickset Cyclopean figure told of a powerful frame." This was the description by Sir Julius Benedict in his " Life of Beethoven," and it agrees with others of the period. The new portrait represents a much smarter person, but that may also be correct, for the composer sometimes made an effort to conform to society laws and fashions. Usually these impulses were brief, and Benedict gives a saddening picture of his home life. He says : "Everything was in the most appalling disorder. Music, money, clothing on the floor, the bed unmade, broken coffee cups upon the table, the open pianoforte with scarcely a string left was thickly covered with dust, while Beethoven himself-sat wrapped in a shabby, old dressing-gown, uttering a string of complaints about his position, the public, the theatres, the Italians, and more especially about his ungrateful nephew." This was just before the production of Weber's " Euryanthe," which Beethoven promised to come and see on the first night, but the great composers never met again.

A PORTRAIT OF BEETHOVEN.

T; height ever attained by balloonists who have returned alive to relate the story of their experience was 37,000 ft —upward of seven miles; this by Glaisher and Coxwell. They left Wolverhampton, England, at 2*30 p.m., September 5, 1892, and during the afternoon reached the enormous altitude recorded above. Balloons have been sent to a greater height than that attained by the Glaisher-Coxwell airship, but they were not accompanied by aeronauts. In the experiments made by Hermite andßesancon at Paris they sent balloons to a height of ten miles. Each balloon was fitted with self-recording instruments. Thev showed that tbe temperature at seven and one-half miles was 60deg below Fahrenheit's zero, and that the barometer marked only four inches.

TEN MILES ABOVE THE EARTH.

Here is a capital little portrait (from the Bulletin) of Mr Duthie : ."John Duthie, M.H.R. (M.L.) ,who passed through Sydney the other day, en route for England, where he proposes to slate the finance of Premier Seddon's Government -—Treasurer Ward is going 'Ome as a counterblast to Duthie —is a large, grey Scotchman with a scowl and a remunerative wholesale and retail ironmongery business situate in "Wellington and adjacent parts. Someone said of him he had " murder in his face and charity in his heart; " and he is like that. He has built up a large business in Maoriland, has been Mayor and other things, is popular with all classes, and has one of the finest StQCkS Qi uatlYQ beneath she

' OOR JOHN.'

Southern Cross. He is a slow, ponderous aud determined speaker, no mean financial authority, and bites oft the tails oi his words."

Sir B. W. Eichardson draws attention to the extraordinary rise in the rapidity of the heart's action which takes place in cycling, amounting sometimes to an increase of from 75 to 150 or even 200 beats per minute. Even in cases of heart disease, Sir Benjamin told an audience, he did not consider that cycling ought necessarily to be excluded, inasmuch as the result of the exercise was often to improve the tone of the organ. The ultimate result of severe cycling was undeniably to increase the size of the heart, rendering it irritable. But the great things to avoid were climbing hills, excessive fatigue, and the use of alcholic stimulants.

CYCLING AND HEART DISEASE.

If the February number of the Pall Mall Magazine reaches the little Japs now waging z war in the Celestial Empire, their cupidity will be aroused by its stories of the looting of the Summer Palace by the French and English in 1860. An old Indian officer, writing under the name of " China Jim," is the author of the paper entitled "Looting at the Summer Palace.'' "I do not wish," he writes, "to start off any youths of adventurous disposition, or elderly gentlemen with a strong taste for treasure hunting, in quest of these 499 golden images; but I have very little doubt in my mind that they are still lying buried and blackened under the ruins of that island temple in the Summer Palace." Though the writer did not carry off the golden images, he contrived to get some share of the plunder.

WHERE rREASURE MA BE FOUND.

As a corollary of the New Woman

(says London Telegraph) comes the New Honeymoon, which is lamentably described by a gentleman who is now enjoying it, and finds ifc extremely dull. He lives in the Temple, and is a lawyer. «In a letter describing his fate he explains that he loved a fair damsel, wooed her in the interval between the classes she attended and the. examination she passed with honours in London, and won her by letter "while she was taking a medical degree.in Edinburgh. This took four years. No sooner—had she obtained the requisite diploma than a capital chance for obtaining a practice turned up in Yorkshire. She embraced it. The patient gentleman asked her to name the happy day, and she consented. She was rather busy, but would'spare time between her visits to patifents' to drive to church and get married if the bridegroom would kindly run down from London to Yorkshire for the ceremony. He did so a week ago in a dreadful snowstorm. But (so writes the gentleman), " entirely discarding the time - honoured delights of the oldfashioned honeymoon, she at once returned to her medical practice, and sent me back to follow my prosaic business of a lawyer alone in London." The honeymoon, he says, is dull.

THE NEW HONEYMOON.

There is a fascination about mining for gold and silver, writes Mr Joseph Hatton in the People, that gives a halo to victory ; but money is often made as suddenly on the London Stock Exchange and in speculative investments that belong to new inventions and fresh industries. The other night I met a friend at dinner whose neighbour was one of a small syndicate who had put less than .£2OO into the initial work of a certain new application to the lighting power of gas. From this small sum his holding in the company had risen'to the value of £200,000. Not long since a Londoner went to-his broker with £IOO. " I can spare it," he said. "It is a small sum ; put it into something for me and I'll lock it up." The broker had on his hands a large number of Incandescent Gas shares, for which they had paid 3s 9d per share. They sold their client 100 at 4s 6d, content to be relieved of them at a small profit. Some six or nine months, it might be more, elapsed. The Londoner had been travelling in India. On his return he went up into the city to see his i brokers on a matter of business wholly j unconnected with the Incandescent Gas. " By the way," said the man of business, ' " what did you do with your Incandescents ?" " Oh, nothing," said the Londoner, expecting to hear that they were worthless. " I just locked them up. Are they any good ?" " "Well," said the broker, " we can sell what you gave us 4s 6d for for £39." "No!" exclaimed the Londoner with, his locked up scrip, " by Jove then sell them." " "We would not advise your selling all of them —let us deal with twenty." And while he smoked a cigarette the broker went out and sold for £SBO thejscrip that had stood him in a I ten pound note. A year or two ago a certain landscape painter, whom I may call a friend of mine, received a message from a compatriot in South Africa urging him to go into the city and buy every share he could get in a certain African enterprise. The mine had fallen in, and it was reported that there were little hopes of working it again. The shares went down to comparatively nothing. The artist in town had full confidence in his engineering correspondent, and went into the city and did as he was bidden. Within a, comparatively few months he was the I richer on this, transaction, by £3O,OQQ„

.£2OO MAKES £200,000.

©n£ who has been kad writes as follows to a Christchurch paper: Sir, —There is a swindler going round to the smaller shopkeepers in the vicimiy 01 unnstchurch, and his mode of swindling is that he abks for a packet of cigarettes, tendering half a sovereign in payment. After the storekeeper produces the 9s 6d change the stranger finds he has a sixpenny piece, and he adds that to the 9s 6d change and his own halfsovereign "If you have a note you would oblige by letting me have it, as I do not care about carrying change about me." The storekeeper sometimes fails to see the trap, and is thus robbed of 9s 6d and a packet of cigarettes.

A " CHANGE " SWINDLE.

Cricket is reported by Mr Basil Thompson in his "Diversions of a Prime Minister," to be the sport that the Tongans especially delight in. Till their pastimes were regulated by State ordinance—" The plantations were neglected ; the cocoanuts lay rotting on the ground; for the whole population played cricket from dawn till dusk all over the island, with a bat if they could get it, but otherwise with a cocoanut branch and an unripe orange. They played matches, one village against another, and all the men of each village took an innings. With perhaps 73 on one side and 52 on the other a match lasted for days; and party feeling sometimes ran so high that at the end the losers fell upon the victors with the bats and stumps to avenge their disgrace. This was all changed when cricket was regulated by law and confined to Tuesdays and Thursdays only ; besides the heat of the cricket passion has had time to cool."

CRICKET IN TONGA.

In the December number of Science Gossip a protest was entered against the use of the word " scientist," and opinions on the point have now been received from some well-known men. The Duke of Argyll, Sir John Lubbock, Lord Eayleigh, Professor Huxley and Dr Albert Gunther unreservedly condemn the word. Sir John Lubbock suggests instead " philosopher." Lord Bayleigh approves Lord Kelvin's proposal to revert to the wider meaning of, "naturalist," while Dr Gunther sarcastically suggests that "scientist" might advantageously be reserved to denote the modern dabblers in great scientific questions. Mr Grant Allen, while condemning the word, argues that as languages grow irresponsibly, it is pedantry to object to a new word when it is used by a majority of persons. After the camels of " sociology" and " altruism," " scientist" is a comparative gnat. Professor Huxley thinks " scientist" must be " about as pleasing as ' electrocution ' " to any one who respects the English language. Professor A. R. Wallace alone views the word with composure; he even describes it as " useful," and argues that, since we have " biologist," " zoologist," "geologist," "botanist," "chemist,""physicist," "physiologist," and " specialist," we might as well use " scientist." He asks what there is to use instead, and expresses the opinion that it is too late to object to the word now. It is added by Science Gossip that the word was invented and explained by Whewell in his " Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1840."

THE WORD " SCIENTIST."

According to an article in Cassier's Magazine for December the American Navy is now attaining respectable proportions. There are now in commission, or actually under construction, forty-five new vessels —twelve gunboats, twelve protected cruisers, three first-class protected cruisers, three armoured cruisers, five battle-ships, six monitors, four special types, two first-class torpedo boats. Their total displacement is 180,478 tons. They catry four hundred and ninety-six heavy guns of from four to thirteen inch, and five hundred and fifty small rapid-firing guns and three fifteen-inch dynamite guns.

THE AMERICAN NAVY.

Mr Price Collier has some very interesting studies of modern English life in an article contributed by him to the December number of the American magazine The Forum. Inter alia he says :—No doubt the mild and equable temperature of England, which enables one to be out of doors, and consequently to take part in some form of out-of-door sport or labour all the year round, lessens the amount of reading. Other things being equal, the inhabitants of a mild climate will read less than people who are, perforce, kept indoors many weeks of the year. No country in the world has such a neverending round of sport in which so large a proportion of the population takes an interest as has England —bicycling, grown to enormous proportions all the year round ; hunting from October to April; racing, from early spring to late autumn ; golf, which has developed from a game to a widely prevalent disease all the year round ; cricket and tennis, from May to late September ; shooting, from August to October; football (played, alas I by professionals, but as many as twenty thousand people attending on one game), from September until May ; and besides these, coursing, fishing, boating, and a long etc. of other pastimes. Now are these sports confined to the rich and idle, or even to the well-to-do alone. It must ueYOT fre Sgrgotten, even by thq xaost

JOHN BULL'S LOVE OF SPOET.

f fervent opponent of an aristocracy, that England is to-day the most democratic country in the world, where the rights of the individual are more respected, and where the individal has more of personal freedom than anywhere else in Christendom ; for to miss this characteristic is to lose the explanation of many apparent anomalies. Mr Lodge has been proving in .Upper's Magazine for January that many so-called " Americanisms " are Shakespearian words. It is shown that the" expression deck (for pack) of cards is from " Henry V 1.," Part V., Act 5, Scene 1: —

N " AMERIANISM " IN [AKESPEARE.

"But while he thought to stsal the single ten, The king was slyly fingered from the deck."

Mr Cecil Erodes, writes one who was at the meeting of the British South Africa Company recently held in London, is an impressive figure. xio m imiiy tall, with a mobile face of a distinctly Irish type, and a pleasant, though not loftily-pitched, voice. Mr Ehodes retains his strikingly youthful appearance. Under a rough exterior, and with a manner apparently shy, Mr Bhodes, says a correspondent of the Westminster Gazette, possesses nevertheless the art of pleasing both men and women. It is, however, to men that he reveals himself. His regard for the other sex is altogether below the standard of to. day. He has never married, and at present there is no sign that he will do so

MR CECIL RHODES.

This is the question Dr Lewis Eobinson

tries to solve in one of the magazines. The ass, it seems, is an ass because of the mountain origin and homes of his ancestors. For instance, on the bray of the ass Dr Eobinson waxes quite enthusiastic. He says:—-"Then consider his magnificent voice! What could be better adapted to advertise his presence to his comrades on- the neighbouring mountains, or to challenge his rivals from afar when the echoes took up his defiant ' hee-haw,' until every canon and crag within half a mile rang, with its repetition J" The last point upon which Dr Eobinson insists is the extraordinary aversion which donkeys have to running water.

WHY THE ASS IS AN ASS.

Sir William Kowan Hamilton, who was appointed astronomer royal for Ireland at the age of 22, and who discovered quaternions, was walking with the poet Aubrey de Vere one day on a road which was overflowed here and there by a river at its side. They were conversing about the transcendental philosophy, of which Hamilton was a great admirer, and De Vere, feeling sure that the abstracted philosopher would not observe the flood, made no remark on it, but waited to see the result. They walked straight on until the water was half way up to their knees, when suddenly Hamilton exclaimed: — " What's this ? We seem to be walking through a river. Had we not better return to the dry land?" Sir William kept a headstrong horse, and, on One occasion, mounted him in Dublin just as a mathematical problem had suggested itself to him. The horse took a mean advantage of the rider's abstraction, and ran away " When I found it impossible to stop him, the philosopher said, I gave him his head and returned to the problem. He ran for four miles, and stood still at my gate just as the problem was solved!"

ABSENCE 01 MIND.

The new bullet fired from the magazine rifle can do some very deadly work. The writer of an article in the Minster, a new . English monthly says :—The magazine-rifle bullet, though no larger in diameter than a lead pencil, does not simply perforate a bone, but " the part is always pounded, fragments are frequently carried out through the wound of exit, which is commonly converted into a gaping orifice, the muscles are pulped, and, in fact, the limb mangled and damaged beyond repair." It may not unreasonably be contended, therefore, that by supplying soldiers with a weapon which kills or maims for life every one a bone of whose body is touched by a bullet,.even at a male's distance, and, further, by making victors and vanquished suffer equally, and the cost of killing a man to be incomparably greater than of old, engineering science has done more to make war unpopular than all the army tailors of the world will be able to undo, however much they may endeavour to distract attention.

THE NEW BULLET.