TOPICS OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1222, 2 August 1895, Page 20

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

From Our Special Correspondent. London, June 15.

In the intervals between his inventive spasms Mr Dennison has been booming New Zealand mutton and lamb amongst the big hotelkeepers in London and the Midlands, and with pleasing success. The produce of the Colony is largely used (the lamb especially) in several of the biggest London and provincial caravansaries. On the authority of an M.P. the New Zealander told me that " New Zealand mutton " figures in the daily menu of the House of Commons diningroom. Mrs Honeyman remains in England till her daughter's education is complete. Mr and Mrs Hay and their daughter return to New Zealand by the Messageries boat in October next.

aS: Mrs Yates, of Onehunga, has been talking to a New Zealand correspondent of the Pall Weill Gazette about the Mayoralty, and the interview testifies strongly to the ability, modesty and good taste of the first lady Mayor. Of the troublesome Councillor she speaks thus gently : —" The person who disturbed my meetings had been a thorn in the flesh of all other holders of my office and knew no more of the way in municipal affairs than your hat." Asked if she deemed her year of office a success, Mrs Yates answered thus : —"The facts can speak for themselves. When I took office, besides a debt of .£SOOO, the town had a current debt of betweon £7OO and .£BOO. I not only paid off the whole of our current liabilities, but paid .£2OO into the sinking fund in reduction of our main debt. I consider the result was due to practical economy and management. The roads during my year of office were better kept than they had ever been before. Since I left office they have run themselves into debt again to the extent of .£300." Her failure to enlist the sympathy of the bui'gesses a second time Mrs Yates seems to think resulted from her determination not to canvass. " I never," she said, " canvassed a single voter ; but I prefer not to speak of the means adopted by my opponent who supplanted me." I trust the nameless ones feel sufficiently ashamed of themselves now. ILLNESS OF CAPTAIN ASHBY. The latest accounts with regard to Captain Ashby are not, I regret to say, very encouraging. Though seemingly better and able to use his paralysed arm and leg a little, and walk across the room, the invalid seems in low spirits, and has in a few weeks entirely lost the buoyant, cheery manner all his friends know so well. The doctors have, with the idea of preventing worry, forbidden the captain to discuss business, &c, but I really think abstinence bothers him more than knowing about things would. I am glad to hear Mrs Ashby has cabled for her

son to come Home as the captain has con* fidence in him and now really requires someone to lean on a bit.

0 The contemplated visit of Captain and 3! Mrs Asbby to New Zealand has been i j abandoned for the present. Indeed, it , seems doubtful whether our old friend '. will ever again be in a condition to under--1 take such a long journey. Next week • Captain and Mrs Ashby go on a visit to their son, the Kev J. Crombie, at Oxford, and we all earnestly hope the little change may do him good. ' % SIR GEORGE GREY. Sir George Grey returned to Park place on Saturday last after spending some ten days with Mr R. B. Marten, M.P. at Overbury, near Tewkesbury. The change seems to have renewed the venerable politician's vitality. When I visited him on Monday the feebleness which I noted in him a short time ago had entirely disappeared. Sir George was, as ever, quite uncertain as to his future movements ; and especially with regard to his return. One of his nephews, it seems, is dangerously ill at present, and he will not make any arrangement until that cloud has passed over or broken. I ventured to remind Sir George of his constituency, and drew his attention to the fact that certain colonial journals were attacking him for his prolonged absence. The G.O.M. made light of these personal attacks, and seemed to think that the newspapers making them must be rather hard up for " copy." I noticed that he did not repeat the statement he made some time ago regarding his intention to resign. But so " close "is the old Parliamentary hand in affairs of this sort that he may have already sent out his resignation. He loves to mystify inquisitive people, and I have never yet ! succeeded in making him forget my connection with the press. Sir George, by the way, told me a rather interesting story concerning himself, Martin's Bank and the old apple woman of Change Alley, which willbearrepetition. It seems that in years long gone by, when Lombard street was quite a fashionable place to live in, and Sir George had but newly acquired the gentle art of reading, he used to spend a considerable portion of the year in the rooms above Martin's Bank. Whenever his elders wanted to be rid of him for a space they relegated him to a little room which looked out upon Change Alley, and commanded a full view of the good things upon the old apple-woman's fruit stall. In the room there were book shelves, and the little library included volumes of Cook's voyages, Dampier's voyages, and sundry other works dealing with the wonders of the Southern Seas. Sir George stumbled through these tomes, and then, his imagination fired by the strange things therein mentioned and the sight of the foreign fruits on the stall in the alley, would dream of tha day when he would own an orchard of his own in the far-off lands of which he had read. It was the hours spent in the little room overlooting Change Alley which shaped little George Grey's destiny. They mapped out a career for him, and he followed up the visions of his youthful day dreams till they became realities. Eighty years have passed since then. Lombard street is no longer a fashionable quarter, but Martin's Bank still flourishes, and though Change Alley has been somewhat altered, it still boasts a fruit stall, kept by the son of the old woman of Sir George's infancy, and the little room overlooking it remains intact. On his recent visit to Overbury Sir George spoke of the many happy, if solitary, hours he had spent in the room, and asked if the library still existed. No one even remembered that Martin's Bank possessed such books as those Sir George mentioned, and evidently believed that the old man's memory was playing him a trick. But Sir George was confident, and finally persuaded one of the junior partners to pay a visit to the chamber. They found it full of old banking records, musty and time - stained, but, searching in the far corner of the room, suddenly came upon the book-shelves which Sir George had remembered as being there in his youth. In them were the very books little George Grey had so often fingered. Brought to light and the dust of years removed the volumes were discovered to be in a good ♦ state of preservation. There was nothing in them to denote whose they were, and Sir George forbore to put in a discoverer's claim. So the books have been removed to Overbury, but I fancy that if Sir George ever returns to New Zealand he will take those long lost volumes with him.

SELWYN MEMORIAL. The chapel at Selwyn College, Cambridge, which has cost .£IO,OOO, raised enlirely amongst friends and admirers of the " Great Bishop of New Zealand," is now complete, and will be opened with ecclesiastical ceremonies next October. Mr Gladstone has just presented the sacred building with a bell destined let us hope to call many generations of undergraduates to morning prayer. The G. O. M. was at Eton with the late Bishop Selwyn, and when he chooses to " reminisce " has many tales to tell of the prelate's physical and intellectual promise. The present Bishop, I regret to say, continues sadly crippled, otherwise he might have felt it his duty to shoulder the responsibilities of Adelaide Bishopric. I forget whether I told you that he was one of the seven princes of the Church who took part in Dr Harmer's consecration, but even on this occasion he could not dispense with crutches. OSCAR WILDE'S HEALTH. A very pretty story to the effect that when Oscar Wilde was transferred to the penal prison at Pentonville and his hyacinthine locks were shorn he went mad and had become practically imbecile is authoritatively denied. Those who know the man best are, however, afraid of something of this sort happening. On the other hand, it is Jjust j possible he may courageously Keep up and resolve to recover a,

position and a good name, as Valentine Baker did. The man has such unique talents—almost genius—that an attempt of the kind would be far from hopeless. Besides it should appeal to his poetic .side. "The Atonement ot Oscar Wilde" has already quite a familiar sound. LA DIVA. Madame Adelina Patti, despite all her virtuous resolutions not to "lag superfluous " on the lyric stage, is like most of her kind, unable to bring herself to retire. Nor can certain folks see why she should do so whilst impresarios like Druriolanus can be found willing to give her .£SOO. a night. Apart, however, from financial considerations, which Patti is wealthy enough to ignore, it seems a sad pity that the once' unequalled Queen of Song should willingly contrast her wornout voice with Melba's superb organ, now at its best. They are to sing together next week in "Don Giovanni," Patti of coarse playing Zerliua to Edouard de Eeske's Don and the Ottavio of Alvarez.

THE £IOOO REWARD FOR ORTON. Apropos of the Orton confessions now proceeding from week to week in a Sunday paper, it is interesting to recall that the late Governor of New Zealand's cousin, Mr Guildford Onslow, was the chief supporter of the claimant in the days of his fame., and squandered a goodly fortune inTichbcrne bonds: After the incarceration of the " unfortunate nobleman " (as some idiot of the period felicitously christened him) in Hartmoor, Mr Onslow and the Sir Roger's credulous f dends, who were still fairly numerous, offered £IOOO for the discovery and production of Arthur Orton. Very soon after it was put about the man had been found in several places, a specially circumstantial story coming from New Zealand. In this connection I saw last week an autograph letter from John Bright, written in July, 1875, to a friend, which I obtained leave to copy. He remarked : " You may rely upon it that Arthur Orton will not come from New Zealand. During the trial and since £IOOO was offered for him, and nobody could produce him. It was a large bribe, and I only wonder it hasn't brought over a score of Ortons. The real Arthur Orton is in Dartmoor, and nobody, I suspect, knows this better than some of those who are pretending to exploit him from New Zealand. I have before me now the handwriting of the real Roger Tichborne, of the real Arthur Orton and of the convict, and this alone is sufficient to convince any man of common-sense and observation what is the truth in the case." THE WAY TO WALK UPSTAIRS. A terrible panic-monger is the latterday medicine man —the more so that lie is usually afflicted with the grievous disease known as cacoethes scribendi, and loves to see himself in print. His desire, of course, is to impress the public, and to advertise himself m a manner which is not disappoved of (in black and white) by the R.C.P. and S. To do this he is continually discovering new dangers to humanity, such as, for instance, that the constant use of steel pens conduces to chronic aphasia, or that too frequent indulgence in semolina pudding tends to produce—well, any disease you like so long as it has an awe-inspiring appellation containing not less than four six-syllabled words. Also, he is for ever telling us that we don't yawn , scientifically and that our sneezes are not performed in a manner consistent with the principles of hygiene, or that our method of getting in and out of bed is opposed to the principle upon which our liver acts. The latest, and not the least, amusing of our literary medicine-man's pronouncements is that we don't walk upstairs scientifically. As the result of exhaustive observations he has come to the conclusion that the great majority take off from the ball of the foot. This, of course, is entirely wrong inasmuch as it throws undue strain on the muscles of the legs and feet. What we should do is to place the whole foot —heel and ball—squarely down on the step and so allow each muscle to do its duty in a proper manner. By attention to these concise instructions anyone may learn with practice to mount upstairs scientifically, but I defy anyone to attain to gracefulness by the new method.

A COUET OP CRIMINAL APPEAL. The idea that there should be some tribunal to which a person convicted and sentenced at the ordinary Criminal Courts could appeal has gained a very firm hold upon the public mind in the Old Country. A Bill is even now before Parliament, the object of which is the creation of a Court of Criminal Appeal. It is, however, not likely that such a measure will become law, for Her Majesty's Judges are unanimous in opposition thereto. Their opinion, as voiced by Mr Justice Grantham at the Kent Assizes, is that the formation of such a Court is wholly unnecessary and would be productive of much harm. Appeals of the most trivial character would, they aver, be taken before the new tribunal, and the rehearing of such cases would involve enormous cost and waste of time. Mr Grantham referred to the fact that the I Home Secretary was petitioned to amend sentences at the rate of about 4000 per annum, but only interfered with about 10 per cent, of the decisions. He regarded this mode of appeal as far preferable to the one the Bill sought to establish, and opined that such a great change in the law of the land as the Bill would bring about would render the trials in the ordinary Criminal Courts much less careful and solemn. The objections to a Criminal Court of Appeal are doubtless very strong ; but so are the arguments in favour of a Revising Court. Mr Grantham provided one himself by giving a man convicted of obtaining three pounds of meat under false pretences the ferocious sentence of three years' imprisonment.