HOME GOSSIP.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 114, 1 September 1876, Page 2

HOME GOSSIP.

Atlas, a piquant writer in the World has the following spicy items of gossip :-. Anecdotes concerning the Prince's Indian tour continue to crop np at the clubs. Here is one, which proves that his Royal Highness can detect a " cad," and knows how to reprove him when detected. It will be recollected that the Heir Apparent distributed medallions pretty fairly at keepsakeo to the notabilities he met on his trip. Those medallions were made of silver. One was given to Colonel X, a well-known cavalry officer. Next day he appeared with his medallion dangling from his watch-guard, but the medallion was silver-gilt. The Princj was quick to observe it, and approaching the colonel, said to him, in a tone of playful irony, loud enough to be heard by all present, " Ah X, so you have corrected my oversight. You knew yon deserved a golden memento ; but t'wouldn't run to it, old man. Still, it is hardly delicate of you to remind me of my poverty." X. blushed ; and he blushes still when a discussion on pinchbeck, aluminium, and kindred imitations is innocently got up at mess. The Derby of 1870 and many former Derbys have produced no more extraordinary bet than one just won by two gentlemen, one of them a well-known artist. By risking one sovereign they have netted £BOO, punctually paid on settling-day. They got 800 to' 1 on a "triple event" —Thunder for the City and Suburban, Petrarch for the Two Thousand, and Mineral Colt for the Derby. All these events came off, but the winners ought to have won more. Thunder was at 40 to 1, Petrarch 10 to 1, and Mineral Colt G to 1; and the proceeds of these bets, put on at the current odds after each " event," would have realised £2,400 for a sovereign. The rumors of the Emperor of Russia's abdication are again becoming prevalent. Should the Czar resign his throne it will be, I fancy, owing rather to a failure of his mental than his bodily powers. For years past it has been a very open secret to all who were ever so little behind the scenes, that the gravest fears for his Majesty's were entertained by his family. The dread of assassination, always strong with Alexander 11., has of late years grown into something very like a monomania, and the recent prolonged crisis in the East, and its consequent anxieties, has ntturally done much to develop the Czar's mental maladies. A knowledge of the slender hold of its present occupant on the thror e of All the Russias, and the well-known French proclivities of the Czarewitch, has probably not a little to do with the increasing coldness of Prince Bismarck towards Russia, ".nd the touching unanimity with which the German papers praise the policy of this country in the East. Lieutenant Colvil'e, of the Grenadier Guards, a young man whose courage is only equalled by his modesty, amused himself on Derby day in a striking and original manner. Starting from Cbaring-cross on the Tuesday night by the Dover mail, with a light summer canoe—one of the Maidenhead " cockle-shells " weighing about sixty pounds and measuring about fourteen feet in length, with a change of clothes and a bottle of cold tea, he prepared himself for the task of paddling across the Channel. There was no Mayor, no crowd, no special correspondents to see him off, his only confidant being a Coastguard man, who had taken a rough forecast of the weather. At three o'clock—daybreak on Derby morning—he started from Dover harbour, and paddled into Calais harbour by half-past nine, doing about thirty miles zigzag across Channel in six hours and a half. His reception on the French side was not enthusiastic. He went on board the mail steamer lying ready for her midday passage to Dover, and was followed by a French official, who demanded harbour dues in that injured tone which a Frenchman knows so well how to assume. He did not pay the dues, but changed his clothes and had his breakfast on board the steamer, returning the same day to London. As an effort of pure courage his voyage beats botli Webb's and Boyton's. My talented confreres of the daily Press have fallen into an error anent the favorite mode of death of Sultans with a consistent unanimity. They pretend that the favorite mode of death is not a naturr.l one. I have been brushing up my historical knowledge of late, and will give them the benefit of an "easy lesson." Amurath V. is the thirty-fourth of the Ottoman line, or descendants of Othman, which mean- "bonebreaker." Of these thirty-four, but six died violent deaths. Amurath I. was was killed by a Servian the day after vie-" tory over the Servians, on the battle-field itself; Soliman I. was strangled by hj s brother ; Ibrahim was assassinated in prison ; Selim 111. was assassinated in the seraglio; Mustapha IV. was strangled by order of his successor ; and Abdul Aziz was scissored out of existence. Some of these Sultans were famous fellows, as some of tlrem were infamous. Amurath 111. murdered his five brothers, and to propitiate Allah begat 135 children. He died of exhaustion. Mr. Disraeli must have " caused uneasiness to a good many worthy gentlemen in the House of Commons last week, when he made the not very original remark that speeches seldom or never appeared in the papers exactly as they were delivered, The Premier was careful to preface this remark by a compliment intended to soothe any possible susceptibilities of the "gallery." He might surely have saved himself the trouble. No one doubts that the reporters could give a verbatim report of a debate if they chose to do so. What the feelings of the vast majority of members would be when they saw their "hums" and their "haws," their unfinished sentences, and their ungrainmatical conclusions, in all their native ugliness at breakfast next morning, is a subject for

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