NEWS AND VIEWS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12243, 6 January 1902, Page 3

NEWS AND VIEWS.

- •*- A circular issued by (he Auckland Kdur.i- | tiun Boan) to school committees and head j teachers, recommends thai the following dates .should he observed as suitable for | tho hoisting of school flags, apart from any j occasion of local inicrc.it which it may he ', decided to ob.-ervo for tlic purpose:—3rd ' January, Commonwealth Day; 28tii .hunt- i ary, Anniversary Day:sth Februarv. Treaty' of Waitangi; 17th March. St. Patrick's Dav; 23rd April, .St. (ieorge's Dav; 2'th May, A'ictoria Day: 3rd Jim.:. Birthday of H.TC.IL the Duke of Cornwall and York: 15th June, Magna Charta signed: Ist July, Dominion Day; 28th August, i<!avrry abolished in British possessions; 12th October. Columbus discovered the New World; 21st October, Battle of Trafalgar, and sailing of first con- i tingcnl for South Africa: 22nd October, Captain Cook landed in Now Zealand; 9th I November, Wrthday ol the King; 30th November,. St. Andrew's Day; 13th Dccemhcr, Abel Tasman discovered New Zealand. J According to a South (Jerman contemporary, one of the liirge hospitals at liio de Janeiro bear, on its front the inscription, | "Humar Vanilj ti Human Misery." in I letters of gold. And the following is tho interpretation thereof. The Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil, who was the friend of the poor mid the suffering, ivishcd to ereel a hospital for the benefit of tho indigent invalids ill the capital of his empire. Hence the public were invited to subscribe to such an institution. But there was hardly any response. Then the Emperor made it known that the title of'"baron" was to be conferred on every subVrikc: of 100,0u'J milreis, and that of ''count" mi evgry subscriber ; of 250,000 milreis. And lo! and behold, a. j: stream of money began to pour into the ■ i coffers of the building fund. The misery of the poor had not touched the wealthy, but tlie appeal to their vanity had not been in vain. The great day of the opening of tho hospital came. Ah enormous crowd was gathered together.' Everybody . was gazing up to the gable of the new building which , was to be "unveiled." When the cover was . | withdrawn the ncvly-madc " aristocracy" j | read their Emperor's estimation of them- , selves ill the inscription. j 51. Victorien Sardou, the celebrated ' French dramatist, was married under the ' most romantic •circumstances. As a young ' man he worked \ind starved in a garret, I and disappointmeht preyed upon hia nerves until he fell ill. A young actress, Mdlle. ' dc Brecourt. took compassion upon him, ' nursed him back to hsalth, and introduced ( I his work to the faints actress Dejazet, :< through whom his work was first acted. | 1 Sardou fell in lovo with and married his i benefactress, whose death, ten years later, i was the one great sorrow of his life. Par- •' dou has made moro monoy than anv other « dramatist, and is probably the only man who ever gave Surah Bernhardt a flaking. , The incident occurred at a rehearsal—a,t a i period when tho divine Sarah was less end- i nent than sho is now. They differed as to I tho way in which a passage should be dc- i claimed; and Sardou, losing his temper, ; seized the actress by the shoulder, and gave f her a shaking. She retorted by slapping his i faco, and afterwards challenged him to a ] duel. (

One of the Princess of Wales's pet charities 16 the Children's Happy Evening Association. While human nature remains human nature the mute appeal which comes from the neglected little ones will be the appeal which will evoke most response from the women who know no lack of this worfirs goods. In the circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising that the members of this association are many of them members also of thn highest ranks of London society. The amusing of the little denizens of the slums is in the hands, not of paid officials, but of cultivated and often brilliant women used to entertaining of the very highest order. Old toys from the royal nurseries find their way to the association, and toys from almost everywhere else go to make the small fry happy. The Princess of Wales has had the association in her mind through her travels, and interesting odds .and ends have l)ccn collected for it in different places. Just before leaving England she presented iho association with a piano. The Countess of Jersey is another active worker in connection with it.

Mr Hall Caine on Ocloher 2 opened a Roman Catholic bazaar in the Palace, Dougla?, Isle of Man. Dean Walsh -introduced Mr Hall Caine, wlie said it was very courageous of the deau to ask hiin on to a Roman Catholic platform; hut it would lib no less courageous of. any Protestant friend to ask him on to a Protestant platform. A book which he had lately published brought him many letters of protest, both from Roman Catholic and Protestant friends. The Protestants complained that it was not Protestant, the Roman Catholics that it was not Catholic; the one speaking of his " Popish seductiveness," uid the other of bis "Protestant bigotry." . . . His Pius X was a- purely imaginary being, owing something, perhaps to Pius IS and fomething to L2O XIII, but not in the least intended as » picture of cither. Some of his non-Catholic friends had remonstrated more in sorrow than in anger. Of all churches, the Roman Catholic Church was the church of the poor. Mr Caine concluded with a tribute to tho parish priests *nd sisters of mercy, who. devoted their lives to Ihe poor. They were true Christian democrats, and the undying flame of their piety uid devotion, in (he midst of persecution and of error, proved that what was Divine in tho Catholic Churck would live for ever.

Queen Alexandra has distinctly stated recently that luprcys arc to be rigidly excluded from her toilette. Our late Queen, taj-6 the Sketch, was no less uncompromising in her attitude towards the wearing of ospreys, and not very long before the end of her reign gave effect, to the suggestion of Lord Wolsqley, then Commander-in-Eliirf, that ostrich feathers be substituted for osprey plumes in the headdress of the Hussars, Royal Artillery, and rifle regiJncnte. Officers already possessed of osprey feathers may wear them till the end of this year, but after the dale of the order officers getting new pinnies were required to provide themselves with plumes of ostrich feathers. Is it not surprising that with the example of the highest lady in the land, and the persistent outcry of the Humanitarian League, so tuany women will persis'. in wearing these lovely but melancholy little plumes? They cannot plead ignorance of tiie cruelty practised in obtaining them, (or everyone must know by this time that m getting the feathers the bird is killed, and generally a nest of young ones left to die for want of the parent's care.

If an Englishman wishes to ?ee himself is others see him, he enn do so by reading in article in tho October "Blackwood's," R-hich deals with the Cliineso diary of Kno Sling t'ao, a distinguished mandarin, who :amo to London with the apology exacted in 1875 for the murder of Mr Marsary, of the British Consular service:—"When Kuo Sung fao," .-.ays tlio writer in "Blackwood's," "turns to the social relationships, he finds that modern extravagance is a serious impediment in the way of marriage, which, as a true Sonfueianist, he consideres

should lie the first object of every human hoing. He tells his countrymen—hut he does not give us his authority—that an English lady spends ten times as much as a man. A single dress, he affirms, costs £10— a singularly modest estimate; the situation is aggravated by the fact that it is never I worn more than twice. He is shocked at | the idea that, what with entertaining, car- ■ nages. and horses, and household expenses, : a lady gels through over £100 a week. The refill is that young ladies are obliged . to reject tvery suitor who has not a long purse, and men are compelled to think twice before they make themselves responsible for the debts of these extravagant but attractive partners. Young ladies, wo learn from him, leave match-making to their parents until they reach the ago of 20, after which they -jlioo-e their husbands for themselves with a free hand and a light heart." | Sir Edward Seymour, the hero of (he famous march to the relief of Pelting from •lidiit, was (says the Literary World) the guest of the Authors' Club on October 24. . Sir Edward is a tall, slight, wiry man, with a very intellectual expression on a face on j which infinito endurance and long exposure , to the fierce suns of tho East are written large. One of the most interesting points m his speech was the emphasis with which I he declared his pleasure at the presence of the literary men who accompanied him during his recent command in China, which is in very marked contrast to Lord Kitc'ueiicr's remarks upon the same subject. Sir Edward naturally did not say much upon professional matters, but ho pointed out that our chief difficulty in keeping up a fleet equal to any possible combination of two foreign fleets lay in the fact that ships nowadays became so rapidly obsolete. "The Victory of Trafalgar, he said, "was 41 years old, , and yet everyone considered her one of the I most formidable vessels in tlic battle. Nowadays a ship is old-fashioned in 10 years, anil obsolete in 20. We havo to face this problem, that our enormous fleet to-day means an enormous lot of obsolete ships in 10 to 20 years time. Tf iU Octave Uzonne ho a true prohpet, evolution in things feminine will move, not : by degrees, but by remarkable bounds, he- | ttveen the present year and 1920. In 1920 says M. Octave Uzanne, the "feminine prejudice, _ which causes ladies, except, of (course ,„ ballets "to object to displaying tho calves of their legs," will have become entirely extinct. "Rational dress," as advocated by extremists, will not, however, prevail. _ The kmckerbrocker will not oust the petticoat, but the latter will never fall below tho knee. On the other hand, the present clinging skirt will ho abolished, and dresses will grow fuller in width as they decrease m length. M. Uzanne believes that these revolutions in costuina will bo promoted by hygienic considerations. He is a violent opponent of the long skirt, on the score of its being a microbe collecting and distributing agent. ■ The singular ornament of an owl at bow and stem 0 r Mr James Gordon Bennett's magnificent new steam yacht Lysistrata will not strike tlioso who know that his fetish is an owl as strange. On his famous old yacht Aainouna one saw owls everywhere— stuffed, plaster, marble, silver, broiiz» wooden owls, of all sizes, and in evory position. Owls peered into the salt-cellars on the dinner table, formed pepper-boxes, seals, handles to walking canes, fire irons, paper knives, perched on the bach of chairs, and so forth. It is the same at his delightful entresol in the Champs Elysees.— Daily Mail. ■ - • For the past four years a sensation has been created in American religious circles by the missions of Jack Cooke, the Boy Jwangelist. Of English extraction, the youth has lived for some years in America, and has como to bo acknowledged as a powerful evangelist both in tho United States and in Canada. The American nress has reported his services at great length, and asks: " Has Moody's mantle fallen up his shoulders?" Immense crowds have everywhere followed him, and many hundreds profess to have received spiritual help from him. The youth is at present engaged in a mission throughout the United Kingdom, accompanied bv the Rev. J. R. Coiittß, an accredited American Baptist minister.

Sir Wilfrid Lawson says he never received a knock-down blow till, csnying a labourer walking along with the old familiar black bottle protruding from his pocket, he entered into conversation with him, and pointed out Iho misery that had resulted from the bottle, and earnestly exhorted tho man to flee from its contents. The man, was so.overcome that he emptied the bottle in the road, and Sir Wilfred, beaming with pleasure, handed him sixpence, saying, "Take that; it will buy you something better." The man took it, and straightway entered a publichousc and spent it on beer. His bottle had contained cold tea!