PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1950, 4 April 1889, Page 34

PERSONAL NOTES.

Count Moltke celebrated the 70th anniversary of his service as a soldier on the Bth of March. Franz George Schreiber, the man who made the first photograph ever produced in the -United States, is still living in Philadelphia hale and hearty at 86. Mr Frith, K,A. f writing to a fiiend under ! date the 9th of January, says : " To-day is my birthday. I have arrived at the allotted span, bub ' there's life in the old dog yet.' " The Rev. 'John Pius Prendergast, for several years priest of the Roman Catholic Church of St. Pancras, Lewes, fell dead recently, at Southover, while on his way to visit one of his congregation. Mr Mackay, the silver king, it is said contemplates endowing a college 'as a per petual memorial of his name, and as a thanks offering to the Providence which made him so rich. John G. Whittier, who celebrated his 81st * birthday recently has an engrav-

ing of the late Emperor Frederick of Germany over the mantel of his study, and says of him: — "He was a good man; I'm sorry he died. The world can't afford to spare such men." I William Leatham Bright, eldest son of the late John Bright, is an M.P., a Liberal, and unlike his father, a pronounced Home Kuler. "Will "Bright is very clever. He recently made his first speech in the House. It was i a little one, but quite good. The young man has plenty of wit. ' * j Prince Bismarck, like Lord Beaconsfield, has no liking for professors.. The English statesman was content to sneer at them — , to jibe at the wildness of one and the muddleheadedness of another. Prince Bismarck has not scrupled to drag JVirchow and Mommsen I — in their departments probably the two most j eminentmen in Europe,— before.police-courts !It is as though Lord Beaconsfield should i have had Mr Gold win Smith up at Bow street, or Mr Gladstone should take out a warrant against Professor'Tyndall.— World. No Minister who has ever left power will relinquish his portfolio with* greater delight than M. De Giers, who has been dying to retire for the last 12 month's, and has been filling the salons at St. Petersburg with bis lamentations that he is kept in office. The Count, who is a most delightful man, is a great friend of Germany ; and as the Czar is not very much in love with that country, there have been some very awkward corners to turn of late. Mdlle Bottard, a venerable nurse, has recently received the special distinction of the pahrtes academiques from the French Government. This lady, aged 66, entered the Salpetriere in 1840, and has never taken a holiday, still remaining at t-he same hospital under M. Oharcot. In 1849 she had to labour amongst the lunatics stricken with cholera ; three of the medical staff, as well as tho apothecary and the director, died of the epidemic. Mdlle Bottard again faced two fresh outbreaks of the same disease in 1854 and 1865 ; and in 1670 malignant smallpox broke out in her hospital. In. a recent lecture William Blaikie, author of " How to Get Strong," contrasted Thomas A. Edison and John Ericsson, both inventors, the one 42 years of age, the other just double that age. Edison never takes any exercise, and breathes comparatively little fresh air ; Ericsson has a gymnasium fitted up in his house, and takes regular exercise every day. Edison is almost totally deaf, is pale of face, and stoops. Ericsson has all his organs in their early perfection, is ruddy of face, and straight as an arrow. Only recently, in a trial of strength, he outstripped two young men in their twenties. Moral : Early to bed and early to rise, with a regular course of exercise. The late Mr Bright has been seen to hold an audience spellbound on a cold January night, with fog and frost abroad, but the men and women of the vast auditory had left their coughs at the door. They were by no means so comfortable as the occupants of pews; they were jambed against one another like sardines in a tin ; but the magic of genius grasped them fast, and not a cough, a murmer, or a sound escaped them. In our theatres also, when Henry Irving or Ellen Terry is acting, the gallery , would halfstrangle acybody who dared to cough, and nobody feels inclined thus to disturb the per« formance. — Telegraph. Mr Gladstone is a generous liver, and the pleasures of the table count for something in the menage Gladstone. Breakfast at 7 an informal luncheon at 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and dinner at 8 include the many and various good things affected by the ex-Pre,mier, who, although moderate in all things, is not a total abstrainer, and enjoys a glass of bitter beer at the lunch hour, and claret and port for dinner. When making a speech, the Grand Old Man fortifies himself by one or two draughts of a " fillip," which is carefully compounded by Mrs Gladstone of the best of sherry and a new laid 6gg, The Eev. David Dickie, of Glasgow, has the same objection to a coughing congregation that a public singer feels to an audience that comes in, or goes out, in the middle of his crack solo. The other Sunday this Scottish parson was preaching at the parish church of St. Luke, and his eloqueenc was much interrupted by bursts of noisy coughing from those who sat under him. At last he exclaimed : " I consider it time this should cease ; you had far better have stayed at home in your beds than come here to disturb everybody else. It is too aggravating for a minister to have to stand up and try and make himself heard against all this disgraceful coughing !"