PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1900, 3 July 1890, Page 36

PERSONAL NOTES.

Though 89 years of age, Miss Aurora Ensor, of Withycombe, Devon, continues to take a class twice every Sunday. She began teaching when only 14, and can hardly remember missing a Sunday since the school has been opened. Mr Henry Tate, sugar refiner, of London and Liverpool, whose benefaotions have been mo9t munificent, has announced his intention of giving £5000 to London, and a similar sum to Liverpool, towards the promotion in those cities of home nursing of the sick poor. The honourable distinction of being the tallest soldier at the present time in the British army belongs to Private Findlay, Ist Battalion Grenadier Guards, who stands 6ffc 7|in. Hs is run very close by Private Brady —"Jock," as his comrades familiarly call him— of the Scots Guards. He is 6ft 7in. A little time ago the Emperor William put himself on duty for 24 hours in an extemporised guard room within his own garden at Pottsdam, and stood sentry during four spells of two hours each during that time. He woro the uniform of a private soldier, carried a rifle, and ate of the soldiers' ordinary. Mine host of Wastdale Head, the most popular hostelry in the English Lake district—" auld Will Rltson," as he was generally styled— died recently in his 83rd year. He had an unequalled store of reminiscences of the Lake literary brotherhood, and of stories of the dalesmen. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, De Quincey, and Professor Wilson were to him very real and very loveable personages, and for their eminence he was always ready to stand up, a little pleasiug fiction helping out his actual memories if need arose. "Auld Will" will long be remembered" by those who knew him. Sh'eng Tai Yon, the Chinese " Amban," or extraordinary envoy, who has been staying in Calcutta pending the negotiation of the Sikkim-Thibet treaty, is described as taking great interest in theatrical performances, exhibiting much wonderment at the phonograph's power of giving back his own utterances, and stopping his oarriajje on the highway to descend and examine the construction of a trioyole that happened to be passing. Personally he is described as a kindly, amiable, liberal-minded man, whose entire ignorance of the resources of modem science and the necessities of Western civilisation as transplanted to Eastern shores forms a very agreeable trait in an altogether pleasing The gout is no respeoter of persons. It is a true democrat, and attacks all, rich and poor, in these days, though it must be admitted that it reserves its principal hostility for the rich. Lord Portsmouth has been suffering from the attacks of this dreadful enemy all through the winter. It has obliged him to give up hunting and sell the Eggesford pack of hounds. It made Christmas a burden to him, and he has now gone to Bath to be parboiled in the hot baths, rubbed by the ingenious people who are known as masseurs, and to indulge in pint after pint of the rusty warm beverage which is dispensed at so much a glass in the Pump Room, under the very^eye of the statue of Beau Nash. It is to be hoped that the patient will benefit very considerably by his efforts, and that, even if he be not able to hunt, he will soon be about again. Among the flood of Bismarck anecdotes here is one that truly indicates the mingled humour, common-sense, and brutal directness of the man. One morning he went out shooting with a friend. Crossing a field, the friend slipped and foil in a morass, in which the more he moved about the more he sank. " Help me, Count, help me, or I shall die 1 " he cried ; and, in fact, he had sunk almost up to his neck. Bismarck calmly replied, "My good friend, it is impossible ; I shonld die likewise, and this would be of no advantage to you. Rather than see you thus suffer it would be better if I shot you through the hoad." So saying he took aim with his gnn and said, " Keep still, for the love of Goa, or I may miss you 1 " The poor man, terrified, made a lasb effort, and jumped so high that he was saved. Bismarck turning to him saul, " You see, my dear friend, I was right ; you have thus got oufc of the mire without me, a-? I should have been obliged to commit suicide to liberate you." Harvard University, U.S.A., by its president and Faculty, has sent a letter of warm acknowledgment to Mr John Corbett, M.P. for Worcestershire, for his gift to the college library of an old original miniature of George Washington,- that had long been in his remarkable collection of curiosities and bric-a-brac. Mr Corbett, who has during many years been in the House of Commons from Droitwich, is playfully called the King of Salt, and has for some years past owned and managed the salt works at Droitwich, which may be well termed colossal in extent and value. The vast estate is most interesting for its hot salt baths, to which invalids resort in such numbers that the extensive, hotels, which Mr Corbett owns, are always full. Another great feature of the place is the M.P.'s own extensive mansion, with ita wealth of paintings by old roasters, its choice conservatories and fruit houses, from which, whenever its owner is absent— and from ill* health he is often in the South of France— the hospitals revel as it were in rare fIQWW. poshes, gwpQs, «$ tta Uk«, -