PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2175, 31 October 1895, Page 46

PERSONAL NOTES.

■ . • Edison is very fond of children. He deligats to show them the wonders of his workshops and to mystify them with his magic. To them he is the real wizard he is so often called.

• . • From the statement in bankruptcy of Oicar Wilde's affairs it appears that since July 1893 he has received about £4.000 in royalties for his plays. • . • The Right Hon. 0. P. Villiers, M P., the " Father of the House," who at 93 is still representing Wolvorhampton in Parliament, is one of the cleverest whist players in London.

• . • Miss Pauline Johnson, who has just brought out a book of poems, " The White Wampum," is of Red Indian stock. She is the daughter of the late chief Johnson, head of the Mohawks, and her grandfather led his tribe against the attack of the Six Nations in 1812.

• , • Max O'R'II, not content with the extra ordinary tucocss he ha 3 er.count-red both as a writer and a lecturer, ia about to compete with the playwrights. A comedy from his pen will be produced in Canada and the States in a month or two, and Mr Daly has requisitioned a play for his company. 1 , ■ The Sultan of Turkey, who delights in ceramic arfc, has a fine china manufactory attached to his palace at Constantinople, in which he has installed Frenoh potters, modellers, and decorators who bad b&ea &x-

gaged at Limoges. They first produce Email pieces, but have now advanced to table services and splendid vases, six of which were offered aa a present to tbe Czar of Russia. • . • Mr William Waldorf Astor, tho Anglicised American millionaire, is inolined to bo rather a r«clnse tha^a sooiety man. He rarely returns call?, although visitors to hia beautiful riparian abode and to his homo in town are always sure of a kind reception. Ha is at present having an. immense well 9ffc high built round a considerable portion of his Cliveden estate.

• . • Dr John Hall, the well-known Presbyterian minister of New York, ia generally reputed to be by far the wealthiest clergyman in the world. Hia congregation is largely made op of millionaires and wealthy city men, and it has been said that be receives altogether as muoh as £20,000 a year.

* . • Cinquovalli, the greatest juggler living, pays Cjsboll's Saturday, whilst tit-ting at the piano cm follow and play anything whistled by a person standing behind him, dictate a letter to his secretary, and listen to a coovergation (which he will afterwards repeat) between other persons ia the room. Again, he will do one of his feats of balancing and play a difficult pieca of musio ou the piano as though such combinations wero the simplest trifles in the world. • . • Mr Pope, the leader of the Parliamentary Bar, is excused by committees from standing while conducing a ense. He sits on an air cuahion ; and sometimes he uses a fan. His weight is enormous ; yet ho gets through au extraordinary amount of work, for which tho teetotallers give part of the credit to his abstinence from intoxicant!. Afc the end of tho day the great parliamentary counsel is wheeled in a chair along the corridors to the ladies' lift, and from the lifb he gets into a four-wheeler. • . • Khama, the African chief who ia now on his way to England, is a favourite of the missionariep, and during his visit to Great Britain they may be exptc"«d to produce him as witness of the change that Christianity can make in a black man. He is ona of the African converts who have acted up to the religious teaching. He stopped the Spartan practice in his country of destroying weak and deformed children, forbade the burying of a living baby with ita mother, and denied the right of a man to kill his wife in a qaarrel. This last feat shows that ho has carried civilisation very far indeed.

• . • The oldest of the actirg officials at the House of Commons now is Mr Jennirg*, the whit c-li aired and very handsome old gentleman who acts as chief doorkeeper. He ifl the personal friend of many M.P.'s on both sides, and is as impartial in politics as the Speaker or the Chairman of Committee*. Mr J<rnnii:g? has known intimately upwards ofadcz-n Prime Milliters in his day and was an official in the ohl House of Commons more than half a century ago. He is foil of anecdotes, and is a profound believer in tho virtue* of snuff.

'.• Mrs Frascr, the widow of tha late Biebop of M"nche»ter, who died recently, was interred at Ufton Nervet, tha Rev. Canon Cornish, vicar of Utton, and tbe Rev. Dr Cluae, prlnoipal of Bs. Mary's H«ll, OxforJ, officiating. The good body left behind a large fortune, aod, aftar a number of legacies to friends and relations, she has bequeath id nearly £40,000 to various rslfgicns and philanthropic sooieiio3 and educational inetitu'ionß.

• . • When the late Professor Huxley was serving on a R>yal OommisMon on Trawßng he visited Aberdeen. Sme of tho wKntssss declared that trawling destroyed the eggs of fish attached to t'ro rocks and land at the sea bottom. Huxley told them that many of our food fi-ibes deposit thoir epgfl in the water, where they float about 'till batched. To this there was a clamour of opposition, one old fisherman tolling the savant that 11 when be saw the birds building thdc nests in the air ho might cro out looking for rLshspawn floating in the sea." • . • Professor J. P. Hartmann, the famous! Danish composer, recently celebrated hia ninetieth birthday, and amoDg the honours paid him wae a personal visit from the King of Denmark, who conferred on him the Grand Cross of Daneborg, set in brilliants. Professor Hartmann was the Princess of Wales'* music tcachfr, and in pplte of hia old age he plays the organ ia the Copenhagen Cathedral and has his class ia the Royal Conservatoire of Ma&io. His songs are extremely popular in his naive land, and his numerous operas and hia ballets have been performed hundreds of times at the Royal Opera in the capital.

The old stage coach London hostelry, tho Eleplmt aud (Jaslle, was in ifs timefamoosas a public resort. Its glories are now gone under the new conditions of life in London, and the Savoy, the Bristol, the Chiuiuf; Cross, snd other palatial hotels replete with luxury and comfort; are very different from the Whi'e L ; on*, lied BuUs, and Ciitcrions of the early years of the present century. Let us picture the bar parlour of the old Elephant and Casfcle, pay. after the battle of Waterloo, where the genius of tha Du'ce of Wellirgfon overthrew, by the aid cf British bajouets and the Prussians ucder Blucher, the great conquerer Napoleon Bonaparte. Burly red-faced farmers from the midlands, toe dapper little keen wheat-bnyer from Mark Lane, the wholesale carcsso butehor, the c?&ilrr in hunters and rcadhteis and others of that ilk, all in harmony threshing out the talk of the day over their ruuga of ale, when in comes the old stago ccachman after a long journey. Not b«ing gifted with much conversational powera and with a consciousness of inferiority in this respect, he tskes up the newspaper as an excuse for silence notwithstanding the difficulty that he was unable to read. In fchoso days tbe mail coach was pictured in an illustration, and 6be paper beiDg held up*ide down, it is eisy to understand the horror of tho old coachman, who exclaimed, "Here's a big accident, % coach capsized," and the roar of the delighted company when they learned tfce nature of that capeizo. How different i 3 convivial life now to fcbofia ol'l times. Instead of tho lorn churchwarden piprs kg have (ho beautiful and fragrant Vauifcy Fair Cif,arttte, tho perfection cf quality and the soolcec of worried humanity.

— " Tell me honestly," said the novel reader to the novel writer, " did yon ever see a woman who stood and tapped tbe floor impatiently with her toe for several moments, aB you describe f " " Ye?," was the thoughtful reply, " I did once." " Who was shflj'^ " She was a olog-dancct,