PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2209, 2 July 1896, Page 49

PERSONAL NOTES.

• . ■ It is not generally known that Mrs Gladstone is an organist of no mean merit. • , ; The, rumour is cropping up in the American, . prose . that; Rudyard Kipling is tiring of bis Vermont home, and contemplates returning, to England to live. ••. • Paderewski's little boy, who, as recently described; is a hopeless invalid in Paris, occupies 'himself the greater part of the day in 'the study of , languages. He can speak four fluently, though he is only twelve years old. • . ■• When Henry Arthur Jones is confronted with some speoially perplexing or crucial point in his dramatic work, he rises early and goes for a long ride to some spot where there is perfect solitude and great j natural beauty. Therein he always finds the key to the problem. * . * Marie Oorelli plays well on the mandolin. She is petite, demure, the embodiment of gentleness, and cultured to a fault. She knows Shakespeare by rote, but her mystical tendencies incline her to make a greater favourite of Dante. She was educated in a convent. ••• MrSelous, who has figured so prominently in the stories of the Bulawayo fights and forays, is said to be highly respected by the natives in the risen regions. One story, which it is interesting to recall, is that he has been known throughout South Africa ' as " the man who never told a lie." * . * Mrs Margaret D aland, the well-known authoress, Hveß in what is described as a modern palace on a small soale. The site is Beacon Hill, near Boston, from which she and her husband descend very often on " smart " society. Mrs Deland is a long way on the hither side of 40— nearer to the 30's, in fact. Her husband's hobby is not fiction, but football.. ••• Monslgnor .Nugenfc, so well known throughout - England for his temperance mission, and in Liverpool especially for his labours amongst the destitute and the slums, is at present in California, where he is meeting enthusiastic receptions. Though long past his seventieth year, Monsignor Nugent is still a workful and enterprising personality. ' . * Prince Krapotkin, the Russian revolutionary exile, leads a patriarchal existence among the Kentish labonrers with whom be has made his home. He has- an extreme sense of courtesy, a kindly, thoughtful, bearded faco, a figure bent; with the " literary stoop," and thin, nervous hands. He is occasionally to be met with in the reading room of the British Museum,. - I • . * Mr Hall Came is living a secluded life in the neighbourhood of the Mile End road for the purpose of getting local life and colouring for the new story which waß announced last week as being in preparation. Mr Came has precedent for this method of studying the East-ender as he is. Mr Rudyard Kipling adopted similar tactics before he wrote his " Badalia Herodefoot." ■ . • " Max Adeler " is the only American humourist who voluntarily abandoned the field in the height of his suocees. He suddenly went into hard, practical work, and now edits the " Manufacturer," a Philadelphia organ, in which his high tariff articles are a leading feature. "He has had l long reßt from humour in this kind of work," says an old admirer, dolefully. He is described as still eccentric, but not at all funny. • . * Charles Dudley Warner, the American author, inveighs against the use of the typewriter in original composition. He agues that the wordy and diffuse character of much that is written nowadays points to thiß -kind of manufacture. Until writers have thoroughly acquired the habit of dictation they sacrifice something of the grace of expression that comes with their use of the geft And. iFhea tbta facility in dictation, ia

acquired there is, he adds, the danger of undue prolixity. •«• Colonel William F. Cody (our old friend, " Buffalo Bill ") announces that this is his last season as a showman. He will devote his future years to his paper, the Duluth Press, and his scheme for establishing a model oolony on the Shoshone River in the Big Horn country. A canal 100 miles long will be one feature of the outfit;, and the Colonel's good friends, Messrs Kicking Bear, Short Bull, American- Horse, and Charging Crow are said to be with him heart and soul. But the small boy will miss the Wild West more than words can tell.

■ . • Mrs H. R. Haweis has designed all the covers of her husband's books and her own. She is responsible for 10 herself, ranging over such divergent subjects as Chaucer, housekeeping, and the art of beauty. She is now and then to be met at the Pioneer and the Writers' Clubs, and latterly the Women's Liberal Association has drawn her to its fold.. She likes Chelsea, oa whose Embankment she has, a stylish house. Once on a time she gave some leisure hours to pleasant spins on the harmless and unpioturesque tricycle, but she loves it not now. Her dislike to it is simply on artistic grounds. ■ . * The eldest son of the Hon. Joseph Con-stable-Maxwell Scott and Mrs Scott, of Abbotsford, came of age on "Friday, the 10th April. All Sir Walter's brothers died before him. Miss Annie Scott died at the house of her brother-in-law, John Gibson Lookhart, in Regent's Park, June 25, 1833. Her remains reBC in the New Cemetery, Harrow road. Sophia, who was said most to resembie her father in features and character, was married to Lookhart, and died May 17, 1837. The second son, Charles Scott, died unmarried October 28, 1841. Sir Walter, the eldest son, a lieutenant-colonel in the 15tb Hussars, died on his way home from India, February 8, 1847. He was married, but left no family. Of the three children of Mrs Lockhart (Sophia Scott), "Hugh Littlejohn," to whom the " Tales of a Grandfather " are dedicated, died December 16, 1831. Walter Scott Lockhart, an officer in the army, died at Versailles, January 10, 1853. Charlotte Harriet Jane' Lockhart died at Edinburgh, October 26, 1858. She was married in 1847 to Jamee Robert Hope, barrister, a grandson of the Earl of Hopetoun, by whom she had three ohildren. The only survivor, Mary Monica, born, October 2, 1852, inherited Abbotsford, and assumed the name of Miss Hope-Scott. She married Joseph ConstableMaxwell, brother of Lord Herries, who assumed the name of Scott, and it i 3 their eldest son, Walter- Joseph, who now comes of age. * . * Sutton, the head keeper of the lion house at the Zoologioal Gardens, and a very old servant of the society, has just retired with a pension. He haß been employed for more than 40 years, mainly in the care of the great carhivora, first as keeper of the bears, but for the greater part of his life in the daily management of the laxge /elides. Like many of the Zoo keepers, he was an East Anglian, accustomed when a boy to the care of • domestic animals j but be had acquired unconsciously a " manner" which was specially acceptable to the huge cats among which he' moved. He was quiet, deliberate, and almost Blow, never making a sudden movement or a loud noise. The animals were never hurried or forced to move if not inclined to do so, which no oat, even if it be a tiger, ever forgives, and they were left to -grow tame at their own good pleasure. In the passage behind the dens he received new arrivals, nursed the sick, prepared the food, and controlled the transfer of some 30 lions, leopards, tigers, and jaguars from day to night cages, and from both to the- outdoor runs in summer. It always appeared to the writer that he treated lions, and some male tigers, as if they were dogs ; while all the lionesses, the leopards, pumas, and most tigers were treated as cats. Lionesses he never touched with the band, and leopards, except the snow leopards, very seldom ; but some of -the tigers and the male lions behaved in •■ their dealings with him exactly as if they were domesticated animals.