PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2660, 8 March 1905, Page 86

PERSONAL NOTES.

— Lord Longford, who recently refused to snll his Longford property, " boch urban and rural, ' is the fiLth Earl, and succeeded to the title in 1887, when he was 25 and a bachelor. Tho year following his marriage, 1899, he served, with other adventurous spirits, in the In=h Yeomanry in South Africa, where befell him the "interesting" experience of being taken prisoner. There were few more popular officers with their men than he, and when, with their hard marching and fighting, the uniforms of his men hung in tatteis upon thorn, it 1-, remembered that on one occasion he exhorted them as follows : —"You write your cheques and I'll endorse them ; then you can get new rig-outs." — -Mr Whitelaw Reid, who succeeds -Mr Choatc as Amoricar Ambassador in London, ov. ns a palace in Upper Madison avenue, which is p-enerally admitted to be the purest specimen of Italian architecture in America. Six city lots made way for it. It cost £600,000. So historically correct i.re the red tapestry furniture and embroidered' hangings m the drawing room that they suggest the Tuileries or Versailles. Conspicuous in this chamber on a Numidian marble pedestal is a blue Sevres vase, leputed to be the largest in existence outside a museum. It was presented to Mr Reid by the French Government. Mr Reid =erved in the Civil War, and he, m tiw seventies, succeeded Horace Greeley m the editorship of the New York Tribune. I>he life-story of Lord 1 Masham, to whom New Year's Day brought his ninetieth birthday, is one of the most remarkable in the annals of indxistnal romance. He was intended for the. Church, but instead of taking his university course ne found a stool in a merchant's office in Liverpool. He- became at 21 a partner with his brother, John Cunliffe Lister, as a stunner and manufacturer. Ttie great problem in the worsted trade in iho=e cays (as the St. James's Gazette reminds us) was that of wool-combing, which was done by hand. Young Samuel Lister and Mr Domsthorpe, of Leicester, tackled the task of replacing handwork by machine work, and suceer-sfully accomplished it after mnmy failure, and Mr Lister became the worsted kinc Later on he came across a heap of rubbish in a London warehouse, and was informed That it was silk waste. He bought all there was of it, took the rubbish to Manninsham, invented new machinery, and converted it into beautiful fabrics. He also devised a new method of manufacturing velvets and plushes. To-day he is a millionaire three or four times over. — Ths O'Conor Don, who is disposing of his estate at Clonalis and Ballingare, County Roscommon. to his tenants under the New Purchase Act, is perhaps the landlord whose family can boast the longest tenure in Ireland. The Right Hon. Charles Owen O'Conor, member of the- Privy Council and H.M.s Lieutenant for County Ros-

common, is the representative fo-day of

tho Kings of Connaxight, and can trace an unbroken descent from ths last of that line. King Roderick O'Conor it was who made submission to King Henry II in 1175. and whose son Hugh kicked over the Saxon traces and forfeited the nice new barony

which had been bestowed upon his father,

The late O' Conor Don, father of the present, was the fltst Roman Catholic to sit for Boscommon since the Reformation, and

in that seat his son succeeded him, holding

Ib for 20 years— from 1860 to 1880— when the Parnell movement drove him and other fine old Irish gentlemen into private life. la those earlier days he was the means of passing several useful pieces of legislation for Ireland, and he has served on quite a number ot Commissions. He has written the history of his kingly ancestors under the title of a "History of tho O'Oouors of Connaught," and doubtless in virtue of his royal descent h© carried the Irish Standard at the King's Coronation. — Mr Wingfield Digby, M.P., whose death

hac caused a deep feeling in Dorsetshire. was not, perhaps, a striking figure in our Parliamentary life, but he was undeniably a responsible and respectable figure. Perhaps he was a little out of harmony with th© trend of modern Parliamentary life. Its jostling rivalries, its ambitions, the prospect of the rule of parties being succeeded by the scheming of sections and segments — all this was repellent to him. He would have Parliament retain a somnolent life of dignity, with every man obedient to his party whips, a.nd) the divisions representing the formal official opinion. A man of considerable natural ability and of «ight instincts, Mr "Wingfield Digby did not care to assert himself under the changed conditions of the House, His sympathies, however, were entirely agrarian, and J:he weal of agriculture was one of his first purposes. Agriculture was to him the first natural interest of Great Britain, and Parliament ought, iji his view, to have thrown over it a more friendly aegis. This alone is sufficient to explain th© unwonted enthusiasm — unwonted for him — which he imparted into Ills advocacy of such measures as the Rating Act. The absence of men like Mr Wingfield Digby from St. Stephen's means a loss to its dignity and character. He was a fitting representative of a county whioh has given to parliamentary history so many estimable Portmans and so many admirable Glyns. — Pierre Loti, otherwise Captain Viaud, of the French guardship at Constantinople, who is so seriously ill, has long been a puzzle to his friends in the matter of his, religious faith. When a man builds a mosque and treats it as his holy of holies, never to be» penetrated by a stranger, and when he spends hours therein in meditation and prayer, one is justified in assuming that he is a Mohammedan. It is said, however, that Pierre- Loti has never made any foimal coiife«s ; on of faith. The mosque which he built is at his French home at Rochofort, and is paved entiicly with pink and white marble. A gold and blue mosaic covers the walls, and on all sides are- to be seen cosily carpets and stuftV. Adjoining the mosque are a Turkish d'-aw-

ing room and a

Turkish bo J room, perfect

|in every detail. Loti himself is a straiijie fe^>mpound of dreamer and man of action. fst«^ j s o f ] l i m |] iat . j 7<¥ was on0l « Seized with a dpsire to show his prowess as an athlete, to tho public, Tinkno-n n to ihei.i. H=> was at Toulon at the time, and approached the proprietor of a travelling circus to give him the needed opportunity. That evening- {here was seen in the sawdust of the ring beneath a canvas tent an nnX known acrobat, who performed upon bar

and trapeze with remarkable ability and skill, and who, moreover, exhibited a trained black poodle. It was Loti and hi-, dog, and the author has since been heard to "declare of the day on which he received tiie plaudits of that provincial audience that it was the day of his greatest rriumph.