NEWS AND NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2692, 18 October 1905, Page 40

NEWS AND NOTES.

There has just died at Yarinsk, in Vo- ' logda, Mikhail Stepanoff, the vainest man in the world. Stepanoff, although nearly 90 years of age, was a dandy until the day of his death. He delighted in the company of young ladies, read all the fashion papers sent direct to him from Paris, London, Berlin, and New York, and maintained a tailor of his own, who was employed all the year round in inventing for him new creations. It was popularly believed that this Russian Anglesey was only half human. He wore artificial' teeth, of which he had 365 sets, and he changed the colour of his hair whenever fashion demanded it. Even his legs were made to order, for it was one of his weaknesses to wear knee breeches, which admirably set off a pair of shapely calves, modelled for him by a "physical culture school " in New York. By his will Stepanoff left the sum of 400,000 roubles "to found a school of Physical Beauty for Aged Gentlemen." 'To his son, who is a solicitor in Moscow, he bequeathed only his collection of false teeth, "My son has insulted me often," ran a passage in the dead man's last testament. " I leave him my collection of false teeth, in the hope that they may induce him to chew his false words." As the result of an unlucky spell of management at one of the Strand theatres, Mrs Brown-Potter's freehold property. East Lodge, Kent, and furniture were offered at auction on June 30 and July 1. East Lodge Ayas bought in at £8900. Among the curiosities sold at the furniture sale was a fine old Chinese four-leaf screen, with boldly-designed panels of landscape and river scenery, representing various phases of Chinese life, presented to Mrs Brown-Potter by Li Hung Chang, knocked down for £14. A set of seven old Spanish chairs £22. A seven-octave trichord boudoir grand piano was knocked down for £45. An antique mahogany settee fetched £17 10s. For it rfie bidding was spirited, as it has a brass plaie on which is inscribed, "Rout seat from the Bath Assembly Rooms, 1771— 1899." Mrs Brown-Potter's gramophone, with 95 records, fetched £11. A full-length portrait of Mrs Brown-Potter, in the role of Miladi in "The Three Musketeers," by Mr John Collier, painted in 1899, and- exhibited at the Graftbn Gallery, 1900, was 'eagerly competed for, but bought by Mr Arthur Aldridge for Mrs Brown-Potter's mother for £75. The total proceeds of the furniture, carriages, horses, etc., amounted to £3000. Ten of the leading insurance companies of Ghicago taking 'life risks have (says the Chicago correspondent of the Telegraph) agreed to revise their mortality tables " in favour of big, active, muscular men, as against fat and spare men. The change In premium rates based on this discrimination is not confined to Chicago, but is really a national movement, inspired by the medical examiners of life insurance companies. According to the old mortality averages, lean men were preferred by a majority of the companies, but two decades of collecting statistics on the general average ct life have induced the examiners to favour heavy, active men to the discredit of tho ordinarily fat men, and leave lean men in a, state of doubt. The figures now available undoubtedly show that lean men are nervous, worry too much, and get tuberculosis. ,