HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2924, 30 March 1910, Page 82

HERE AND THERE.

Lord Rosebery and School Boys.— Lord Rosebery recently delivered an interesting brief address to the Higher School boys of Edinburgh on • life and deariy bought experience and on the healthy mind in the healthy body. " I suppose," he said, " that between the oldest of you and myself some five and forty years intervene. Looking back on tnat period one reviews it with the sense of one's own great shortcomings, one's waste of time, of one's opportunities missed/ The best of men cannot have felt any complete satisfaction on reviewing his career. The most costly thing in the world is what we are all willing to give to those who are younger and what our juniors never accept, but throw away jn a ditch as soon as they receive it, as if it were destitute of all value—and that is experience. W T e all buy our experience very dear—with pain, with anguish, sometimes with our Heart's blood —and yet when we try to give it to those who are younger than ourselves they treat it with neglect and with contempt, and they go into this world resolved to buy their own experience themselves. I therefore will not offer you my experience, because,, as I say, you Would reject it. But there is a great phrase which has come down from the ancients which embodies, I think, all that a Boy at school ought to wish to be—putting religion aside. A healthy mind in a healthy body—that is almost the secret of happiness at school, and after school. You can only get that healthy mind in .a .Healthy body by working both, not by shuffling either at sports or at work, but by throwing your best heart and best energies into both, and in that way you will not turn out sneaks oi drift into the region of the unemployed. I don't mean those who walk the streets, because there are unemployed in every sphere of life." The Outlook (New York) publishes the following translations from a German paper of sentences that hang in the workroom of the Kaiser, so arranged that his Majesty has them always before him when sitting at his desk : Be strong in pain. . To wish for anything that is unattainable is worthless. Be content with the day as it is; look for the good in everything. Rejoice in Nature and people, and take them as they are. For a thousand bitter hours, console yourself with one that is beautiful. Give from your heart and mind always the best, even if yoii do not receive thanks. He who can learn and practice this is indeed a happy, free and proud one; his life will a'ways be beautiful. He who is mistrusting wrongs others and harms himself. It is our duty to believe every one to be good as long as we have not the. proof to the contrary; the world is so large and we ourselves so small that everything cannot around us. If something damages us, hurts us, who can tell' if that is not necessary to the welfare of creation? In everything of this world, whether dead or alive, lives the mighty, wise will Of the almighty and all-knowing Creator; we little' people only lack the reason to comprehend it. ' As everything is, so it has to be in this world, and however it may be, should alwa.ys seern good to the mind o{ the creature. Pie-eating Contest.— American newspapers to-day (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on January 28) describe a greafc pie-eating contest for the championship of the State of New Jersey. In the United States pie is a national dish, and the machine-made variety with which the competitors have to struggle consists of a layer of pastry about a quarter of an inch thick, overspread with canned fruit, preserved with" benzoate soda, the average weight being J,lb. It is not a particularly digestible dish, and partly explains why Americans as a race are very frequently inclined to dyspepsia.■■: "Amid enthusiasm," we read, " thirty-five young men, trained to the minute, entered the contest for the championship. The State record of 26 pies in half an hour fell during the battle. Walter Tappin. of Tiioomfield, New Jersey, was the winner. He managed to put himself on the outside of 27 pies in the allotted time. Besides the hoTxmre which go- with the title, he receives the championship '.-belt and a five-dollar gold piece. 'Tappiri, after the victory; declared himself-willing to sign articles with any opponent on three months' notice. Second honours went to John Wirithrop, who disposed of 22 pies. For a long time at the start of the. race he was leading by three mouthfuls, and he explains his defeat by the fact that when nis face'' slipped ' on

No. 17 he changed by mistake from peach to mince solvester. Pollit, la»«- -'ear's winner, was third. He declared, vhUe being led from the arena by friends, he was satisfied to have been able to-even enter the contest, and not let the' title go by default. More than 300 enthusiasts witnessed the competition. Tappin is hot only the premier pie-eater of New Jersey", but has beaten tne records in several other New Jersey pastimes, sucl as oysteropem'ng and wood-chopping. - —Kind to a Cripple.— A letter from an Indiama attorney apprising her that she had fallen heir to a fortune of about 25,000 dollars has caused Miss Emma B. Alexander, of No. 110 North Sixteenth street, Philadelphia, a manicure, to cease work, and bask in the dreams of a. coming luxury. "One night, just before Christmas, four years ago," she said, "I was leaving a department store in which I was then employed, when I saw a m,an with a cane alighting from a car. He was plainly a cripple, and I ran over and helped him and then walked with him to the sidewalk.- He said he was on his way to the Reading Terminal, and I piloted him. through the holiday crowd to the station. Just before leaving me he asked me my name and address, and a few days later I received a letter from him, dated Ne-R York. I replied,, and for two years we kept up a correspondence. He told me that his name,was Frank Dayton, that he lived in Plymouth, Ind., and. that he was a cattle dealer, and had ranches in Arizona. A few weeks ago he wrote me that he was quite ill, and in subsequent letters said that he doubted that he would survive. His illness, he said, was due to his old injury 7. He said he expected-to remember me for the kind act I had done 'our years ago. Last Monday I received a letter, signed by William F. Bates, \an attorney of Plymouth, Ind. It told me that Mr Dayton, who had died, had bequeathed ine a large part of his estate. A sum of money between 20,000. dollars and 25,000, dollars and property, in Plymouth, it said, was stipulated."

—Women Die to Save Men.—

A despatch dated Williamstown, W. Va., says:—Firing a- a sheriff's posse to give two men time'to escape, Mrs Chas. Daniels and her daughter were shot to death in the doorway of their home near Devon to-day by the sheriff's aids. The men are the husband' of Mrs Daniels and Ins brother. The shooting grew out of a family feud between the Christians and Danielses on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia,. The Christians- lived in Mingo county, West Virginia, and the Dandelses in Pike. county, Kentucky. About, three weeks ago George Christian ventured to the Kentucky side, and was sla.in oy Jim Daniels. Christian and Daniels were brothers-in-law, and formerly had been allies. After the death of Christian the two families and their friends became involved. The Christians got warrants for Jim Daniels and his brother Charles, and led a posse, of Pike county officers to the home of Jie Daniels family.. When the officers approached the house Mrs Daniels and her daughter opened fire with "rifles. One of the posse members was shot in the arm. The Christians fired, and after Mrs Daniels was shot her sixteen-year-old daughter stood over her body, and fired upon the posse until she dropped dead, pierced by three bullets. The officers closed in, but found that by forfeiting their lives the mother and daughter had enabled the men to escape.

—The Assistant Editor's Chair.—

A despatch from Winsted, Conn., dated December 28, says:—Lydia Todd is married. Everybody knew she would be as soon as she got a job as assistant editor on the Thomaston Weekly Express (Frank Etheridge editor and publisher). There are only three chairs in the sanctum of the Weekly Express—the editor's chah-, the chair that guests sit in when they come in to ask the editor if he would not rather have cabbage instead of real money for last year's subscription, and the magic matrimonial chair. Eiheridige cannot keep an assistant editor because of the spell that chair throws over them. Seven occupants of. it have up and married within three years. It is an armchair, with arms that fit close round the waist, and has a nice back cushion with a picture of a man handing flowers oyer a wall to a girl. The editor-in-chief did not suspect the chair at first. He thought that his troubles we;'e due to the fact that the assistant editor always had to read th« spring poetry and the verses about love that were contributed by Thomaston poets. But one week the editor broke his own chair by falling on the back of it suddenly when an old subscriber came in to pay for three years in tdvance. As there was a vacancy in the assistant editorship, due to a recent marriage, Etheridge too]-: the vacant chair while his was being repaired. He had not sat in it three davs before he went and got married himself. Then he knew what the trouble was, and wrote a, piece for his own paper about the chair. Ever since the story of the chair became known many maids in Thomaston have been standing in line, waiting for the next vacancy. Miss Todd, the latst assistant editor, went to New York on Christmas Day, and was married in the " Little Church Around the Corner" to William B. St. John, a foreman in the cloak factory in Thomaston. —Anecdote of Bismarck.— Some anecdotes as to the manner in which Prince Bismarck, when stationed afc St.- in 1859 a,s Prussian ambassador, grappled, with the Russian language are told in an. interesting article in Nord nnid Sued. The ambassador began, bytakinig; two.:: lessons a week, early in the 'morning; from a young student, and for some time pretended to stand in constant fear of' '' putting his tongue out of joint'' with the jumble of consonants and sibilants. This difficulty overcome, his pro-

gress was very rapid, his marvellous memory being a powerful ally t< his determination to learn the language. One of the first works of Russian modern literature which the pupil jndertook to translate was Turgeiiieffs famous novel "A Xobleman's Nest," which had quite recently been published. The Emperor Alexander 11, shortly after Bismarck's arrival, turning to the latter at a luncheon party at the Imperial Palace, suddenly asked "in Russian, "Do you understand Russian?'' and Bismarck coolly replied, " A little, ' your Majesty, if it is not spoken too fast." And when it appeared that the ambassador had been instructed only four months, the Czar paid him the highest compliments on his great linguistic achievement. —Caruso's Thi*oat.; — Caruso's throat (.says the Milan corre** spondent of the Daily Telegraph on February 3) has just escaped being the sub-: ject of litigation. After the extremely-.de-licate operation to which the celebrated 1 a,rtist submitted his vocal chords in Milan some little time ,aigo, Professor delta Vedova presented an account which was truly worthy of his fame as a surgeon and: of the celebrity of the singer. It amounted! to £2OOO. Caruso offered at first and then, as the surgeon persisted in .his, demands, £6OO. There were some attempts' at conciliation by letter and 1 cable messages, but they met with rib success, and at last Professor deila Vedova decided to have recourse to a legal tribunal. Caruso was, in fact, cited to appear before the tribunal of Florence, where he has his Italian domicile. ever, resumed negotiations for a settlement, and it is now announced that the question hae been compromised, the tenoi agreeing to pay £I2OO.