HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 82

HERE AND THERE.

—A Painter on the Tramp.—

In his " Pre-aphaelite Reminiscences" in Harper's,' Mr Ford Mark Hueffer tells some stories of a painter whom he calls " P." This painter's indigence was remarkable, but his talents are now conskseiably recognised. He " had a. chance cl U commission to make illustrations for a guidebook dealing with Wales; but, being without the necessary means of paying for his travels applied to Madox Brown for a loan. Madox Brown produced the money, and then decided to accompany his friend. They arrived upon a given morning, toward 2 o'clock, in looaie Welsh watering-place, having walked through the day and a greater part of the night with their knapsacks on their backs. They were unable to rouse anybody at the inn; there was not a soul in the streets; there was nothing but a Ion,? esplanade, with houses whose windows gave on to the ground. "Well, I'm going to have a sleep," "P." said. "But that is impossible," Madox Brown answered. "Not at all," "P." rejoined with a happy confidence, and pulling his knapsack round his body, he produced his palette-knife. With this in his hand, to the horror of Madox Brown, he approached the drawing room window of one of the lodging-houses. He slipped the knife through the crack, pushed back the catch, opened the window, and got in, followed eventually by his more timid companion. Having locked the door from the inside to prevent intrusion, they lay down upon the sofa and on chairs, and proceeded to sleep till a reasonable hour, when they got out of the window once more, closed it, and went on their way! On the next night they appeared to be in an almost similar danger of bedlessness. They arrived at a small village which contained only one inn, and that was filled withra large concourse of Welshspeaking people. The landlord, speaking rather broken English, told them that they could not have a room or a bed. There was a room with two beds in it, but they could not have it. This enraged Mr P. beyond description. Having consulted with his Welsh friends, however, the host afterwards made signs to them that they could have the room in an hour. In an hour, accordingly, they were ushered into a room which contained a large and comfortable double bed. Mr P. undressed and retired. Madox Brown similarly undressed, and was about to step into bed, when he placed his, bare foot upon something of an exceedingly ghastly coldness. He gave a cry, which roused Mr P. Mr P. sprang from the bed, and, bending down, caught hold of a man's hand. He proceeded.to drag out the man, who displayed a throat cut from ear to ear. "Oh, is that all?" Mr P. said, and having shoved the corpse under the bed he retired upon it, and slept tranquilly above the suicide. Madox Brown passed the night in the coffee room.

—Curious Requests in Wills. Mr Albert C. Freeman, in a new edition of his "Antiquity of Cremation and Curious Funeral Customs" (Undertakers' Journal offices), tells of some stramge requests made by different persons in con-

nection with the disposal of their remains. Mr Solomon Goldschmidt,. a rich Jewish merchant of Frankfort and London, who died in 1906, directed that before his body should be placed in a coffin his heart should be pierced and his aorta severed ; them that his remains should be cremated. Mr U. B. Corbett, of Crabwell Hall, Mollington, Cheshire, left directions in his will that he should be cremated, and added: ' I should' wish a£3 cup to be

given to the Cheshire Golf Club, to be competed for on the day of my cremation and on the six following anniversaries." Colonel S. H. Lucas, a retired army officer, who died at Los Angeles, California, left a will in which he made the request that his body should be cremated and the ashes placed inside a copper globe, with his name and age engraved on the outside, and, under, the following words: "Rocked in the cradle of the deep, I

fay me down in peace to sleep." He I then directed that this globe should be given to the officers in charge of some United States man-of-war, with the request that it be thrown overboard in the Pacific Ocean midway between San Francisco and Honolulu. The following singular provision appears in the will of the late Thomas Bevan, of Stone Park, Greenhithe, Kent, who died on March 1, 1907, aged 73: "I desire and explicitly order and direct that at my death, whether in England or elsewhere, my body shall be cremated, and that the ash residue —the product of such cremation — be ground to powder, and again (if necessary, with the addition of any chemical) be burnt and dissipated in the air." Mr Herman Unger, of Boston, Massachusetts, who committed suicide, left instructions that his body should be cremated and that his ashes should be mixed with cement and then pressed into a solid brick, which was then to. be buried. —A Paradise for the Idle.—

In an article m the Pall Mall Magazine describing a tour through, the Malay States, Miss Evelyn May Pocklington writes:—The Malays alone- are unmoved by the fever of speculation. Often while motoring through the jungle one catches sight of qarious houses, with tiled roofs and carved walls, raised from the ground on nianv little wooden legs. These are the homes* of the Malays. " They toil not, neither do they spin," and are they not wisg, when Nature k so generous? A patch of rioe in the marshy ground, a clump -ctf coco-palms, and fish in all the stream* t would bo ungrateful if one strove far mine. It is a paradise for the idle, thia climate of warm sunshine, cool nigbt broessa, and daily rcfr&ihing Of cutira.v ehfltild one attempt

to do anything, the intense damp heat, to put it very mildly, is an abominable nuisance. But why work? Let us rather array ourselves in silken sarongs, and precious little else, and gaze at the golden sun setting in streaks of scarlet light over the misty wooded hills. Behind one the moon rises in the purple night sky of the tropics, huge winged insects hum around, in the distance one hears the night calls of many a strange bird and beast, and the air is heavy with the scent of some wax-white flower. What an adorable existence ! A'as ! that the treadmill of civilisation gives us no choice but to leave such delights to the Malays! Besides, '■ as always, there are two sides to the question. True, there are the scarlet lilies, the gay butterflies, but also there is the tiger, the panther, the snake, and the crocodile—gruesome horror, half buried in the river mud, —and lastly, are there not the fever-stricken swamps? Decidedly one does not go to Malaya for one's health, but it is a lovely country to see, and a grand l place to grow rich in. —Bantu Women. —■ The industry of the Bantu women deserves our notice. Their domain is well defined, and the most tyrannical husband is unable to add to his wife's burden. She is responsible for the food supplies, and has entire control in that department, which recompenses her for the hoeing, weeding, and reaping that fall to her lot. Her husband cannot sell the crop without her permission, nor may he help himself from her stores, although she is expected to provide him and his guests with food and to brew the tribute beer for the chief. The women's most important task is the cultivation of the land. In September they prepare it for planting with mealies (maize, Kaffir corn); in December the corn is already getting fairly high, and everybody hoes between the rows each day, working strenuously. At this season summer rain, with occasional thunderstorms, constitutes "growing weather," and in February the maize is generally ripe. The cobs are then broken off, collected, put into round baskets, and carried home on the women's heads to be stored—possibly in underground pits or in bins like small huts, built on platforms. Sometimes the cobs are boiled or roasted whilst green, but most of them are allowed to ripen and then ground into meal. Amongst this people professional ladies are not altogether unknown; the prophetesses are held high in repute, and the herb doctors may be of either sex. The latter possess quite a useful knowledge of anedicinal herbs, but at the present day they may not practise without special license. Herb-doctors are quite distinct from diviners, who "smell out" unknown causes or secrets. Alice Werner, in "Women of All Nations," describes a lady doctor practising among the Basutos and receiving her fees in cattle, as being held in high esteem by the natives. It is no real hardship that agriculture falls to the lot of the women, this being merely the result of primitive conditions, in which the male portion of the race were usually employed in warlike or hunting expeditions. Women now do the field work when the men are in the mines or away trading, or engaged in service to Europeans. Among he pastoral Basuto tribes the men and women cultivate the fields together.—" Native Women of South Africa," by Bessie Pullen-Burry, F.8.A.1., in the Englishwoman for April. —Safeguarding French Spendthrifts.— There is a safeguard established by French law to prevent spendthrifts from squandering their fortunes (says a writer in Chamber's Journal for April). When it is apparent that a member of a family, male or female, who has attained his or her majority, is extravagant beyond reason the nearest relations concerned may assemble in council and make application to a judge for the appointment of a conseil judiciaire or legal guardian. If sxifficient cause be shown the judge appoints a conaeil, generally an advocate of standing, who has complete control over his client's money, sets aside what he thinks proper for the payment of debts, and allows any sum he chooses great or small in proportion, for the support of his charge, to whom all credit is barred. This method of guarding the family fortune is very often resorted to in the case of fils de famille who have gambled or spent too much money; not a few French houses have been saved from themselves and from complete ruin by it. The chief partner in a firm of motor manufacturers was only released from his conseil a short time ago on his own application, but not 'before he had produced his books to show the profits and income he was earning in the business. Dr J. Horace Round quotes an instance when Cardinal Wolsey, at the height of Ms power, was appointed guardian of the young Earl of Northumberland, and laid down the exact annual sum to be expended on his wife, his household, retinue, and stables. Scottish Judges and Their Titles.— Although Lord M'Laren, of the Scottish Bench, who died the other day, was not a peer, nor a baronet or knight, his widow is, by virtue of the fact that the deceased judge was a senator of the College of Justice, entitled to the prefix "Lady." For centuries the judges of the Court of Session have enjoyed the style or title of "Lord," and so long ago as the reign of James V their wives put forward a claim to be styled "Lady," but the right was peremptorily denird them by the monarch named. "I," s: id he, "made the carles lords, but who the devil made the carlines ladies?" And so, while their husbands rejoiced in the lordly title, they remained plain Mrs So-and-so, although the spectacle of Mrs Home travailing with Lord Karnes, or Mrs Boswell with Lord Auchinleck, sometimes provoked awkward comment when those worthy personages travelled south of the Tweed. The ambiguities arising out of the circumstance that & Soottich judge and his wife might bear totally dissimilar names were put an endl to by a Royal Warrant iasued in 1905. By this it was

provided that the wife of every .'Senator of the College of Justice should be entitled to assume and use the title "Lady,"' and to continue to use the same during the life of her husband, and during widowhood. The warrant further gave Senators of the College of Justice the right to retain the title of "Lord" on their retirement from office. Young Inventors.— Throughout the country to-day upward of ten thousand boy aviators are struggling with the problem of the airship. Among these junior aeronauts the record for height and that for distance-flying are matters' of quite as lively interest as amonf grown-ups. The great contests of aviators here and abroad are watched with intelligent interest. Let a new form of aeroplane, a biplane, or monoplane appear, andi it is quickly reproduced by scores of models and its virtues put to an actual test. If a new wing or new plan for insuring stability is invented, a new thought in the steering device, or some new application of power, it is instantly the subject of earnest discussion among the junior aeronauts the country over. Nor are junior aeronauts merely imitators. The mystery of the problems of th>B air, the fascination of a new world, of conquest, make a strong appeal to the American temperament. With thousands of bright boys working with might and main to build airships which will actually fly, there is certain to be real progress. Thousands of different models have been designed and put to actual test. This army of inventors, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen years, some of whom will be the aviators of the future, cannot fail to do great service as time goes on in the actual conquest of the air. —"Marathon Dance."— Undeterred by the dance recently given at a public hall in Brooklyn, when sixteen couples entered a waltzing endurance contest, and only desisted when they fell to the floor from sheer fatigue, the New York police seemed to have permitted a similar performance in the same neighbourhood on April 6. It was called a ,T Marathon Dance," the winner being the pair who were the freshest after an hour's ceaseless dancing. Eleven couples started, and at the end of 56 minutes, says a Telegraph correspondent, only four were conscious. May Smith danced so strenuously that she fell, cut her nose and split her lip. She rose, and insisted on continuing the contest, with the blood streaming down her face. A few minutes later, however, she collapsed, and was sent home in a carriage. Four others were hurried into cabs. Alice Dunn and James Morrissey won the first prize, by waltzing 61 times round the hall, a distance of more than four miles. One thousand two hundred spectators witnessed the contest, and there was much spirited betting, as only one solitary policeman was present.