PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3149, 22 July 1914, Page 79

PERSONAL NOTES.

J s=Mr A. J. Balfour once complained mildly about the way in which his everyday actions are sometimes elaborated m the newspapers. On one occasion, he told os, he lent a hand in launching a boat that was putting oif to rescue a couple of boys in a boat that was drifting out to soa. The story appeared in the newspapers, at first more or loss accurately. Later, it started on a tour round the world’s newspapers, each of which varied the story a little. Finally, a Japanese newspaper printed an exciting story of how the British exPrimo Minister swam two miles with two unconscious b,oys on his back ! —ln his” early and almost briefless dajs at the Bar, Sir Edward Carson had as hard a time as ever young counsel had, and it is said that more than once he took a brief for half a guinea. On a certain occasion, when he was going into court in Ireland, a man came up to him, and, catching hold of h’S gown, said, “ Look here. Counsel, you have a bit of a case for Mick O’Dwyer, haven’t you?” “ I have; what about it?” “ Well,” said the man. wit-i an air of one making a very grand offer, “I am Mick O’Dwyer, and if you win that case I will give you five shillings for yourself !” Counsel won his case, but he did not claim his promised five shillings. An anecdote of the Royal visit to-Pans is related by the Cri de Paris. King George, it is statoci, mentioned to some of his entourage that, according to King Edward VII, any- person entering the Church of Saintc Clotildo for the first time had only to place a candle there and formulate a wish to have the wish exactly fulfilled. Sir Edward Grey decided to go to Samte Clotildo immediately. , The fihurch was situated at no great distance from the Foreign Ministry, and Sir Edward soon returned. He was carrying a scaled envelope, and explained that he had formulated his wish, which he had written down and placed in the envelope in order that in due time it might be seen whether the reputation of the Catholic v Saint was justified. On envelope he had written these words;—“To be opened after my death, to verify the results of a wish that I made at Sainte Clotilde de Paris, April 23, 1914.” Professor Silvanus Thompson, who lectured the other day on the pioneer work of Michael Faraday in the field of electrical science, could hardly hold" Faraday up as an example of the industrious apprentice. As a lad that" famous man of science was apprenticed to a bookbinder, but he found it more congenial to read the sheets of letterpress than to bind them in their covers, especially when the subject dealt with was of a scientific nature. A customer who happily caught him absorbed in the article on “ Electricity ” in a volume of tlie “Encyclopaedia Britannica ” he should have been binding, sympathised with his desire for knowledge by presenting him with tickets for a series of lectures by Humphry Davy. The idle apprentice later ventured to write to Davy to clear up a difficulty, which led to the latter ultimately taking Faraday into his laboratory, whore ho studied with such assiduity as to become the greatest experimentalist in physical science the world has ever seen. “Dr D. W. Forrest, the newly-elected United Free Church Professor of Systematic Theology at Glasgow, was,” writes a fellowstudent in the Christian World, “ perhaps the most distinguished student of his years at Glasgow University in the ’seventies. While defending the faith of his Church on liberal lines, and with the broadest toleration, Dr Forrest will inspire his students with his own inexhaustible and overflowing enthusiasm for scholarship, for literary culture, for the graces of literary composition. Academic, he is also human, and knows no class distinctions. A celibate, with a self-devotion to an only sister which recalls the attachment of Charles Lamb to his sister Mary, Dr Forrest has enjoyed unusual opportunities of foreign travel. He knows his Romo, his Constantinople, his Venice, his Florence, his Paris intimately. Dr Forrest has warm friends in all the denominations, from Bishop Boyd Carpenter, the Dean of Durham, and other representative clergymen of the Church of England, to Rev. R. J. Campbell, of the City Temple.” The Earl of Caithness, who died recently, succeeded to a title without estates on the death in 1891 of his father, who had himself succeeded in 1889, and who was a chartered accountant at Aberdeen. In earlier clays, however, the Earls of Caithness possessed no lack of property, their lands embracing a large portion of the North of Scotland from sea to f soa. Then in the thirteenth century the County of Sutherland was separated from the Caithness earldom, which, after various vicissitudes. was bestowed by the Crown in 1455 on William St. Clair, Earl of Orkney and Chancellor of Scotland, who was also the ancestor of the Earl of Rosslyn. The second carl of this revival of the title -perished on Flocklon Field in 1513, and with the succession of the third began those feuds between the Sinclairs and the neighbouring Earls of Sutherland which are the subjects of many legends. The fourth or “ wicked ” earl is credited with having poisoned both the Earl and Countess of Sutherland, and kidnapped their son, whom he then tortured into marrying his daughter. The new peer, the Hon. Norman Maclcod Buchan —ho changed his name from Sinclair to Buchan in 1911 —is well known in legal circles, having been for many years a practising solicitor. The Rev. Oswald W. C. Blogg, who is resigning the wardenship of Navy House, Chatham, in order to become chaplain at Rio de Janeiro and Archdeacon of Brazil, knows* somel.ii.fng about the rough and tumble of seafaring life. When ho was hi the Mediterranean years ago he shipped before the mast as a seaman in order to gain experience, and so badly did he fare on one vessel that one dark night at Algiers he got a boy to row him ashore. He lay covered up with a blanket in the bottom of a small boat. Next day he signed on under another skipper, and within a week or so was back in Roumania, whore ho had charge of the Danubian ports as chaplain. Subsequently he became a chaplain in the Royal Navy, and once was very nearly court-martiallcd. One night ho took off his glasses and disguised himself as a blue-

jacket. In that way he entered most of, the public-houses and mixed freely with the men. Unfortunately, however, he was found in a public-house which was “ out of bounds,” and the naval patrol arrested him. Mr Blogg has also worked in the coal mines of Durham.