PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 68

PERSONAL NOTES.

—Mr J. Ogden Armour, of Messrs Armour and Co., meat packers, has offered himself and his great meat-packing business at Chicago to the American Government. His father, who died in 1901, and who left a private fortune of over £10,000,000, > was the founder of the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, and also the Armour Flats, which were built for the purpose of supplying at a low rental good homes for working men and their famines. Mr Ogden Armour's recent gift of £IOO.OOO to the general fund of the American Red Cross is worthy of the reputation of the family for philanthropy. Sir Matthew Nathan,' the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions, never puts in less than 10 hours a day, never leaves his office for meals, takes home bundles of work in the evening, and works all day on Saturdays and Sundays. He joined the Royal Engineers when he was 18, and took part in the Nile Expedition five years later. It is interesting to note that Sir Matthew was the first Jew to be appointed a colonial Governor, and when sworn in as Governor of Hongkong in_ 1903 he conformed to the rights of his faith by going through the ceremony with his head covered.

Mr Alexander Bremner, 0.E., late of the Jubbulpore and Great Indian Peninsular railway, who died lately, aged 58 years, belonged to a family of engineers. His cousin, Mr J. R. Bell, the original of Kipling's " Bridge-builder," performed in 1879-80 tho feat of. laying the strategic line of tho Ruk-Sibi railway from a point south of Sukkur up to the Bolan Pass, 113| miles in 101 days, 'through a waterless desert, the _ route unsurveyed and no material existing on the spot. This achievement was an important factor in the successful march of Lord Roberts to Candahar. Both Mr Bell and Mr Bremner were grandsons of James Bremner, tho Scottish engineer and harbour-builder, who in 1847 floated the Great Britain off the Dundrum coast, the largest ship In the world at that date. Sir Charles W. Dilke, a story is told of the Duke of Wellington—how the Govern-,, mont of the day wrote to tho Duke to tell" him they had agreed to le't the .French transport the corpse of Napoleon from St. Helena, the Duke being in Opposition at the time; how the answer ran : F.-M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to H.M.'s Ministers. If they wish to know F.-M. the Duke of Wellington's opinion as on a matter of public policy, he must decline to give one. If, however, they wish only to consult him a 9 a private individual, F.-M. the Duke of Wellington has no hesitation in saying that he does not care one twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Buonaparte." Lord Howick, who succeeded his father, the late Governor-general of Canada, and becomes the fifth Earl Grey, was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Ha was for a time a subaltern in the First Lifeguards, and has been serving in France as a major on the Headquarters Staff since 1914. Both tho new and his wifo have the distinction of being descended from a Prime Minister. The former Lord Howick is the great-grandson of the second Earl Grey, Who held that office from 1830 to 1834; while his wife is a grand-daughter of the late Marquess of Salisbury, being a daughter of Lord Selborne. IS is not surprising, therefore ; that Earl Gray tak-i* th> keenest interest in politics. Mr Spicer, _ a well-known Dover journalist who died, noted for his keenness for news, and in the English journalistic world he was recognised as a man "to whom copy" was the one thing In life that mattered. Ho was Dover correspondent for a large number of newspaper.?. It is told of him _ that he was on© of tho victims of a railway accident

some years ago, and that as soon as ho had struggled clear of 'the wreck he made his way to the nearest telegraph office, and despatched an account of the affair broadcast over the country; but the story, as I heurd it at tho time, had an ending which is now omitted. When ho had finished his long "descriptive" and had handed it to tho operator, with a long list of newspaper office addresses, andeaid "Good night," I was told, ho seemed to be searching' his memory for something that escaped him. At last the happy thought was recovered. "Oh, yes!" ho said. "Perhaps I'd better send a wire to my wife, too, to tell her that I'm not killed !"

The most popular of the British marine painters died with Mr Napier Hemy, who down to the end of a long life was painting with the vigour and the skill that he exhibited in his prime, The son of a distinguished musician, Mr Hemy was born at Newcastle in 1841. Ho was educated at Newcastlo Grammar School and at St. Cuthbert's College, Durham. At 22 he decided to become a painter, and two years afterwards exhibited his first picture at the Academy. Dissatisfied with the results, he wont to Antwerp to study, returning to England in 1870. He knew the sea in all its phases; he knew boats as only the practioal sailer of boats can know them; and he combined the two in infinito variations, through which ran a thread of sameness. Several of his works were acquired by the trustees of Chauntrey Bequest. "Home Winds" w r ae acquired by the Australian Government. The election by Scottish peers of Lord Fairfax to a seat in the House of Lords may be regarded as a compliment to America, for the Fairfax family has been American for generations, and the present peer is British by naturalisation. He proved his title to the peerage in 1908, but he had come to England previously for King Edward's Coronation, to which he received a special invitation. He travelled as "Mr Fairfax," and, of course, the American pressmen had a field-day with the story of how a New York bank clerk was about to cross the ocean .with coronation robes. The Fairfaxes were monarchists in the American War of Independence, and when the news of the surrender of Cornwallis was taken 'to the Lord Fairfax of that day at his house in "Virginia, he cried to his negro servant: " Carry me to bed, for it -is high time to die." Then (according to the story), turning his face to the wall, he did what it wae " high time" to do. '

Professor D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, C. 8., who succeeeds the veteran Professor William Mackintosh as Professor of Natural History at St. Andrews University, has been Professor of the same subject at Dundee University College (part of St. Andrews University), ever since it came into existence some 50 years ago,_ and he is one of the ablest of our living biologists. Like Professor Mackintosh, Professor Thompson specialises _in fish, and in addition ho is an authority on whales, for the study of which Dundee, with its whale-ships, has proved an admirable centre. Ho was made 08. for his work as British delegate to the Behring Sea Fisheries Conference in 1897, and he has given, splendid service as scientific member of the Fishery Board of Sco'tland. A son of the late D'AFcy Wentworth Thompson, Professor of Greek at Queen's College, Gal.way, he inherits his father's literary grace. —Mr John Hill, who presided over the recent British Trade Union Congress, is one of the moet powerful forces in the British labour world. His_ secretaryship of the boilermakers gives him control of a rich and powerful union, whose members are drawn in large numbers from an aristocracy of labour. He is, besides', a personality; one who thinks. He is noted for his knowledge of his own business and his wide outlook over the Labour movement. . In his home at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the boilermakers housed their secretary in a fine stone mansion, he is at his best in conversation. Outwardly 'the house is such as one of the merchant princes of Tyneside might inhabit, and internally it is a comfortable and pleasant home. But its spaciousness is accounted for by the fact 'that the bead offices of the boilermakers are under the same roof, and many of the rooms are_ devoted to the clerical work of the union, though outwardly it appears just a large house surrounded by a pretty garden.