PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3383, 15 January 1919, Page 52

PERSONAL NOTES.

The Y.M.O.A. Music Section received a trombone the other day which has quite a history attached to it. It arrived from Sir Edward Elfiar 0.M., with this charming_ note: '' This trombone has clinging to it happy memories of mv youthful musicmaking. I meant to keep it. But why should I keep it for sentiment when the 'boys' can put it to use?" So some soldier will be made happy (if his comrades are not!) by playing on the trombone which was once used by our great British composer.

gested programme, the Island of Lewis, which he owns, is on the eve of an extraordinary transformation. Where neat now is farms will presently arise. Six hundred more or less deserted lochs will be dotted with tourists and anglers. Barren wastes will become forests, where Scotch firs and Menzies spruce will stretch themselves skywards ■ and the population of 3000 may grow to 200,000 or more. Five million young trees "are to be planted every- year. That in itself is a pretty big enterprise, but it is as a food-producing island that Lewis will mainly flourish. Peat-fuel, despite its utility, will succumb to potato crops, the fishing will be developed, and our markets will be busy with Lewis raspberries, strawberries, and currants. Both from, a speculative and a romantio point of view, the island will be worth watching^ Major Mackenzie Rogan, the popular Director of Musio to the Coldstream" Guards, who has been presented with the honorary freedom of the Worshipful Com-pany-of Musicians, holds that the military, band conduces to the good health as well as the good moral of troops. In. proof of this . contention he relates experiences 'of his own, particularly in India. ''During epidemios of cholera or fever," he once said, " I have known funerals so frequent that the attendance of the band has been dispensed with. Instead,- daily programmes of ..light and lively music have acted as. a wholesome tonic to the community.'' He recalls as a specific the case, of the Second Battalion Hampshire Regiment, which, in 1891, was for five month's *n cholera camp in the Allahabad region, 40 miles from cantonments and 10 miles from the railway. During that terrible period the band proved absolutely invaluable. :..-.- Lord Oowdray's gife of £IOO,OOO for. the foundation of a club of flying men, following so close on Mr Mallaby Deeley's cheque for £200,000 to a cause intimately associated with the war, suggests enormous possibilities.. It can hardly be said that donations .for more or less public purposes have increased in proportion to the growth of large fortunes. Now and then a very rich man does notable, things, as in the-case of tha late George Herring; but this has been rare enough to evoke our special wonder. There has been little conspicuous following- of the American example. Many of the wealthier citizens of the United States seem to look round them for means of disburdening themselves of their riches. They appear to have played the great game of accumulation for its own sake, the gains in themselves being of minor interest. The Englishman's characteristic-is a strong and unfaltering desire to leave as much as he can behind him. Possibly the war may have the unanticipated result of bringing* about a great change of feeling in this respect, among others. Major Hon. Charles Lyell, Assistant Military Attache at the British Embassy at Washington, has died from pneumonia. Major Lyell, who was 43 years of age, when war broke out was gazetted captain in the Fife R.G.A., subsequently receiving promotion to Major. In November, 1916, ho was severely injured at the front. He was elected MP. for South Edinburgh in 1910. He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Viscount Grey, and then to Mr Asqiiith, and he had also acted as •temporary Chairman of Committees. Major Lyell was the eldest son of Lord Lyell of Kinnordy. He married in 1911 Rosalind Maruraret, older daughter of Mr Vernon. J. Watney, of Cornbury Park, Charlbury, Oxon., and their only son, born in 1913, is now heir to the peerage. One is inclined to think that one of the most promising careers which the war has cut short was that of Major A. J. B. Wavell, M.C., of " Wavell's Arabs," who was killed in East Africa nearly three years ago. Wavell was a quiet, modest, unassuming young man who. appearances notwithstanding, was as adventurous as Sir Richard Burton, and who would have made a great reputation if he had lived long enough. Major Leonard Darwin, who knew and admired him as an explorer, says that " personal danger seems to have been to him the most stimulating of all surroundings," that "his rather frail physical appearance gave no indication whatever of his immense powers of endurance," and that "he had a scholarly mastery of Arabic, a thorough colloquial knowledge of French, Italian, and Swahili, and a remarkable knowledge of medicine for a lay man. whilst he possessed all those many qualities necessary to make an acute and far-seeing man of business." Wavell made on adventurous journey to Medina and Mecca, disguised as a dervish. 10 < years a<ro; and the story of this is told in "A Modern Pilgrim in Mecca," which he on his return, but which Constable's have only just published. It will make many readers regrret his death, in defending the Uganda railway, at a time when he should have had many years of useful adventuia before-' him.