PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3385, 29 January 1919, Page 58

PERSONAL NOTES.

—Mr John Plodge, the British Minister for Pensions, speaking at Brierley Hill, said that once he was rated as a good-tempered man, but the worries of the Pensions Department had caused a change. After three months of it his wife called him a nasty-tempered old rascal. _ —ln connection with the recent death of Sir Edward Fry, a former judge in England, it is recalled that he sat in the Chancery Division from 1877 to 1683, and in the Appeal Court until 1892. when he retired on a pension of £3500 a yearl He reached the age of SO. Sir Edward, who was a son of Mr Joseph Fry, of cocoa note, became a celebrated arbitrator after he left the bench. He acted as conciliator in the South Wales coal dispute in 1898, presided over the Royal Commission on the Irish Land Acts, was legal assessor in the Dogger Bank Inquiry Commission, and arbitrated between the U.S.A. and Mexico. He. was, too, the first British delegate to the Hague Peace Conference in ~ ISO 7. A recent discussion on rabies in the House of Commons must have meant an awkward twinge of memory for Mr Walter Dong, who will never forget what he suffered in the day 3 of the muzzling orders for which he was responsible. Ho attained his end, but at what a cost! If Mr Justice Hawkins was objurgated by all his old sporting friends for his definition of "a. place," not less was Mr hong castigated for his muzzling orders. Many a dowager dismissed him m conversation as "that man who muzzled the dogs," and when he was under d.-scussioh as a possible leader of the Conservative party this" item in his "past" was quite solemnly discussed as a bar. Probably no Minister ever received so many abusive letters

A typiste in a Ministerial office in Wellington was formerly "secretary to Sir James Roberts, Bart, (lather of Mrs Rutherford, the wife of Lieutenant-colonel Rutherford), concerned in the recent shooting case in London. " This gentleman," says his late secretary, "is a well-known figure in commercial and political circles in the Old Country. He is a self-educated and self-made man, who began life as a mill-boy and now owns the town of Saltajre (one of Yorkshire's 'model villages'), with two or three country s-eats, of which th«» most notable one is the ancestral home of the Earls of Perth, at Strathmore, Scotland. Sir James, although so successful and powerful in business and • public life, has had a tragic career. His eldest son unexpectedly developed a ' fatal disease and died in South Africa, where his father had bought an estate for him, in the hope of his recovery. His next eldest son was cut down in the prime of life by the recurrence of malarial fever, contracted during a tour through South America in his youth. His youngest son met with a tragio death at Portrush in Ireland during a holiday there. Now comes the tragedy connected with his daughter, Mrs Rutherford, who was always a lively and popular girl." Mr Frederick Delius, whose new sonata has iust been performed for the first time, is commonly but erroneously believed to be a foreigner. He is a Yorkshireman, belonging to a family long settled in Bradford. For some time ho studied at Leipzig under Gieig, who is a Norwegian Scotsman, not a German; but all his compositions bear the impression of absolute originality, though partly inspired by the environment of his early manhood, when' be grew oranges in Florida. Mr Dehus has For many years resided in France, where he married Mile. Rosen, the artist, and where most of his best creative work was first introduced. . —Mr Andrew Dickson White, the distinguished American diplomatist, whose death at the age of £6 is announced, was, it will be remembered, the man by whom Mr Goldwin Smith was induced shortly after his resignation of the Oxford Professorship o Modern History, to transplant himself to a similar post at the newly founded Cornell University at Ithaca, U.S.A of which White was the first president. Goldwin Smith's account of his tenure of this appointment, which lasted for two years, forms an interesting chapter of his Reminiscences. "Equal," he writes,, to Ezra Cornell in merit and in .his claim on the gratitude of Cornelhans is Andrew White, a wealthy citizen of Syracuse a man of the highest attainments and culture, who devoted to the foundation not only much of his wealth, but labour, which was of higher value and bestowed at a greater sacrifice. American wealth has a bad side. It has also a good and noble side, which showed itself hero. Andrew White has since been transferred to another, sphere, and has shone as a diplomatist at St Petersburg and Berlin. He has also shone as a writer." He was the author of an elaborate work, which at one time had a considerable vogue, on the' "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom."