PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3444, 16 March 1920, Page 65

PERSONAL NOTES.

Mr D. Antonio Saez is the lucky man who won the first prize in the Madrid National Lottery, amounting- to 7,500,000 pesetas, which is equal to some £375,000. He is the deputy manager of the Madrid branch of the London County and West-, minster Bank. «> Before streaks of silver began to change the locks of Mr Lloyd George, Sir Bertrand Dawson, one of the recent peers, was pccasibnally mistaken for the Prime Minister. The King's physician, Sir Bertrand did some wonderful work as head of the medical staff on the Western front. The story of his marriage to a daughter of _ Sir William Yarrow, the famous shipbuilder, provides a charming romance. Regarded as "a coming man" in his profession, he was taken by the family on a yachting cruise for the benefit of Miss farrow's health. The end of that cruise has been succinctly summed up in these words: "The daughter regained her health, but the doctor succumbed—to the daughter." Mr William Darling, a member of a family famous in lighthouse annals and nephew of Grace Darling, has retired from the post of lighthouse-keeper, after 45 years in the service of Trinity House. The family has been in the service for 300 years. The bravery of a relative of Grace Darling was rewarded at the offices of Messrs Furness, Withy, and Co. (Ltd.), when Mr John Hall Knott, chief engineer of the s.s. Cominco, received the honorary certificate of the Carnegie Hero Trust Fund, the honorary vellum of the Royal Humane Society for gallantly saving life, and a cheque" for £IOO from, the company. Mr Knott's mother was second cousin to Grace Darling. ...,.J[n the early hours of the morning of September 2, in Edinburgh Dock, Leith, Mr Knott was in bed in his quarters on board when he heard the shouts of a man who had fallen into the dock. He rushed on deck, but, owinr to the darkness, he was unable to see the man From a, height of 15ft he dived into the water and found the man, and supported him until he . was lifted out'. "—Mr George Grey Barnard, the American sculptor, whose statute of Lincoln was presented by the American Peace Centenary Com,mittee to the British Peace Centenary Committee last year, began to work on his group of Adam and Eve two years ago. Since then he has been searching for an ideal model for Eve —not the splendid, full-figured Mother of the World, but the gir! and fragile; and it is thought that in Virginia Lee, a member of the Greenwich Village Follies Company beauty chorus, he has found the ideal model. The candidate for approval as Eve's counterpart is sft 4in in height; her breadth .of shoulders is 16in; her bust, 324 m; waist, 25|in; hips, 35in; knees ; 15in; calf, 13m; and ankles, 9in—so if the "Great Barnard" accepts 1 er, women will know the table of correct measurements to which they must conform for the sculptorTa ideal of perfection. . —Lord Curzon of Keddlcston, who was bor.i : n 1859, celebrated his sixty-first birthday in January last. As leader of the House of Lords, ha exercises qualities which showed themselves even in his school days, for at- schorl he was feared by the irresponsible ones on account of his searching intellect and powers of repartee. The boy with the biggest muscles did not rule when Curzon was about. Once a big fellow, who could have knocked him down with the utmost. of ease, bolted away and slammed the door in order that he might be spared hearing some scathing retort which he felt was about to wither him t One of Lord Omzon's old schoolmates says: "I cannot understand why wo did not kick Curzon when he 'oheeked' us. I am sure we felt it was our duty, and yet I never heard of it being done." All the same, Curzon had his qualms at school and college, even if he kept thorn private, and the only man who is supposed ever to have made him feel timorous after he himself reached manhood was an old Master of Balliol, whom

he met subsequently at a country house. The master spoke to Ourzon as though he was still a boy, and Curzon replied as though he was still in the presence of a master. He confessed to his friend, "1 have not been in such a funk since I left." August Engiehardt, who. is known as the "Apostle of the Cocoanut,'" claims that the cocoanut contains in its natural state all the food 2nd drink which human beings require. H'c goes further than this, and states that other foods are responsible for our human passions, which may- be repressed if one confines oneself entirely to a cocoanut diet, which was the daily menu of Adam and Eve." At first sight it does rather look as though Augusta Engiehardt is mad. He lives on the island of Kabakon which he owns, and which forms one of the Duke of York group. It is a coral island about five miles in circumference, containing many thousands of cocoanut palms, and supplying him, therefore, with a constant source of food and drink. H'fl dress is a simple loin cloth ("lava-lava."); his bed is a mound of sand in a small thatched-hut. The mosquitoes are kept away with a net, the cold with a blanket. But Engiehardt does not out himself off from civilised thought. He is a 'German American with a knowledge of many languages and a well-informed mind, and ho possesses on his island one of the finest private libraries to be found south of the Equator. His dislike of_ the war brought him into great unpopularity among the Germans who lived in adjacent islands. —'The election to the House of Commons of Mr Edwin Harmsworth, the youngest member who has sat in the House for many years, is regarded by the Harmsworth press, as an event of national importance. This young man,, who was 21 years of age in September last, is the only surviving son of Lord Rothermore, and the nephew of Lord Northcliffe. The fact that Lord Northcliffe has his home in the Isle of Thanet, and gives the thousands of boardinghouse keepers in the seaside resorts of Margate. Ramsgate, and Broadstairs in this constituency such generous help each summer by booming these resorts in his newspapers, was of considerable help to the young man ot the poll. And as he is a nice-looking young man, it is safe to say that the women's vote in the constituency was fairly solid in his direction. His two elder brothers were killed in the war, and he is now the heir to his father's title. His uncle, Lord Northcliffe, has no children. Unfortunately, it is the fate of infant prodigies to disappoint the high hopes entertained in' regard to them by fond deluded relatives. But as blood is thicker than water, the British public will doubtless be treated to the novel _ spectacle' of the Northcliffe newspaper remaining faithful to one of the many political idols- they have created for public worship, instead of following their customary practice of pulling dewn each new idol at the end of a few months, and telling the British public to regard, it as a. fraud and a failure..