MILLIONAIRES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 62, 27 October 1911, Page 4

MILLIONAIRES.

i he Loudon correspondent of the "(1 uardiau” gives an amusing sketch. how some millioifaires hardly got ill they wanted recently in Britain’s capital. He says that only “Mr Dooley” could do justice to tbs. Marathon race of the Olympic’s millionaires for berths on other ships to take them home. But oven a bald, dry report of the spectacles is thrilling. There was, for example, Mr Magee, nt San Francisco, instantly crawling ouj; nl a porthole of the world’s greatest ship, and dropping into a small boat manned by a butcher’s boy. The fare was Cd, and the willing boy lauded the American on the Cowes beach. Three hours later Mr. Magee was on board the Olympic again, Inning secured three of the seven berths unbooked on the, Adriatic. “More child’s play,’’

bo- said to a reporter. The millionaires then held a mass meeting, which ended in one securing the option of the vacant places for £6O. When the Olympic’s passengers readied Southampton the millionaires scrambled through that historic town to the shipping offices, and made desperate efforts to corner the supply of Atlantic saloon berths for immediate delivery. Jt is reported that extreme irritation was displayed at the shipping company’s invariable reply that, no matter what was offered, the prices of cabins -were fixed and unalterable.*, and that no booked passenger could be turned out oven for a billionaire. Surely the companies would fix up annexes to their liners, as the British Government did to Westminster Abbey at the Coronaion? No. Well, couldn’t they jack up the Savoy Hotel and get it down into the Thames on a hig barge and tow it behind the Adriatic? England might shake the ivy nut of its eyes for once in a way in a case like this, and show that much enterprise. No. It was an impasse. For the few available berths the heads of the various trusts tossed—with cheques, of course, not with halfcrowns, like the three chiefs of the Clan Macdonald, —and only one of the winners seemed to have required a special train to Liverpool, a Mr Sheldon.