THE SOCIAL ROUND

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 83, 14 May 1914, Page 4

THE SOCIAL ROUND

r NOTES AND NEWS. Mr and Mrs M'Gibbon (Gore) are in town in connection with the Masonic installation, and are staying at Warner's Hotel. - • Mrs Gerald Stead is at present in Christchurch, and is at Warner's. Mr and • Mrs John Aitken (Christchurch), are visiting Auckland. , Mr and Mrs E. A. Wiekes {(Greynioutli) arrived in Christchurch last night. The Misses Clifford (2) arrived in Christchurch yesterday morning, after a trip to the North Island. Mrs Deans, who hasT been staying with friends in Wellington, returned to Christchurch by the Wahine to-day. Mr and Mrs J. B. Thompson, who have been visiting friends in Christchurch, have returned to Wellington. On Tuesday next their Excellencies the Governor and Countess of Liverpool will leave Auckland for Wellington, to join the Willochra for their visit to the Cook <<3rroup. Mr and Mrs Seaton (Wellington), who arrived in Christchurch in the early part of the week, are staying at .the Occidental Hotel, and leave for the north by to-morrow night's boat. The Girls Standing ; Commifcteie in connection with , the Y.W.C.A. are giving a little '' Thank You " tea-party in- the new" building ;, on Wednesday evening, next, by way of expressing their gratitude to the Board of Directors- for the new home. A quiet little wedding was cele- , brated at Papanui on Tuesday, when Ifr William Wood, of St. Albans, was married to Miss Alice Priest. The bride .wore' a dainty white' embroidered frock and the usual wreath and veil. Her Bister, Miss Jennie Priest, who aeted as maid of honour, wore blue chrystalKne, and a hat of black panne velvet. The bride's brother acted as best man. After the ceremony the _ wedding pai*ty and a few friends adjourned to Broadway's, where a wedding breakfast was ' f Princess Mary, on her seventeenth birthday last month, came into posses- - aion of a legacy of £20,000 bequeathed to her by the late King, which has been held in trust for her Royal Highness by lier father. Pew people who see the hands at work oh a certain, farm at Pairford, Gloucestershire, rea'tise that one of them is a' Prince and a nephew of Queen Alexandra. Prince Eric of Denmark, is a son of Prince Waldmar, Queen Alexandra's youngest brother, and is destined for a. sphere in agreement with . the tastes and pursuits of his country. So this 20-year-old Prince is learning wheat-growing, cattle raising, dairy farming, and pig keeping, in the British

way. Fairford folk were eager to fete Aim and spoil him, but hours, of leisure are spent with the farmers' family or a third-class excursion to a football mateh (he is an ardent footballer), or on a family visit to Queen Alexandra at Sandringham, at none of which-,he is in danger of being "spoiled." Den^

mark's Minister of Agriculture, who counselled this life for Prince Eric, iallow:8 his own daughter to be general servant to a middle-class English family, that, she may be practically expert in household duties. A somewhat unusual coincidence has teen-brought to notice in connection with the visit of the King and Queen to Paris. In the garden of the British Embassy, there is a tree which was ■ planted by- King Edward. During the King's lifetime this tree grew 'and

flourished exceedingly. It was one of the' first-to burst into leaf, and its ibliage was luxuriant. Then King Edward died, and from that moment the tree in the Paris garden ceased to

thrive. It now looks like dying itself. Nor is this all. Queen Victoria planted •. tree to commemorate a visit to the

City of Light. That also grew beautifully till the Queen's death- then it withered away. There is going round the social world;

just now a story which ought to be true if it isn't. Mr M'Kenna was sitting next to a very charming lady at a big society dinner, and his fair companion was greatly concerned at the fact that he ate practically nothing at all. The Home Secretary pleaded guilty to a bad attack of indigestion, and the lady insisted that she should be permitted to send him a remedy—a medical bandage,

to be worn for twelve hours. The bandage duly arrived and, so goes the story, was duly worn, but imagine the Home Secretary's consternation when, upon its removal, he found the words "Votes for Women" legibly and permanently inscribed upon that sacred portion of his anatomy in which the fiend Indigestion usually lives and has its being.

Mozart did not care for the applause of the crowd. "Write in a mor.e popular style,'' said Hofmeister, the Leipzig publisher, "or 3, can neither print nor pay for anything of yours." "Very well," answered Mozart, "then I shall earn nothing more, go hungry, and devil a bit will I care." Mozart had to struggle often with poverty. • On one occasion he wrote to his father: "I have one small room.; it is crammed with a piano, a bed, and a chest of drawers.'' When his father objected to his marrying because of his poverty, he wrote:' "Constance (Weber) is a well-conducted, good girl, of respectable parentage, and, I am in a position to earn at least daily bread for her, and we love each other, and are resolved to marry.'' Poverty continued to pursue himj and" when his wife was sick, he could not get her the necessary medicines. And he was burigd as a pauper.

, "The mantle of Verdi has not descended upon his successors, " remarks a musical paper. "There is enough of it left to make overcoats for all the living Italian operatic composers."