PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 764, 26 August 1893, Page 5

PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

Latest addition to Auckland Hospital nursing staff is Miss Meta Lyell. Hospital nursing is coming to be regarded as quite the proper thing. . Ninian Melville, Esq., M.L.A. New South Wales, now stumping this country on the prohibition racket, is irreverently referred to in Masterton Star as ' Ninny Melville.' Sir G-eorge Grey is regarded by the Pall Mall Gazette as an extinot volcano. But that's where the P.M.6-. makes the mistake. Sir George may be a smouldering volcano, but he isn't quite extinct yst. Laurie Dunbar, upon whom fortune refused to smile when he was Bhowing here last, has leased the Public Hall, Tauranga, for three months. Helen Fergus, otherwise Mrs D'Oreay.Ogden, is still his ' leading lady.' Professor Bickerton, the Christohurch scientist, remarked in the course of a recent lecture that much of the sugar used in brewing is made from the dirty oil rags used in cleaning locomotives. • Where ignorance,' etc. Bob Oourtneidge was the only member of London Gaiety Company who remained behind when the Company returned Home. Mr Courtneidge has accepted a six months' engagement with Williamson, Garner and Musgrove. And they have got hold of a good man. M'Kenzie, the well-known Masterton footballer, was presented by his team the other day with a cake, bearing the following inscription : ' Presented to W. M'Kenzie as possessing the best all* round appetite of the New Zealand team. 1 Mao ought to be a proud man the day 1 Foxton rejoices in its ' Pooh Bah ' who, besides controlling the destinieß of the local rag, is coroner, J P., chairman of School Committee, printer, auctioneer, secretary of the co-operative butchery, vestryman, church-trustee, and a heap of other things besides. He is never tired. Says he hasn't time. T. "W. Eowe, the new librarian at Wellington Public Library, is 30 years of age, an M.A., with first-class honours of University of New Zealand, Junior Scholar 1681, Senior Scholar 1883. He is a French scholar, a scientist, and is a walking encyclopaedia (neatly bound in cloth) on the subject of books and bookmen. Sir George Whitmore ought to feel crushed when he reads the resolution concerning him just passed by the Auckland branch of the Women's Franchise League. • The so-called Iwnourable member '—with the accent on the ' honourable ' — is rough on our only General. But he will probably survive. The League also plainly hints that it considers Sir George •no gentle?nan.' Italics again. When the average woman can't add a ' P.S. to anything she writes, she drops into italics. Victor Buxton, of the great brewing firm of Truman and Co., has retired from the firm because he has become a teetotaller and has refused to realise on his £100,000 worth of shares because he 1 would not make profit out of the accursed drink.' And so Mr Victor's huge fortune remains in the firm to enrich it and to help extend the sale of the beer he loathes, Possibly Mr Victor didn't think of that. Possibly, again, Mr Victor hasn't forfeited his pile after all ? The Eev. E. F. Fairclough, of Christchurch, is an enthusiastic supporter of ' woman's rights.' Speaking at a meeting the other day, he said : ' To show the absurdity of the existing law, Miss Shaw, the lady correspondent of the London Times, who had an intelligent grasp of colonial and English politics, was not allowed a vote, while A. Dude, Esq., aged 21, a rack to hang Brummagem jewellery on, who, by a bound, jumped from sucking a bottle to sucking a meerschaum pipe, and whose head was mainly useful for keeping his collar from slipping off, had.' The ladies cheered 'like one man— -we mean woman.

A QTeytown parson lectured the | other evening on < Other People's Faults,' This is a subject the average shepherd is well posted in. Max Einkle, the ex-circus clown, now a Salvation Army officer at Wangartui, says he would sooner be a scavenger in the Army than Premier of the colony. But Max always was eccentric. Lord Brassey has been talking about 'the family estates.' Grandpapa Brassey was a navvy, who ate raw onions with his bread and cheese, and never had any spare h's in stock. ' Professor ' Eichard, the electric healing-man, made £1000 in Wellington, after paying ex's. The professor, by the way, never would keep ducks. He says they make such personal remarks. Carnegie, who has just died worth three millions declared publicly some years ago that ' The man who dies rich dies damned.' If that is so Carnegie must be pining for a fan just now.

Edward Carr, who sued Jawbone Bees for election ex's the other day, is evidently a man of little ' faith.' Prefers hard cash. What do you think, Mr Adams ? • Mr Ward, of AucMand, whose New Zealand story ' Supplejack ' has just been accepted by the well-known London publishers Chapman and Hall, describes the style of writing as ' a cross between Rider Haggard and Mark Twain.' If that is so Messrs Chapman and Hall are to be congratulated. Editor Price, who is leaving the staff of Napier Telegraph, after twenty-two years editorship thereof, was banquetted by the proprietor the other night and presented with— an illuminated address 1 An illuminated address is a grateful and comforting gift to receive after you have worked hard for nearly a quarter of a century—and so economical, too, for the donor I

AN APOSTLE OF PROHIBITION,

Max O'JRell is still scooping in many shekels at the Cape, apropos of which Chrißtohuroh Truth says : • What we would not permit Thaokeray with his genius to say to us at any prioe, we meekly accept from cute f oreigD speculators of the type of Max O'Bell.' The Duke of York is thus tenderly let down by an English paper : ' His only faults are self-distrust ard a too rapid generalisation which sometimes leads to exaggeration of statement.' Exaggeration of statement is good. In the oase of a ' common person ' it iB called something else. Such a person would be termed a blankety perverter of the truth. Fergus Hume has just brought out another book, ' The Harlequin Opal ' 'which, if not faultleßS.' says London Spectator, ' has at any rate a olaim to be appraised as literature.' Nasty knock wrapped up in this, in spite of the compliment. The Spec, means, of course that oFergy's previous shockers were not ' literature.'

I A prominent Masterton prohibiI tionist has resolved to send no more telegrams beoauae somebody's whiskey is advertised on the backs of the forms. He might just as reasonably refuse to read the Bible because it counsels the drinking of a little wine for the stomach's sake. Dr. Carl Fischer, news of whose death at Chicago recently came to hand, was a very old Auckland identity. He had a lucrative practice in this city at one time. He owed his astonishing success here as a medico to an accident — literally an accident. A store, at the corner of Short-land-street and Old Victoria Lane, collapsed one day and Mrs George Graham, who was in the building at the time, was buried beneath the bags of grain. The dootors all gave her up— until Dr. Fischer, then a new arrival, came along. Under his skilful treatment the lady recovered — and the foundation of the doctor's practice was laid. That accident brought him fame and fortune.