"Pars About People

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 848, 30 March 1895, Page 5

"Pars About People

John Duthie, M.H.K., is described by the Bulletin as a man with ' murder in his face and charity in his heart.'

E. G. Jellicoe, the Wellington lawyer, and his wife are back from their European tour. Things will liven up a bit in Wellington courts now.

The O'Regan, M.H.R., has resumed editorial control of the Inangahua Tim en. And he should make a good editor, too. Mr O'Regan is something of a socialist, and like the first and greatest of socialists, he began life as a carpenter.

Charles Griffiths faced the music, down at Wellington, the other day, for pouring boiling water on a cow suffering from inflammation, but Magistrate Martin having been satisfied that boiling water was good for cows suffering from inflammation, dismissed the information. We live and learn. Sergeant Gamble had a great old time at Rotorua. He is always popular with the ladies, but the Maori wahines were unusually enamoured of his ' fine figure,' and we hear on good authority that one lady in particular who owns a big slice of the thermal springs district was very anxious to have an offer of marriage conveyed to him. She was too bashful to make it herself. Just see now what Gamble missed through being a married man. Walter Bentley has recently taken to religious lecturing as che most profitable thiug going. Religious lectures by Walter Bentley are good. Next, we shall hear of sacred solos at occassional intervals by Charlie Hugo. It is not yet certain whether Walter Bentley intends to qualify for holy orders. He wants to persuade the Government to subsidise him as a lecturing agent at Home by the issue of £5,000 worth of postage stamps for a year's lecturing. The wonder is he did not ask for £50,000. I

Little. Douglas says in the Herald that Lord Kosebeiy must resign. It is cabled that Lord Ro?eberry won't resign. Now, who is going to settle It ?

Sir Henry Thompson says that no man who eats to excess has a brilliant intellect. Comfort for the starving. Explains why the fat man is so stupid.

Mrs Seddon was presented by the Chinese ladies of Greymouth with a handsome bracelet the other day. Surely the Honorable Dick will abandon his crusade against the ' yellow agony ' now.

Jules Wilson has been renewing old friendships at Paeroa. He represents a wealthy De Hirsch, brother of the Baron, and the man who was willing to find £150,000 for prospecting the Thames deep levels if the Thames people had been smart enough to afford him the opportunity.

Hallenstein Brothers have seen the mining boon at the Upper Thames approaching from a considerable distance, and have purchased a freehold section at Paeroa, on which they are going to erect business premises at once. They propose to make dividends out of the cyanide process without paying the royalty.

W. E. Barton, late agent of the Whangarei branch of the Bank of New Zealand, has been appointed to the agency of the Bank of New Zealand, Kaikoura. Barton is a good cricketer, and one of the best batsmen in the colony, but it is not his itxck to be stationed in a fairly large centre of population, where he would be able to indulge in the game. Fire-eating Prohibitionist Taylor, of Sydenham licensing campaign celebrity — it is not the ex-Sydenham M.H.R. converted, but a very different stamp of man — is talked of down South as one of the candidates the Christchurch teetotallers intend to run for all he is worth at the next general election. He is a man who will out-Speight Speight for verbose cold water oratory. Queen Victoria is said to be proficient in eleven European languages, and she has, during the last four or five years, completely mastered Hindustanee, in which she converses with great correctness and fluency with any of her Indian subjects who are presently at Court. Possibly Her Gracious will take some lessons in Maori from Sir George Grey while he is handy. The ' old man eloquent ' is a good Maori linguist.

Edwin Harrow has been ordered away -for his health, and was* to have left this week for South Africa. He h'aa £10,000 worth of property there, and talks of selling~ifc and spending' the money atTnkapuna on his return. But won't the Lake be very dull while he is away ? There will be no fun going now. One of Premier Seddon's daughters is pupil teacher in a Wellington school. She came from the West Coast with the family, and was installed in a city teaching billet straight away. What the other Wellington teachers want to know is whether any girl other than a Minister's daughter would have been provided for so quickly. Miss Laura Treadwell and Miss Garrett have obtained appointments to the Advances to Settlers Office in Wellington. The fair Laura was greatly in evidence in the ladies' gallery of the House of Representatives last session, and her autograph album was freely circulated amongst members and pressmen for their signatures. Government House always patronises the Wellington Hospital nurses in case of illness Head Nurse Willis, one of the most popular members- of .that excellent staff, has been the regular guardian angel of the Glasgow family for some time. Now she has been brought up to Auckland to nurse Lady Augusta through the effects of her accident. What will the Auckland nurses say to this ? Michael Davitt, who is coming out to the colonies to lecture, is a powerful and incisive speaker, and a man of great courage and honesty of purpose ; a most interesting man, who has suffered for his principles and stuck to them through thick and thin. But he is no orator. It is fourteen years since Davitt came out of Portland convict prison, after his seven and a-half years of incarceration for treasonfelony. ' Phaylix ' Maguire, M.H.E., started on a foreign tour by the mail steamer last Saturday. He won't have time to call and see the dark-eyed beauties of Japan on the way, because he has to be back in time for the Governor's Speech in June, but he declares he will drop in on Sir George in London, and-ask the great pro-consul why the dickens he doesn't come out and look after the political interests of his'famale' constituents in Auckland. Phil LeQuesne's death at the early age of thirty-four came as a great shock to his friends. He was on his way home, when he was knocked down by a 'bus, and though he was believed to be uninjured when he was taken home in a cab he was found dead on the floor of his house later on in the night. Phil was a good, sterling fellow, and hadn't an enemy in the world. He was a smart business man, and held the responsible position as manager of Sharland's pharmacy. Only recently, we announced the engagement of the deceased to Miss Staunton, of Ponsonby, daughter of Mr W. Staunton, and sister of Madame Goldenstedt. Much sympathy is felt for the young lady in her trouble. John Walker, who has just removed his cage bird, florist, and poultry business from Auckland to Wellington, is a notable type of successful young colonial. He commenced life almost without the proverbial shilling, but with a good stock of shrewdness and common sense, and from the day he went into business in Auckland as a mere lad he has made money. To-day, though scarcely more than thirty, he is comfortably well off, and besides other means possesses at Mount Albert one of the best model breeding farms in the colony. Mr Walker's removal to Wellington is solely on account of the holiday. His best business in Auckland was in cut flowers on Saturday afternoons, but the holiday has killed that, so Mr Walker is going where there is no Saturday holiday. He finds it pays him better to take cut flowers from Auckland to Wellington for sale there. Cherubic little Dr. Newman and dapper Henry Dillon Bell, M.H.R.'s, were new adherents to the Temperance cau3e last general election, and were elected on that ticket Last week, they were at a reception of the delegates of" the "Women's Christian Temperance Conference at Wellington. In welcoming the delegates, a Rev. Mr Hallowes patronizingly said he saw encouragement to the Temperance cause in the fact that legislators were taking it up, and legislators never took up anything till there was a good body of public opinion behind it, and that it would be politic to go with it. Legislator Bell indignantly repudiated this view, and pointed to Sir William Fox and Sir Robert btout as two legislators who had rescued the Temperance cause in New Zealand from death. Then the Rev. Hallowes rose hurriedly and, in apologetic tones, pleaded that he was a new arrival, and he didn't know, and he meant to refer to the type of politician who took up new causes from notions of expediency and policy. Then, the Reverend Hallooes smiled sweetly at the dapper lawyer and the little doctor, and the lawyer and doctor glowered fiercely at Hallowes, and the next hymn was announced in order to restore harmony.