"Pars" about PEOPLE

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 920, 29 August 1896, Page 18

"Pars" about PEOPLE

Captain Kbzeg, of the German warahip Falke, now here from Samoa, is a tall, rednosed Dentscher fighting man, and looks as if there was 'no humbug ' about him. But when he goes up in state to visit the Mayor and our own dear P. A. P., with his glittering uniform on, he is as mild and suave as any 'Johnny Crapaud,' and has quite a taking way with him, which reminds us of Johnny Gordon. When at Samoa Captain Krieg used to lord it over the Apia re3i'dents, and it was a practice of his to send an armed patrol ashore daily to prevent the local police arresting any of the Falke's crew for drunkenness or disorderly behaviour. Captain J. M. Syms, who has gone to Launceston, Tasmania, with the intention of settling there with his family, was for many years connected with the s.s. Maori. Captain McGregor, with commendable enterprise, has now become the owner of the Maori, and intends to run her in conjunction with the s.s. Eose Casey in the Matakana and Wade trade. No doubt, the Maori will still prove as popular as of old under her new ownership. The Taranaki petroleum bore people are never content. They have been boring to get oil until they got down 2,000 feet at Motnroa ; then they : Btruck oil.' Now they are growling because the oil burst up suddenly and burnt their derrick, although it has now proved a paying well, as the oil flows np instead of naving to be pumped. There is a fortune or two in that oil well. Wonder if E. M. Smith has a share in it ? We expect, though, that he is too much wrapped up in his ' virgin ores ' on the sad sea-shore. In the near future we may expect to hear of some ' oil kings ' after the American pattern down Taranaki way.

A guileless correspondent, who made a trip from Napier to Auckland in the Union Company's larawera, is so overjoyed at the fact tb&t he wasn't drowned on the way, that he writes to the Star to say how nice everyone was on board. ' The ship's company all seemed to take pleasure in doing their work well, and on the Tarawera I never heard an ugly word, much less an oath.' And the ' valued correspondent ' then somewhat irrelevantly concludes : ' I say, "Advance New Zealand." ' We are pleased to hear that the officers of the Tarawera didn't swear in that passenger's presence, but it hardly follows that they never use a ' big, big D ' under any circumstances. Anyhow, what does a passenger know about it ? The captain is not likely to go round cursing all hands while the passengers are within hearing. Ask the erew — or course not of the Tarawera. But we fancy that we have heard some good solid curses come from the first mate on the focal-head of steamers coming alongside the wharf, as well as from the skipper on the bridge, at somebody's slowness or awkwardness, which would have turned that nice old passenger blue bad he heard ihem.

We see that Mr William Casaen, the well - known Government surveyor at Hamilton, has had the misfortune to be appointed a J.P. He has oar sincerest sympathies. Oscar Wilde is described as 'a mental • and physical wreck.' A visitor to Beading. j prison had an interview with him recently. ' I feel,' said the unhappy prisoner, *a» if I were in a tomb, and my brain is getting: weaker and weaker every, day.' ' I am strongly convinced,' says the visitor (Mr R. H. Sheratt), ' that Wilde will either die before his sentence expires or become insane.' M.H.E. Hogg let off a double barrelled ball in the House lately by telling the Opposition that it had ran away from the Liberal fire, thongh ' a great deal of that fire was chaff,' and he went on to speak of the Opposition benches 'filled with absentees.' And Hogg is a Scotchman ! | The frequent ' indisposition ' — to use the j euphemism commonly applied by the j charitably-inclined and people in high life — ! of three or four members of Parliament,ba» been a matter of much remark in Wellington this session. Last week it broke into open scandal, when one Southern member i had to be shipped off home by the Hinemoa with, it is said, a man in special charge of him. When leave of absence was sought for him ' op the ground of ill-health,' the Temperance Party strongly opposed covering up his little weakness in this way.and moved to strike out the ground altogether. So much feeling had been excited in the matter that rather than risk carrying the amendment, Premier Seddon got the debate abjonrned. But, as we say, this is only one of several cases of Parliamentary scandal that the Wellington public have been talking about this session. Here is an extract from the first letter written to friends at Home in the early days by the late Sir Henry Parkea, immediately after he had landed in Australia as an immigrant : — ' I had but two or three shillings when we got to Sydney, and . . . the 41b loaf was selling at half-'a-crown 1' l Poor Clarinda in her weak state had no one to ■ do the least thing for her . . . and was obliged to go ashore with her new-born infant in her arms, and walk a mile across the town of Sydney to the miserable piace I had been able to provide for her ... a low, dirty, unfurnished room without a fireplace.' ' I had but threepence in the world, and no employment. For more than two weeks I kept beating about Sydney for work ... At length, being completely starved out, I engaged as a common labourer with Sir John Jamison.' Parkes in his youth worked amongst the clay in a brickyard. Sir John Millais's death recalls an old and romantic story about two distinguished men. It isn't everybody that remembers that Lady Millais— an able woman and the source of some of her distinguished husband's greatest inspirations — was first of all the wife of his bosom friend John Buskin. As a girl of eighteen, she was married to the great critic and philosopher — against her own wishes, it is said, and on account of the insistence of her father. Very soon it became known that Raskin, for reasons which can hardly be discussed here, ought never to have married at all. Then it . dawned upon Ruskin that this artist friend was over head and ears in love with the lady. With remarkable self-abnegation he agreed to a nullity su't being entered, with the result that the marriage was declared null and void, and the former Mrs Ruskin became Mrs Millais. The arrangement was perfectly friendly, and Ruskin has remained on intimate terms with his artistic friends up to the time of his death. A cousin of Sir John Millais is a draftsman in the Public Works Department at Wellington. The captain of an American barque which is in these waters at present, and which is a well-known visitor to Auckland, has a funny little son who is a miniature deep-water sailor. The little fellow is only about two feet high, but when he appears on a rainy day got-up in a suit of oil-skins, with sou-wester and all, and a board-ship roll of his infantile legs, he looks a comical little sea-dog. Then to hear him speak one could imagine he was listening to a hoary old shell-back from Massachusetts 'Yes, sir, by the etarnal Jeerusalem,' pipes out the miniature Tarrybreeks, ' we've made a raal snortin' tug this time, you bet ! Yer onghter seen the old hooker carry her royals through it, blowing like Hades, air I By gosh, we can sail, we can ! We air a live ship, we airl' Then the small 'un asks his ' dad ' in a real ' downcast ' tone of voice for a ' chaw of fcerbacker," and rolls away on his squirting way rejoicing. He knows something about ships, too, does this liliputian sailor-man, though he's not ' more'n seven,' yet he knows how a jibboomis rigged in, and what a ' bo's'n's chair ' is, and he is very knowing on the abtrnse questions of sky-sail-yards and ' bowing down the tack,' and at present he says he's taking lessons from the ' ole man ' on the interesting subject of ' working up' the crew's 'old iron,' with practical | illustrations. We guess he's a chip of the old block.

Frank White is off to London again with more mines to float. F. A.'s name ought to be a guarantee that there are no 'wild cats ' amongst them. John Ormßby, of Waikato, talks of contesting the Western Maori electorate. There ia no more popular half-caste throughout the King Country, or a man more trusted, than John Ormsby. He speaks far better English than many a white man, and he is a regular rangatira amongst the Ngatimaniapoto. John would make afar better M.H.R. than many of our addle-headed paJceha legislators. Bishop Stuart, who quitted Napier some time ago to take up missionary work in Persia, is possibly sorry now he didn't do his missioning work in Maoriland. As the result of the hubbub which followed the assassination of the Shah (says the Christchnrch Spectator) the bishop is a prisoner, and sees no immediate prospect of being anything else. Captain S. H. Burningham, who died the other day at his Lake Takapuna residence, was one of the veterans of the Crimean war. He was extremely deaf, the tremendous cannonading at the bombardment of Sebastapol having destroyed his hearing when he was a young officer in the navy. He was for some time in H.M.S. Eetributiqn, on board which ship the Duke of Cambridge was for some time during the Crimean war, and he was a fellow midshipman with Admiral Lord Charles Scott, who, on his visits to Auckland, always ' looked up ' his old chum Burningham. There is ' trouble in the amen, cpjrner ' inßeresford street Congregational Church. The choir again, of course! It's always those church choirs ! In this case, several members of the choir have left, and the organist has resigned. The latter seems to have justice on his side, for it was purposed to cut down his • screw ' from £25 to £15 a year, in order to increase the pay of the new conductor of the choir. Hooton didn t see the force of banging the organ three times a week for a paltry £15 a year, which the Beresford street people will now have to offer to some other musician who doesn't mind being ' sweated.' Captain A. B. Turner, Government road engineer in the Wellington district, was in Auckland this week. Turner is a whitebearded veteran of the sword and rifle as well as of the theodolite, for he took an active part in the Maori war, particularly in the Bay of Plenty and Hot Lake's country between 186(5 and 1870. For some time he hunted Te Kooti with the native contingent, but never succeeded in getting ■within ' cooey ' of that wily warrior. After that he was engaged surveying down Kotorna way, and in 1874 he drove the first buggy over the new route from Tauranga to Taupo, the late Mr C. 0. Davis being with him. Some more changes in the New Zealand Times (Wellington) staff. To strengthen the reporting division, Sub Editor Nolan, arst of our own Herald, resumes his old position of chief reporter, and he will be succeeded in the 'sub's' chair by Editor Hornßby, of Napier and Christchurch celebrity, where he has of late years been notable as one of the chief of those who unmasked the rascalities of the arch hypocrite and (worse) Worthington. Dr. Hatherly, of Wanganui, one of our Crack chess players, wa9 beaten in a telegraphic game the other day by young Sexton, of Woodville. Whereat a Woodville rhymester gets off the following rather Bmart l judy spree ' : — 1 Thus it happens in the game of chess, As in life's more serious play, The cleverest doctor in the end To the sexton must give way.' An Aucklander who died some time ago, and who was for a considerable time employed as storekeeper by the Auckland Harbour Board, found his wife in a peculiar way. He was once at Fiji, prior to going up to the Line Islands, when he met a young lady from Sydney with whom he was very much struck. He asked her to marry him, but she replied that she wasn't inclined that way. She had a sister in Sydney, however, who might, be matrimonially inclined, and she showed the trader the sister's photo. He decided to have the sister, on the strength of the sunnicture, and sent a message by the young lady to Sydney asking her, though he had never seen her, to come down to the Islands and marry him. When the Sydney girl got the message Bhe was nothing loth, and promptly took passage in one of Henderson and Macfarlane's schooners to the little atoll in the Line Islands where her would-bo husband was trading. He came on board ; there was a business-like greeting between the queer lovers who had never until then met, and they were married at once by Captain Oblsen, who was in charge of the. vessel Then the new mated couple went ashore to spend their long honeymoon amongst the niggers. This surely deserves to rank in the list of romantic marriages.

A correspondent, • H. J.F. Graf ton Road, writes ns in a philosophical stiain in" connection with the Czar of Russia, the Government steamer Hinemoa, Martini-Henry rifles and other topics equally closely allied. He Bays :•— • I notice that the press and the public are lamenting over what they are pleased to term the extravagance and waste of money occasioned by the prodigal use of coin during the Czar's coronation festivities. And also over the vote of 12,000,000 francs (or rather pounds sterling according to the invariably mangled telegrams as published by your contemporaries) to be expended during-, the Russian's visit to Paris. For my part, I fail to see why a circulation of money should be termed a waste, provided always that the coin so handled Bhall.be entirely retained amongst the people from . whom it is drawn, no matter whether the object be the turning out of ironclads, the building of cathedrals, erection of pyramids, maintenance of armies, or the manufacture of fireworks and illuminants ouly to be employed for a short hour to catch the eye of the mob or to serve as a grovel to His Majesty of Russia. Where a waste .of the nations substance does come in is when.for instance, the Government of a deeply indebted country gives an order to outsiders for a £35,000 yacht, the said vessel to be em- j ployed for taking the Ministerial Dicks and Dinahs, 'Arrys and •Arriets out for an airing. Another leakage from, our public purse was occasioned by the replacing of the Snider rifles by an ancient pattern of the Martini Henry.' No doubt anything that will drag the coin out of the autocrats and plutocrats of the earth is a good thing, for they have no right to be possessed of such sums of money. Rockfeller, the New York millionaire, is worth £25,000,000, which is more than he could spend in a couple of hundred years. Cannot some device be invented for quietly relieving such gentry of their surplus gold? We don't mean dynamite bombs, of course, or nitroglycerine or anything of that sort, but something less demonstrative. As for our £35,000 yacht, that is a clean case of needless extravagance, for the Hinemoa is quite good enough for the work for some years to come at least. Our legislatois and Ministers, however, think she is not quite luxurious enough ; the velvet cushions are not velvety enough and the carpets not thick enough for our Ministerial Sybarites. By-the-way, what are the Government going to do with the Hinemoa ? Sell her for old iron, perhaps, or for one-tenth of her value, like the Stella ?