Maritana Fancy Dress Ball.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 922, 12 September 1896, Page 16

Maritana Fancy Dress Ball.

Ouu report of this successful function and also a page of illustrations dealing with it have been crowded out of this issue. They will appear next week.

Chevalier Kontski, a gifted musician and Court pianist, to the Emperor of Germany, will Bhortly give a series of recitals ia Auckland. It baa been written of him that as a composer and conductor he takes the front rank, having composed over three hundred pieces, including sonatas, trios and quartettes, symphonies, oratorios, masses, "operas, etc. When he is gone there will probably be no living man capable of 3howing the .world how Beethoven played his own music.

— Who is the Parnell young man (and gosling broker) who cleared out for 'Frisco on Saturday last and let his friends in badly? Oh, those cheques. And all on account of woman, lovely woman. Everybody knows that luck is a freponderating quantity in horse-racing, t does not matter whether one's connec tion is in owning, training, or simply punting. And an intuitive perception of this fact in the minds of all raciog men is the cause of so. much superstition amongst them. Did any backer dream of a particular horse for a particular race and not back it? The man most averse to such superstition would not be easy in his mind until he did so And not only his money, but that of his friends, would go on the horse of his dream. I know a man who dreams regularly vivid dreams of winning horses, and he as regularly backs them — except once, and then the horse of his dream won — the others did not even run. That'B luck — bad luck. The most shadowy of ' ofnceß ' will be followed by any number of race-goers. A name over a shop-window, a minute spot~"on the race-card, even a sou'west wind or a rain-storm will form a point in some backers' minds. And, after all, when 'form ! becomes such a complex article, who shall say that even such apparently idiotic belief in such offices as these and many others are not equally as profitable in the end, where none seem to gain ?

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