PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

Observer, Volume XXXII, Issue 52, 7 September 1912, Page 4

PARS ABOUT PEOPLE

THE New South Wales Rugby 1 Leaguers were packed into the * commercial room of the Waitemata hostelry on Saturday morning, there to be officially received by the local leaguers. The reception took the usual form of talk from both sides, but a touch of originality was introduced in the references to the mighty Press, Mr Blue, one of the N.b. W. managers, making bitter complaint ot the way the dailies treated the league, both in Sydney and this country. He alleged that the Press was- given to defaming the league game and exalting the effete Rugby game, all of which was denied by subsequent speakers ol both sides, who were of opinion that the League game got as good a hearing as any other form of football. _V nG visiting pressman, a Sydney 'Evening News" gatherer, put the show away pleasantly when he explained that as soon as the public took a bigger interest in the game the press would follow. It is injudicious of a pressman to intimate that the press follows public opinion and doesn t lead it The acrid Mr Blue same some interesting remarks about Jimmy Garcia, the New Plymouth "News" sporting reporter, charging him with naying • been all that was helpful and cautious on the team's arrival in New 1 iyniouth, and with expressing a most uncomplimentary opinion if 'hem a-ter the match. ' Mr Blue seemed grieved that he didn't have an opportunity of vnter- - viewing Mr Garcia, but if the team had had him on the train he wouldhave been fired out of a window. It was no- encouragement for the expression of candid opinion, and most ol those present seemed to feel that Mr Blue had been indiscreet at least, p. W McLean, who is president ot tlie N Z League, made deprecating remarks anent Mr Blue's utterances and handed out soothing words to the Press. Town Clerk Wilson explained the intricacies of playing grounds and exonerated the Council from all intention to block the Leaguers. Johnny Fuller, junior, who has the dignity ol being a Wellington City Councillor, arose to state that he hadn't seen the League game played but as soon as he had he was going to be an out and out supporter of it, and Jimmy Gleeson stood by and said " hear, hear with great regularity. Mayor Parr also spoke. It was rather a dull reception. „ * John Stickley, the old Auckland identity who passed away the other day, will be remembered by old timers as the master of the Home for Destitute Children, which stood on the site now occupied by the Girls High School in Howe-street. He was a highly enthusiastic temperance advocate and a leading light m the Good Templar order. Some busybodies in the days of his conduct ol the Home alleged neglect against him and an inquiry was made, disproving the charges made against his administration. * * * Lady Stout, wife of the Chief* Justice of New Zealand, has evidently completed her job of instructing the English people in the art of managing their country, and is coming back to New Zealand to see if anything has gone amiss during her absence. A daily paper correspondent says she received a very flattering farewell from the Australian and New Zealand Women Voters' Association, this powerful organisation being thus brought to our knowledge for the first time. Lady -Stout has talked rather much, and somewhat misstated our aims, objects and performances, and as a large figure in the front of Suffragettism she has possibly induced further misconception in the mind of the timid and overawed English male. The secretary of the aforementioned Association alleges that Lady Stout " will be greatly missed in England, but her memory will not soon fade away." Which, no doubt, is strictly true. In default pf suffragettism in this country, the lady will probably take up Eugenics as her hobby—that subject, with a few addresses on the English political situation, suffragettism, etc., will supply the papers with sufficient copy to keep the lady in prominence.

Evidently Tommy Wilford has become imbued with Germanphobia during his second visit to the Cold Country, and is endeavouring to stir up strife. He says that our Tourist Department should be prosecuted for describing the Wanganui river as ' the New Zealand Rhine," since that last mentioned insignificant stream is only " a dirty, porridgy-coloured river with mud banks, battlements, towers and occasionally a dry-looking tree. Diplomatic complications are expected at any moment. It is probable that the " Wacht am Rhine" will be forbidden as a National Anthem, and the cablegrams state that the Kaiser is sick—no wonder.

The recent shuffling of teachers and their promotions wrenches a good many educational limpets from their several rocks, and three old Thames boys are transplanted. Alfred Taylor, who has been severed from his Northcote job, which he has filled with credit* for seventeen years, has taught the Auckland young idea how to shoot for nearly thirty years, but the fact remains that previous to this he brought up the youth of Thames m the way they should go. Frank Murphy, who goes to Northcote from Paeroa, is the dark, good-looking son of the late Sergt. Murphy—one time in charge of the Thames police district who was succeeded by Sergt. Gillies (afterwards inspector). Frank has a reputation among Ins fellow domines of being a very good teacher and a fine disciplinarian. He has spent most of his teaching life in the Thames district, and for years controlled the school at Puriri (where thesoda water comes from).

" Davie" Dunlop, who goes from Napier-street to Paeroa, is the " Major" Dunlop of cadets—and a jolly good officer he is. Although he has spent the greater part of his teach-

ing life at papier-street, he was a Parawai schoolboy under the late Mr D. Schofield (lovingly remembered by hundreds of his scholars as " old Schoeydux " —one of the brightest of old-time schoolmasters, and a terror for discipline. Also, he was a Kaueranga boy under the late Mr Horatio Philips, whose sons, by the way, are making a way for themselves in the artistic world and whose widow (for very many years a headmistress at the Kaueranga School) is now living in retirement at Ponsonby. " Davie " Dunlop is a son of the late Mr David Dunlop, one of the best known mine managers of the Thames (Saxon and Alburnia).

The suddenness of Miss Ellen Yon Meyern's death came as a shock to the many who knew her as the apparently and obviously blithe-hearted proprietress of the Old Oak tea rooms ' in Queen-street, and there are many to regret that the genial and clever personality is extinguished, and at the early age of 29. As an artist, Miss Yon Meyern was well known in Auckland and Wellington. A pupil of Mr Goldie's, she devoted her talents largely to Maori subjects, and did small things well, though during the last few years, doubtless owing to the necessity of managing her business, her work was not up to the level of her earlier painting. Art does not suffice to earn bread in New Zealand, so Miss Yon Meyern, together with her sisters, established the artistic little refreshment rooms in Queen-street. As a regular contributor to the Art Society's exhibitions and a painter known intimately to other artists, it is surprising that none of the artistic fraternity, nor one of their established bodies, was represented at the lady's funeral—it reflects rather badly on local artists, even though it is certain that there is sincere regret in all who knew her.

Thomas Ronayne, the Irish gentleman who has been head of the N.Z. Railways for seventeen years, starts the next New Year afresh as a private citizen. Mr Ronayne is a quiet man and during the thirty-seven years he has been in the Civil Service has made so little noise that people have sometimes mistaken silence for inaction. But the Railway service has certainly grown from infancy to youth under his eye and guidance. Since his youth he has lived a life of railway and got his earlier training on the Great Southern and Western Railway, Dublin, at the Atlas Loco Works in Manchester, and elsewhere in a country which has quite a number of lines. Mr Ronayne has always been a keen advocate of sport, and is president or vice-president of a large number of sports -bodies. It is certain that his resignation has nothing to do with the inability of age, for at 63 he is still young and alert.

. News has filtered through of another New Zealander's success in the European art world, the Dominionite in this case being Miss Mina Arndt, who has had one of the insignia of success bestowed upon her in being selected a member of the " Societe dcs Beaux Arts, et dcs Belles Lettres de Paris." It is a fairly notable distinction, as can be guessed when it is mentioned that the committee includes such personages as Gabriel D'Annunzio, the great Italian novelist, poet and dramatist, Anatole Fiance, one of the few and foremost in French literature, the famous artists Dega and Claude Mouet, and Rudyard Kipling. Present writer knew Mina as an art student of the Wellington Technical School, when that institution was more of an art school than anything else, and when the traditions inspired by ' James Nairn were still vigorous. Jimmy Nairn had died a few months previous to Mina Arndt's joining the art classes. She was then a buxom, joyous and eternally energetic little Jewess, with heaps of brains and abounding vivacity, bright eyes and a jolly smile that could make a Wellington winter's day look like sunshine.

There are some in Auckland, more in Wellington, and some who are now working in Europe, who will remember Mina's vivacious outburst of greeting, "Hello, brother; pretty companionable, eh ?" and in remembrance of her gloom-dispelling personality will be glad of her success and will wish her future honours. Mina Arndt, after about two years of varied stud-, ents' work in Wellington, left for England, where she worked first under Stanhope Forbes and then under Brangwyn. She afterwards worked in Munich and Berlin; and evidently learned much to back up her innate talent. Her sister, Mrs Philip Nathan (nee Jennie Arndt), was a teacher of elocution, whom some Aucklanders will remember as having given performances here in assistance of the Auckland Shakespeare Society.

W. C. Buchanan, the daddy of the Reform party (alias Conservative party), and one of the largest landowners in the Wairarapa, is probably a bit forgetful in these latter years, and is apt to lose sight of the "fact that his old-time party has found it necessary to embrace doctrines that were anathema to the Conservatives of the old time past—in fact, he finds it difficult to realise that his _ party now believes in legislation which would have- been stigmatised as "radical" forty years back, but which is now the commonplace of politics. When he got up in the House the other day to remark that the large landholders were not against the Reform Graduated Land Tax Bill and that he "would do everything in his power to encourage closer settlement," he was rather dazed when Mr Hanan asked, "Didn't you say the graduated land tax was confiscation by law ?" and started violently in an effort to remember.

Then he said, "If the honourable gentleman goes back half a century" —but Mr Hanan, with aggravating persistency, said, "No, you said that in 1908." It was in a bemused and crestfallen spirit that Daddy Buchanan said, " However, I shall take up another point," and the Opposition benches grinned. It is annoying when one's brain becomes old enough to refuse new ideas and one finds oneself in company where the old ideas are very much out of date. But Daddy Buchanan can console himself by reflecting that he has been of much use to his party, in the days when its was Opposition, in providing the shot and powder for wordy bp+tles. [ t

John Baillie, when he was a younger man than he is now, ran a bookshop with his brother (now Wellington's chief librarian) in the city of windy hills, and incidentally and in his spare time, he studied painting under the late " Jimmy " Nairn, at the Wellington Technical School. Then he decided to devote all his time to making an artist of himself and went to London but after a few years of student life, he discovered that there were men more brilliant than himself who were not making a " do " at the game, and he resolved to spend his life in assisting merit to make itself known. So he started a small gallery in a more or less obscure street, and as he struck the time when the New English Art Club was coming into notice, he profited, and in a few years became the proprietor of the notable Bond Street Galleries and a benefactor to art.

His New Zealand exhibition of British paintings has done him no harm financially, but speaking to the writer, he said he was just a little disappointed in Auckland's enthusiasm for art, since the attendance at the .Art Gallery during the week past hadn't been equal to the attendance on his worst day in Wellington. He is a big man, and quite able to laugh, aiid he exercised the faculty when reminded of Wanganui *s discovery that there was only ,£IOO worth of stuff in the exhibition that was worthy of the riverside town, and he chuckled at the " criticisms" of the "Herald." It's a great pull in life to have a sense of humour.

Edward W. Burgess, traffic manager for the Auckland Harbour Board, has laid down his job, after serving the Board since ever it was a Board in 1871. In 1875 he applied for the job of secretary and the Board told him he was too young for the onerous billet, so Mr Brigham got it. When Mr Brigham died he applied again. Said the Board, "You are too old." Still Mr Burgess has put up a very fine record of service. The prevailing characteristic of Mr Burgess is his uncompromising method of saying exactly what he thinks. He is exceedingly outspoken and straight. In the days when a game of football consisted of two or three lock scrums (which might last twenty or thirty minutes), Mr Burgess was among the North Shore

heavy-weight forwards, and pulled a weighty oar for the North Shore Rowing Club. There was great football rivalry between Tom Henderson, who was to Auckland football what Edward Burgess was to North Shore, and it is on record that many interesting verbal battles took place on the question of leather chasing between the two champions.

Journalist Harrison, who is at present engaged in coaxing eggs out of several ducks and watching the trees blossom on his small farm in the vicinity of Auckland, looked in the other day to get a breath of printer's ink, and to say that newspaper work generally dragged its victims back again from duck-farms and fruit-or-chards. Years ago, the gentle greyhaired scribbler (night work has frosted his thatch) was chief reporter on Wellington " Times," and married his editor's (J. L. Kelly) daughter. Then for nine years he locked himself up in the scribblery of Napier " Herald " until he got a wicked illness and had to get closer to nature. The bloom has returned to the faded cheek, and the light to the eye, and there is a probability that he will invade some newspaper office or other and again begin the eternal grind. * * *

W. H. Judkins, editor of the Australian " Reviews of Reviews " is dead, of cancer. It was but a short time ago that he, with characteristic pointedness, raked so called " cancer cures " fore and aft, and said they had made him worse. Judkins attracted a very great deal of attention because of his vivid methods and his Purity Crusade in Australia is remembersome, especially when a Avoman's league insisted on crowning him with a wreath of white flowers on a public platform. But little Judkins, like most reformers, apparently cared nothing for public opinion and let anybody who liked laugh at him. No doubt he fought and maimed many abuses nobody else had the courage to tackle. Before he became prominent in Australia he bid for some prominence in New Zealand, and a good many people remember him as a Presbyterian Minister at Dannevirke, in which place he frequently burst forth into an expression of very pronounced views. There was nothing half-hearted about the little man.

Another of Auckland's leading citizens dead is W. H. Smith, head of the firm of Smith and Caughey, clothes providores to Auckland. Besides being a businessman he wa3 one time a City Councillor and an unostentatious philanthroipst with a leaning to slum mission work. He was born in Ireland 60 years ago, and manied in that country, and, like most Irishmen ox that day, went to America to find fortune. As fortune wasn't lying about in heaps for the mere trouble of stooping to pick it up, he decided to come to New Zealand, and landed in this city 32 years ago, and got a job as a draper's assistant as his first billet. There is money to be made in drapery and so W. H. Smith when he was a little over thirty, started a draper's shop in partnership with his brother-in-law, Mr A. C. Caughey, and prospered. The old shop was in Upper Queen-street, and was soon too small to accommodate the business and the ambitions of the partners, who made move in buying out another drapery business.

Then, as the growth of the town caused the firm to flourish like a green bay tree, the next door shop was absorbed into the business, and so it was that the firm of Smith and Caughey, through the acumen of its senior partner, became what it is now—one of the largest drapery firms in New Zealand. Slum missions and such means of giving material and spiritual assistance to the very poor were Mr Smith s hobby long before he left his native Belfast and, of course, when he came here he straightway got busy on such work, and later found the establishment and endowment of missions and rescue homes a convenient method ot getting rid of superfluous wealth. Of his good work in Auckland, the Freeman's Bay Helping Hand Mission, the Central Mission, and the Door of Hope all bear witness in his favour, for by his personal effort, and with his cash, they were greatly helped. Another memorial to his name is the Home lor Convalescents at Ellerslie, but there are many other benefactions ot his that have been done without ostentation and of which little is known. He was one of those public-spirited and generous - hearted businessmen whom Auckland is so fortunate in possessing and he is as deeply regretted as his memory is honoured.

That funny little man, Dr Newman, M P who regards himself as a financial wonder, lately accused Robert McNab, the semi-millionaire land-owner-and bookworm, of receiving money for writing books for the Government. Wherefore Robert arose to say he hadn't had a single postage stamp out of it. By the way, the utility of the little doctor as compared with the utility of the big bookworm is as the

usefulness of a racehorse and a traction engine. Robert McNab has searched the earth for historical data of New Zealand, and has done highly useful work. Dr Newman has done very usefu work too—for Dr. Newman, although at one time he went on a tour with the intention of proving that the Maoris were the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel or something. The adoration of the masses is showered on the little doctor becuse he takes an interest in football and boxing. Nobody sits up o' nights devoting his sleeplessness to worship of Robert McNab, who is certainly doing national work.

George Witty, M.P., is still four years off three score, and theretore it is not reasonable to suppose that old age and gout have affected his temper, yet in the House a few days ago, he actually had the nerve—the breath-taking, stupendous nerve— to wonder "how a man of Mr Herdman's eminence could take a paper like the OBSEEVEE seriously." Why, farmer George couldn't have been more bitter if he had described this journal as a comic paper, and, searching for reasons for George's awfulness, the back of the memory reminds that on one or two occasions in the past George has received sharp pricks from the ObSEEVEE'S lance, just because he deserved them—possibly he has ever since refused to credit the paper with serious intentions, just as a small boy who has been spanked by his father might resolve to treat the old man as a joke for ever after. The little remark arose out of the Hon. A. L. Herdman's complaint that an action attributed to him in a recent Lancing was really Mr Hanan's work, and that in succeeding Mr Hanan in office he merely signed the order prepared by the previous Minister.

The matter was in regard to a reserve which had been practically given to the town of Napier by the Liberal Government and of which it was suddenly deprived when the Reformers took office. It is no great matter, so if it is true that Mr Herdman didn't really mean it we let him off on that charge, and, instead, convict him of negligence in the performance of his duty—he should not have completed Mr Hanan's work without making enquiries. We hope though, that the Hon. A. L; Herdman will be more careful next time and. will meanwhile take the advice of Messrs. Buddo and Isitt and undo the injustice, which he says is really Mr Hanan's fault. Do noble things, Mr Herdman, and do not hearken to the voice of Georgie, for he has a reputation as a laborious joker, whose jokes never come off, he is notto be taken seriously, although his name is Witty.