DEATHS HARVEST.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7203, 14 September 1901, Page 7

DEATHS HARVEST.

MRS KRUGER. [FKOM OtTR CO-RESPONDENT.] LONDON, July 26. P.^ath hftstj, i^ ths cpur?e of the last few da^ys, i«B)^ several yrell-kßawTi ch^rao ters from, the stagfr on which they played «' small leafe" Afrs Kruger, Miss Ormerod, R&tti,, Joh.n. Farmer, have -gone to the "Great Beyond." With the old President in hi* loiiety exile, everyone will syuipathis^ wU^ver th#v yie.ws a,a to the war or as«& hi? <wi4W>v- «p feTOSS? ? ee » s J° haye h&a to her husband quite "the Old Dutch/* of C^eviaUe.i*6 ©.nee feusifWis song. "She "was a good wife and an excellent womaja, 93pibf #cc vr^ qiprr^k ar±s that was ex months after our marriage, wax her h^banld'? «\\iogwn of her. "L.W.," : in *.tjfe " Eaily News," explains MrKrugers leaviag fes wife behind by the f«#t that- fw the B&ffe twtfve yeaFai M.TC Kru^er bfl* b#W. a ii^ini to. drossy, oft^ W*W *°t * OT * from h«r- armpha.ir for days, and owud never ha^ risfcfed evep the railway jouraey to. Itelagoa Bay withofofe incurring very seriousiwßa^v#Bm- ?be §n,al patfisrg cf husband «&<* wife is thus; Tttqgdttl tyr v kW 7 ." : " I as>w thepa pajc* oe th* afce^wa piMay 26, ISQGk Vjw* "tfc>. tas* ?jwte^? t«?fc $«• on t& sH»P oJf ¥r?sWleH> Hrn prior to, the '%tftKii ftigfet. *ft M^**^^P ■»*$ L J~ d«nburg, which has ended with the exile villa, at mivers^m. Iw OM moa^ftt^-and only a *t#rt .QfgsJM. $». ipaaii, shook with suppressed sobs, bending down in the im iaymfmv^mi &«. te ?•*&» and, wHh^* Iwfeag ®^ cc more, team*- **» ?i?»:&Hrt> going VNb : Q* his-l»me. &*<* <W qiyjgrtajn future, fleeing bis <&Eft§l« BWBte.'W* owntrr, wfl Obliged $o l<*ff® &S & a gallant enemy — to die." „.,.. "L.W." tells us that >£rs Krflger "was particularly proud of her graiidT^aughte^^ thi"Mi"sses SJoff, all beautiful and highly •ceoanpiished girls, <juite capable to mix in' anj y?&s Kn4 4^wfeg-r«PW.- |t, w^s Net- 1 ti* plgg whom I saw one day m January, ISOO, *efriu>g the news of the Spifrnk<ffiia?^ n*g» & fcer* 'gWvW wfea .■ copious tears at the ofiicial reports , of tfte;; frightfullesa ©f life, on &t top $ /the bleak hill Bear the Tugela, M?s Knwjer was ■weepjpg over British dead that afternoon. ♦ Why must ■ W*. "War W' $&■' esolainied •orrawJuUy to me. ' Wh^t wiU their moth«rs wi wives feti across the s^ when. they: get the sews?' Sisce tfeefl §&> has h^ta; eon and three grandsons hergeM, ,m$ cioye.; the sad news with resignation. - $he.-lav^& h.fr ©Qunt?y a^d.her people,- . aj^^a.MUaii the last monießt peynjad^l tjjajyp^^ h^elpi ■would come to h«r natiou in^aH^eVj peeted menieflt:, 3«t she ne^er. iai^ed hersdfiup in politlos, and Qm:J?W\ Mver cons^lled her on mattera in that \\nt>. -Her ia^enoe throughout was for peace, and one of the greatest problems unsolved 1o her wajs'ths %c% that' Queen Victoria, for whom she bora a great personal admiration, did not apparently have the power t<» stop the war at afly time Ehe thQUght right." Anofter South Afrigan describes Mrs Kruger as a- "^Fpiqal, ignQr^vifc lioer woman j she waa a very good wife, «,B>d made very good jam, and you cannot say more of her tfean y«iU would say of an ordinary farmer's wife-^and less, perhaps, for she, was bom to the life of a pioneer, and had no other experience. Mrs gruger had a I square,, almost «xpresfeionless fact , .butj the . forehead waß broad. Over it was parted ,the .hair, in the style of the old Dutch doll. The ,eyets. were small and sharp, her nose broad, t^« under dip t3iin, and the chin firm," Mrs Kruger'g pp§ caje. in Jife was tp see thftt her hi|sK»nd's clothes were p?or perly aired and his meals cooked to his liking. - She was distinctly nonrprogressjve, and steadfastly refiised. to enter the train which was the first oa the railway to Pretoria." Another story told of her is that when Mr Kruger cftpie .-back from Europe with pyjajßas, ihe expressed strong disapproval of such new-fangled ideas, and- told him to continue to go to bed like a respectable Doppsr in his trousers. The. suggestion that the tall hat which crowned the President's »tatue in Pretoria should be indented; so that the birds might drin>k from the hollow, came from Tante Sanna-; ajrs Kruger is Baid at the time of the Jamesoa R^id to have used her influence with the President on the side of moderation. She was born in Cape Colony, and took part as a child in the Great Trek of 1836, was the. second. wife of the President^ was a niece by marriage of the firsfc wife, and was a Mass dv Plessis, .the descendant of a surgeon who weqt to the Cape in the service of the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth century, and who claiaied relationship— apparently on good grounds —with the family from Armard dv Plessis, otherwise Cardinal Richelieu, has sprung. Mr Kruger's first wife 4ied soon after the birth of a son, who did not surTive fei? infancy, and Mr Kroger marrUtl Annai, the niece. . She bore him sixteen childrep, and there are now over a hundred grandchildren. MISS' ORMEROD. W&erever in the Britisji; Empire ihe . farmer is plagued by pests; tQ^pl^Jit. or beast,- the name of Memoft" €^ie!rod : : '']i , known. She found a new field 'Kf'woni|n'B energy and insight, and pfoyeafvthai ' by careful observation amd intelligent sj)ecialised study, a woman could become tific specialist of world*wide reputation. Her delicate constitution, which necessitatr «>d an out-of-door life, proved a blessing in disguise, for ib lead her from a very early age to devote herself to plant and insect life and to do her reading in Nature's book on tiie farm of her father, Mr George Ormerod, in .Gloucestershire. One .of p ,LM^ss Ormerod's earli^jst recollectioiis/was .= basing ,| placed in a chair to watch gopie : large water grubs, an injured one of which' 'was; much to her agfconishjnent, devoured by his fellows. Assisting her father on his farm amd being of a symps'bh'etdc, nature,. Miss Ormerod discovered Hhat farm kbourera had a vast [fund of knowledge about natural jthenoanjeaja, *»(! that theia- observation only needed direotipg into. the right- chwnell to produce imparbam* eoteo-tifio rasulta. She collected wa& sifted the information she re- 1 ceaved, and ia 1877, by her "Notes fo? Obs«ry«ti<*ns on, Injurious Insects," put anamy -ftilling studecrt^ of nature on ithe right ttfack. HJeT work is (recorded in. iiumei'aus pamphlets, and fly leaves and in her reports the itwetfty-fourtdi, of wibifeh was issued inj M^Fcb 1 l* sb y** l '- The coinfidence that was repesed by agiricajturista in lier judgment wias ipatovodl by tft© faofc that for te© years rhe was the Ironorary consulting entomolpgisrt! to the Roya/1 Agricultural Society and for some tinje <a JectiiTer on agricultural entomology at the Royal Agricultural College, Edinburgh. Miss Onneiroid had only to ba seen io 'her beautiful garden at St •Albans amddstthe flowers sh« tendted with euqbloviiog care to satisfy even the stauncheeb' advocate of the <io4n«stio sphere for women tiiait a wonwira can <bei 'Hiie leading Bjjrtbority on bugs oawi beetles without 'los? ing one whib of her womanliness. The formers' fekaid will t>B missed all over the Empire, PUTTISigQor Piattj, wfyo died in his dg-htieth y*ajr «.t !hie na>tdre itunm, Bergano, last Friday, was a musaoian pur© «und simple, •who never allowed his brMiant axvd- perfect ftecholqiue as a 'cellist *o lead him. astray* in*o ihe region of musical fireworks. His family tod' been musical for ;three generationa before faint, aawj Alfrtido was oinly seven -when, 'thanks 'to *h» guidasice of his gTeat-wiicle Zanebti, he beoamie a member in the string ismim of !hia faith ©r's band. At *€Oi he w«s a tfnfainb ait >tbe> Miten> ConBkvwfcoarie and *t fifteen he made his debirt aa a 'celb eak»»6 before asa J'baliaw Budjanoe. After some years «ra the Oontifcetft i*9 oan» to tooidon in «. memoraWe y^ar, 1844, wh«* those grea* fidd&wis, Brast, Joaohim amd SBMittons also made their bow to the Briitagh puWic. At. the Hanover Square Roopis, whe^a tihe Philbaimwnio cofflogfts ww» #t9» fe*W» 3» made hxs Bnglbh debut, amidi althoujtfb hiis solo

followed directly aifter a. grand' perJorm- ! anoe of Be€*tihoven's Grand Concerto ia G-, with Mendelssohn aib tlie piazio, he evoked the. greatest epitlhu^is^n- on the Amaii with vrhach Ljszt had presented ham. Mep-dele-'soliii 'MmsdLf paid hian tbe complimerat of composinig part of a concerto far viola 'cello aiad orchestra witih the avow&i design of dedicating it to " the distinguished! virtuoso, Alfredip X > io ; M>i." Qa the fprinaition of the. Monday " Pops " in 1859, Piatti beojjn« chief 'cellist, amd comtdnnied so without a break unvt-il 1897, when hjs Hl-h&alth cony pelled ids rejjreme©*. In 1894 a pleasing ceremony took pLace- m thia. Grafton. Gal« leries, when the fiftieth anniversary of Joaohkn and P iatti's fiist appearance in .-LondW was cejlebraitedi with trememdious envthusasin, and 1 Piatti slyly retferred to 'the little Hungarian, boy," wibom he saw in 1844, about :to play the violisji «wid be a rival of 'his own. Whether as a soloist or in. concerted music, says a musjcaroritic, he never departed from- his high ideal. In the maibter of execution, he had a wondterfully perfect teclpiqu*', plenty ot emotioaal power that was never exaggerated or over-emphasised, and a degr.ee of interpretative ekifll that has seldom been .equalied. His ptorasing of such, a melody ia§ '-Schubert's "Aye Mai^a," aimnged by r lfl^s£<K, wias a lesson/ to every ginger who heatt<d iim; and in listening to 'him the glories of the old Italian school of vocalisation could b& realised by •hhose who were born- after that school ceased) to exist. He was a maQ of the widieet artiietic sympathies, and he threw ihimiself as keenly ..imtp ,fihe mu«ac of Bralhrns or the modteinj "composers aa into fchaA of the old Italiaii masters, whose sonatas for tho viol da l gamba and thie violoncello he made so popular in Londlan. Several of ids songs with 'cello pbiigoito have achieved popularity, notably "O Swallow!" and "Awake." JOHN FARMER. If John Farmer was not in. the first rank of mttsiciams, he at all events didi mopa to mate Ecglaiodl a musical nation, than many more celebrated musicians. Bonn in 1836 and educated at Cohurg apdi Leipzig, be musio lor severai years art* Zurich. In 1862 he was appointed music master at Harrow, and 1 for nea/rly a quarter of a cen^ tory caavincied tih© young bairbarians tihat musio hath charms as well as cricket. It was urn uphill fight to- conive.pt the school on the Hill into "a nursery of singing birds,'* for when Farmer first arrived, snobbery was luanpaait, amd 1 a nmsici'aai was lcoktd down, upon with . conitempi. Farmer, in fact, used to r&late with a chuckle that when 'he first came to Haiwyw he believed the nKLSters, nearly all of whom were in orders, mad© the vexed question ■whether they eiliould call on, him a matter of private prayer. But Farmer's tact aoid "energy and the avllicking swing of his school songs soon conquered atl opposition., aTid mad© music one of the features of Harrow. His popularity among the Harrow boys was largely due to his 'taking a boy in flairaiels with an inferior voice into the choir in preference to one witih «. good vx>ice who was a duffer at cricket. He had the courage of his . convictions, for when on one of Ms musical evenaags a boy of Jietwish origin denied that to be the case, the auithcr of " Bawow Sengs " said emphatically, "Don't say that, don't deny the fact, but be proud of belonging to fine most glorious race that God .enetr created." The book of Harrow songs, written by the late Mr Edward Bowen and composed by Mr Farmer, has a world- wide reputation, «nd tihe tetter 1 * ocatario "Chxist and His BoWiers " is not imfrequemltly perfornK'd. In

1885 he became organist of BaHiol College, but it is with Harrow th&t his name will always be associated.