A FIGHTER'S " STAGE-FRIGHT."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7698, 6 May 1903, Page 2

A FIGHTER'S " STAGE-FRIGHT."

The " World's " " Gangway Gleanings," referring to the army debate in the House of Lord 9 says that tho most interesting speech — if one may venture a Hibernianism — was the speech which was not delivered. Lord Lovat was given a genial welcome. But facing Boer bullets is easier than facing an interested audience. He- got. through half a sentence, when suddenly he wag conscious that hundreds of eyes were upon him. He was struck with "stage-fright." Pulling himself together, he made another attempt with the same sentence, got to the same word, and broke down again. The House gave him.' an encouraging cheer. That- was fatal. He could not go on, and he sat down defeated for the first time in his life.

VALUE OP SEA COMMAND. The secret of England's success in the eighteenth century (says "The Times") was sea power. But for command of the sea we should have lost both America and Canada in a single campaign, while we should either have 'been forced to leave India for ever or to have deferred its conquest for many years. It was owing to the arrival of De Grasse, with twenty-eight ships of the line, in the Chesapeake that the French fleet temporarily established that naval superi-, ority w-hich resulted directly in Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown. Thus the greatest disaster which has ever befallen the British Army, and the loss of our American colonies^ was due to our failure to* maintain command of the sea, though the duration of that failure may be counted by hours. ZOLA'S HOME. The late M. Zola's country residence at Medan, which is being sold, as well as all i the "famous novelist's household goods, is ai curious patchwork habitation. Mrs Crawford, in one of her .Paris letters £ states that it waa originally an ordinary roadside cottage, which Zola bought for 10,000 f. Whenever he made a hit with a novel he s laid aside a considerable part of the smb. it brought him to enlarge tins country house and its garden, and to buy furniture. The different additions ill-match with each other, the original parts being small, and the modern additions having wide, lofty rooms. A CANARD. A canard means in French a duck; in English it has come to mean a hoax or fabricated newspaper, story. . Its origin is amusing. About fifty years ago (writes a London paper) a French journalist contributed to the French press an experiment of which he declared himself to have been the author. Twenty ducks were placed together, and one of them,, having been cut up into very small pieces, was gluttonously gobbled up by the other nineteen. Another j bird was then sacrificed for the remainder, and so on, until one duck was left z which thus contained in its inside the ■other nineteen ! This the journalist ate. The story caught oiu and was copied into all the newspapers of Europe. And thu s the " canard " became immortalised. DIVINATION, The recent death of a fortune-teller, famous in her tkne — Madame Mongruel — has drawn tho attention of the French Press to the evergreen subject of divination, whether by the cards, as was th© practice of the deceased diviner, by the hand, by the horoscope, or in any other of tho classic forms of scrutiny into futurity. "Madam© Mongruel en-joyed! the patronage^ of society in the palmy days of the Sefeond Empire, despite the fact that she once made a bad blunder (it must have been while France was yet "en Republique"), by mistaking the Republican General Cavaignao for the fu>tur© Emperor Napoleon 111., andi boldly predicting a , tliTone as hjs destiny. *»As a matter of fact, Napoleon IDE. would! only huve been imitating his illustrious uncle, be"' V? many other great men, who have "been in the habit of consulting professors of palmistry or cartomance, jif he had paid a visit to -thet fashionable seer. Certain it is that the mysterious attraction ' of the* veil, whereof we would fain lift a corner, will not disappear with the death of Madame Mongruel, or any^ other professor of tho ait.