HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16701, 5 April 1922, Page 6

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHINGr BANZAI 1 Tt is said that while the Crown Prince of Japan was m England last Afny ho was entertained by a certain well-known society hostess, and among the attractions at her country residence was a ‘‘ Japanese Garden”—so called. Wishing to give him a pleasant surprise, the lady conducted her distinguished guest to it on the morning following hi? arrival. t{ There, your royal highness,” she proudly exclaimed, “ what do you think of that? Ts it not beautiful f ” “Very beautiful ! said Prince Hirohito. •* Very beautiful indeed, madam.” Then, after a pause he added in all seriousness : “ Certainly you English excel in landscape gardening. We have nothing like this in Japan *’ INAPPROPRIATE. A certain famous explorer is said to tell the following story concerning a visit he once paid to the palace of an Oriental potentate. In the garden wan a steam roundabout, imported by him from England for the amusement of the ladies of his harem. Several of the wives were mounted on the wooden horses, and the organ attached to tho concern was industriously grind- ! ,n £S oiit a tune. The explorer, as he ! listened, laughed inwardly, for th** • tune was that of the onco popular I »cng. “ There’s Only One Girl iji the | World for Ale.” A GAIETY GIRL DUCHESS. Since the days of Connie Gilchrist the Gaiety Theatre ha.s had a charm for the peerage- Afore than one lord has made a musical comedy girl into a lady. T ntil this week, however (writes a London correspondent under date February 9). no Gaiety girl had won a right- to “ the strawberry leaves,” which are. the sign of a duchi ess - The <=pe»l has l*een broken by j Alay Etheridge, who has become a l Ouches* of Leinster on the death of her brother-in-law. Afauriee Fitzgerald, premier peer of Ireland. The dead peer was a son of the famous beauty, wife of the fifth Duke, but he has long been a confirmed invalid, and died in his thirty-fifth vear. When Lord Edward Fitzgerald married Alay Etheridge there seemed little chance of hi* succeeding to the title. He had two brothers alive, both of marriageable ■age. But an elder brother. Lord Desmond Fitzgerald, was killed in the war. and the duke never married. Ro the Gaiety girl becomes a duchess, and her small son, Lord Gerald Fitzgerald, is heir-presumptive to titles -which go back to 1203. The new duke was twenty-five when he married: the wedding took place at the AVandswort-h registry office, close to his wife's home. An election was going on at the time. The crowd of voters heard of the , Gaiety girl who was being received into I the peerage, and the young couple had | difficulty in avoiding a public demon- ! stration. The honeymoon was spent on the Canadian lakes. After her boy’s birth, “ Aliss Etheridge *’ returned to the stage, possibly because, of her husband's financial troubles. Those will now terminate, as it was mentioned during the bankruptcy proceedings in 1919 that the new duke would be entitled to £45.000 a vear. The young duchess is a slim, black-baired woman, whose chief stage asset was her petite prettiness. THE PERMANENCE OF LIFE. ! A curious and striking incident that sheds a light on the permanence of life was given some time ago in tho daily news items (says the “American ”). It was stated that a morning glory seed, old as the pyramids, had been brought to Baltimore and planted in the garden of Airs Champ!in Robinson. Green Spring Valley. The seed was one of twelve found preserved in the hand of a mummy of a girl, which recently was excavated in Egyot. and which dates from the Third Dynasty. The seed was given to Airs Robinson by Airs Samuel Taft, of C’incinatti, at a meeting of the Garden Clubs of America. When the mjtmniy was brought to this country ten of the seeds, which had been hidden away in a tomb for nearly 5000 years, were planted. All of them germinated and flourished, and when the plants brought forth flower* the horticultural world had the surprise, of its life. Small blue morning glories they were, evidently the favourite flower of a little Egyptian maiden, in whose hand the seed had been placed for planting in another world. When the seeds were distributed and planted horticulturists ridiculed the idea that anything would ever come of the venture, and declared that no dependence could be placed in seed more than one year old, much less 5000. THE MORNING COLD BATH. The cold bath in the morning is n social fetuih that makes two clear divisions of mankind—the thoroughly virtuous who do not shrink from the full rigours and the T.aodiceans who play with the hot water tap. As a custom it may be peculiarly English, but one hears less of a vanation of it that has respectable authority. Benjamin Franklin, while representing the American colonies in London, wrote ir. one of bis Informing letters to a French correspondent that the “ shock of cold water hath always appeared to me as too violent, and T have found it much more agreeable to my constitution to bathe in another element —I mean cold air. With this view T rise early almost every morning, and sit in inv chamber, without any clothe* whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, cither reading or writing. The practice is not in the least painful, but. on the contrary. agreeable: and if T return to bed afterwards, before T dress myself, as it sometimes happens. I make a supplement to my night’s rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined.” Franklin was sixty-two at the time. He had still to live twenty-two of the most active years of his extraordinary career, so that in bis case cold-air baths seem to hare done no harm.