ASTONISHES U.S.A.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17569, 20 June 1925, Page 25 (Supplement)

ASTONISHES U.S.A.

NEW ZEALANDER’S EXPLOIT MADE HIS OWN SED. SAX FRANCISCO, May 20. Americans have been astonished .at the extraordinary activities of John G. Kelley, ail aged New Zealand world tourist, who registered at the Hotel Stewart in San Francisco, while passing through California on his way to Ireland. Mr Kelley, who has reached the ripe old age of ninety-one years, upon arrival at the San Francisco hostelry, made one request, which surprised the staid officials of the hotel. “I want to make my own bed,” he said. “I have been making it since I was ten years old, and I like my own system.” The hotel people agreed, and Mr Kelley went to his room happy. He tipped the chambermaid to let him make up his bed. The nonagenarian, who is a wealthy farmer of New Zealand, made his own bed on the steamer across the Pacific, and when he left San Francisco on the Overland Limited for New York he carried a letter which permitted him to make his bed across the United States on the Pullmans. When he takes the steamer for Ireland lie will again make his own bed. Mr Kelley will visit an older sister. Mrs John Cavanaugh, who is ninetyseven, and who resides at Tecumseh. in the State of Nebraska, and then proceed to Ireland, where, according to a statement he made in San Francisco, he will claim an estate valued at £20,000. This estate was formerly owned by another sister, who died recently. In his youth Mr Kelley served in the British Army, and is said to have narrowly escaped being with the detachment, that was lost in the Black Hole of Calcutta. “San Francisco is the politest city 1 have ever seen,” he said to an American newspaper man in San Francisco “I got tangled up with traffic, and held up my cane, and everybody stopped until I got out of the mess.” He is making the 25,000-mile journey to Ireland and back alone. lie is bachelor, and laughingly remarked: ‘‘No woman has caught me yet. If any girl has her eye on me she’s got to work mighty fast ” The - San Francisco newspapers gave] him plenty of space, and, in addition | to publishing his photograph, showing I his white and flowing beard, added j comic cartoons of him taking the bed- j clothes from the astonished dapjjer ( chambermaid in the hotel.