People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19267, 2 January 1931, Page 9

People and Their Doings.

Rutherford And His Contemporaries : Mistakes That Creep Into A Journalist’s Work : Lord Mayor Who Was A “ Bragging Bufflehead.”

“N IB " writes: “Mention in the cables of the discovery of more ancient tombs at Ur of the Chaldees reminds me of a bloomer a colleague of mine made xfthen he was dishing up the cables of a South Island paper. Cables used to come out even more skeletonised than they do to-day, and my friend was not at that time too well up in the classics. One night a cable came through referring to something that had happened to “ur chaldees.” It was the days before the automatically typewritten cable, and capital letters were seldom inserted by the cable operator. My friend was stumped for a while, but 1 came to the conculsion that the * u ’ must be a misprint, and in the morning the local parson was amazed to read that * Mr Chaldees * had been discovered by some travellers in Mesopotamia.” Up IJp “ JJUT BEST BREAK of the kind I ever saw was made by a young man who afterwards rose to eminence in the trade. A cable came through saying, ‘ body Constance Charles martel discovered under altar chartres cathedral.’ He dressed it up a bit, and it duly appeared in the evening journal, ‘ The body of Miss Constance Martel, daughter of Mr Charles Martel, who had been missing for some weeks, has been found buried under the altar of the Cathedral at Chartres.' At that stage in his career the young man had never heard of Charles the Hammer, evidently. The little touch of ‘ missing for some weeks ’ was priceless.” W W “ JJUT THESE LITTLE ACCIDENTS happen to all young journalists. I well remembered struggling with a skuptschina one night. It bobbed up among a lot of * skis,’ * ascos ’ and other terminations of obviously mid-European proper names, so I prefaced the lot with the usual * Messrs ’ and it was not for some days afterwards that I discovered the skuptschina was the Parliament of Serbia or Hungary, or one of those quarrelsome spots round about that part of the world.”

Up Up U? “A TELEGRAPHIC MISTAKE that struck me as being rather choice occurred in the North Island. The farmer went to town, and in his absence the family wanted a certain key, and wired to thi old man to know where it was to be found.

The wire came back, ‘lnside my old cow/ Naturally, the family thought ‘dad* had gone on a bender. He had an old cow, ‘ Strawberry,* as it happened, but under the circumstances the family decided they would not prospect, and decided to await developments. Explanations showed that his telegram read ‘ Inside my old coat.' The mistake w r as quite simple. In the Morse language of the telegraph coat becomes .... .. - The telegraphist had run the signals for ‘a ’ and ‘t * together like this - - and that makes a * w.’ Sending Morse is all a matter of spacing. Evidently the farmer’s telegram had been sent by a careless hand, and no joke was intended.”

$$ sg? rPHE SWEARING-IN of the new Lord Mayor of Sydney on New Year’s Day recalls some lines by a London versifier, something like a century ago, on the qualities of a good Lord Mayor. At that time the Lord Mayor-elect was Sir Peter Laurie, a saddler, who was said to be the original of “ Alderman Cute ” in Dickens’s “ Chimes.” Some of the verses were as follows: A good Lord Mayor is one who does not need The office gold his family to feed; But rather gives from out his private store, For honour’s sake, as much again or more.

A good Lord Mayor is one who will not strain, Like some of old, to save, and gripe, and gain; And, all forgetful of his festive state, Let the cat kitten in the kitchen grate! A good Lord Mayor is one who will not mix His office duties with his politics; Nor, idly anxious for the mob’s applause. Neglect the just dispensing of the laws! UF IP JpEPYS wrote of the Lord Mayor of London in 1663 in the most unflattering terms:— “ My Lord Mayor I find to be a talking, bragging Bufflehead, a fellow that would be thought to have led all the City in the great business of bringing in the King, and that nobody understood his plots, and the dark lanthorn he walked by; but led them and plowed with them as oxen and asses (his own words) to do what he had a mind: when in every discourse I observe him to be as very a coxcomb as I could have thought had been in the City.”

JN THE LIST of Lord Rutherford’s con«

temporaries at Canterbury there appear some very notable names. Lord Rutherford and Sir William Morris signed the college register together on March 23, 1891.

Mr E. S. Buchanan, whose name is distinguished in literature as the author of several books, and who has done much research on early Biblical texts, also registered that day. Then there appears the name of Mr J. A. Erskine, a man of genius in the same line as Rutherford (mathematics and physics), who won the Exhibition Scholarship a year after Rutherford. Sir A. T, Ngata came a few days after.

(CONTEMPORARIES who did not actually start with Rutherford were Dr Gibson, who entered in 1889; Mr Waller, the headmaster of Christchurch West School; Constance Barnicoat, the authoress, whose married name was Mrs Julian Grant; Mr Bell, who has just retired from the position of assistant Director of Education, and Sir George Julius. Dr Hight entered a year after Rutherford and they had two years together. Then there were Mr Frank Rolleston, of Timaru 1 ; Sir Michael Myers, the Chief Justice; Mr George Lancaster, headmaster of the Christchurch Boys’ High School; Miss Gresson, headmistress of Avonside Girls’ High School; Mr A. G. Henderson, editor of the “ Christchurch Times ”; Mr Frank Milner, headmaster of Waitaki Boys’ High School; Mr S. A. Atkinson, who was killed in the war; Mr A. E. Flower, of Christ’s College; Mr Arnold Shrimpton, editor for Whitcombes; Mr George Weston, the well-known Christchurch lawyer; Mr W. D. Campbell, of Timaru; Mr Johannes Anderson, librarian at the Turnbull Library; and Professor J. E. L. Cull, Professor of Civil Engineering at Canterbury College.

"PROM THE “STAR” of January 3, 1870—Lyttelton Regatta. In the ordinary course of matters it might have been very reasonably assumed that the exertions necessary to recover from the heavy blow dealt by the recent devastating fire, the dispiriting effects of the disaster and the scarcity of “ the circulating medium ” necessarily accruing, would each have been sufficient to put a veto upon the troublesome and expensive measures incidental to a regatta. But it was not so. The preliminary work was entered into quite as heartily as of yore, and the result has been an aquatic gathering equal to any previous regatta in Lyttelton. The public on

the plains will not fail to appreciate this in its true sense, and will heartily echo the often expressed wish —“ Long may Lyttelton Regatta continue to prosper.”