People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19268, 3 January 1931, Page 8

People and Their Doings.

More About Rutherford : Championships Are Hard To Win Cricket Psychology And Its Warnings : Far From The Madding Trots.

WHILE TRAVIS AX WORTHY was winning the big trotting race in Christchurch yesterday, Mr E. X. Le Lievre, who imported him from America, was engaged in starting another kind of race. Mr Le Lievre was with a companion on the boulder beach at Children's Bay, Akaroa, opposite the starting point of the rowing regatta events. His first knowledge of Travis Axworthy’s win was when the news was shouted from the official launch which followed the progress of the rowers. Mr Le Lievre received the news with smiling satisfaction. This well-known importer and breeder of trotting horses added to his fame when he bred Great Bingen and Peter Bingen, whose sire and dam he imported from America.

si? W O n THE EVE of the tennis championship final the winner, A. C. Stedman, was somewhat nervous, remarking to a friend that merely to be a finalist was “ a chance of a lifetime.” And so it is, because in the last twenty years only thirteen persons have held the men’s title, and in the same period only twelve women have held the ladies’ singles. Stedman is only the second Aucklander iri the history of the game to hold the title. Many first-class players have tried year after year to secure this greatly coveted trophy, and have never got their names even on the honours list in doubles. This was the case with I. A. Seay, who, until this year, when he shared the combined and men’s doubles championships, did not figure on the honours board at all, except as boy champion in 1920.

3$ 52? QMIE only two persons at this year’s tennis championships who started and ended the tournament with titles were Angas and Miss Andrew, of Christchurch. Angas dropped the singles, but gained the men's doubles championship, and Miss Andrew lost the ladies’ doubles and won the combined doubles.

Miss Nunneley’s name occurs as the winner of thirty-two New Zealand championships—in thirteen consecutive years as singles champion. Her trophies have been incorporated in a casket that is being competed for to-day by ladies’ teams from Auckland and Wellington.

<§Q3 WRITES:—I liked your appreciation of Warne Pearse on the tennis courts. He is a wonderfully happy addition to any team, and always welcome. He’s so helpful. Many years ago I was scheduled to report the New Zealand tennis championships in one of the secondary North Island towns. I didn’t know anything about tennis. But Warne Pearse and others took me

under their wing, and my paper published very fine reports of the play. I remember Pearse coming to me to tell me in what matches he would be umpiring, and offering to describe the play. Other honorary contributors to our columns that week were Messrs Chris Aschmann, Harry Parker, J. C. Peacock, C. J. Dickie, A. G. Wallace and F. M. B. Fisher. They did the work, and I got the credit. $ 3? BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES dealing with Lord Rutherford usually start with his entry into Nelson College and forget to mention Havelock, a tiny township at the head of Pelorus Sound, where there are still a number of people who can boast of having attended primary school with him. The same school building, though it has recently been slewed round to catch the sunshine, is still in use, and the frieze of lettered panels round the top of the walls commemorating the achievements of past pupils in the *field of scholarship bears the name “ Ernest Rutherford ” many times. The Rutherford family, who lived in Havelock for a number of years, were not in a position to help their brilliant son financially and his school and college years were not the comfortable period of more fortunately situated young people. ® interesting* comparison of the two college contemporaries, Rutherford and Erskine, appeared about seventeen years ago in an article in a Christchurch paper entitled “Twenty Years After," by a Tinline scholar. “ Of the two," the writer said, “ the observer might have been pardoned for prophesying the greater career for Erskine, whose faculty for bridging gaps in a theory and for reaching a rapid conclusion was always strikingly apparent. But Rutherford was showing then the uncanny patience and inflexible determination that . have since won him so high a position in the scientific world. Perhaps the faculty that has contrbuted most to his fine achievement, apart from his untiring energy and unusual mental gifts, has been the ability to ignore unessentials. Few men can resist the temptation to dally by the wayside, and pluck an attractive flower, or chip a strange rock, but Rutherford seems to have had his eye always fixed on the track. Erskine chose the practical rather than the theoretical side of science, and sought the workshop in preference to the laboratory, and his labours for that reason have carried him out of the limelight. The other course might easily have taken him into the ranks of the great discoverers."

HABIT, constantly indulged in by

schoolboys, of carving one’s name on the classroom desk, is never regarded with a tolerant eye by the educational authorities. But time, and the prestige gained by the owner of the initials, have certainly mitigated the crime in the case of Sir Ernest Rutherford. A certain desk was once, and maybe still is, proudly pointed out by pupils of Nelson College as the desk on which .Sir Ernest had wrought the damage “ that he would never have dreamed of executing on the dining-room table at home," as the authorities delight in saying. But, dark rumour says, the “ E.R." graven deep on the desk’s face was placed there many years after Sir Ernest’s departure from the school by a plotting youth. Who knows? $p QF 9 y QRICKET PSYCHOLOGY is worth studying. Almost anybody at Lancaster Park yesterday afternoon might have scented danger after Roberts was dismissed and Page joined Talbot. There were long consultations in the field; Lowry scratched his head; the ball was finally thrown up to a new bowler; and the stage was obviously set for a desperate effort to separate the two batsmen who were responsible for Auckland’s downfall. It was about twenty minutes before time, and if ever the occasion called for restraint on the part of the batsmen and an utter disregard for runs, it was now. And Talbot, facing up to the new bowler, went for a swipe and was clean bowled. For once the net had been set successfully in the sight of the bird. sg QVER 500 trophies were exhibited recently at the annual reunion of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves held in London. The trophies represented all the activities of the Volunteer Reserve, and included the raft used by Lieutenant-Colonel Frey berg, V.C., when he swam ashore and placed flares close to the Bulair lines on Gallipoli in April, 1925. For that feat Lieutenant-Colonel Freyberg earned his D.S.O. He won the V.C. in France. The exhibition recalled memories of Antwerp and various phases of internment in Holland. There were the replica of “ Drake’s Drum," used in many actions in France and marked by many bloodstains, a piece of Vindictive’s funnel after the engagement at Zeebrugge, a Russian ikon presented by Russian officers to their commander, exhibits recalling the beginning of the Volunteer Reserve, training at the Crystal Palace, the general activities of the Reserve, and “after the war."