People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20298, 7 May 1934, Page 6

People and Their Doings .

Captain H. G. Booth, of the City of Tokio, is an Expert Cabinetmaker : A Curious Collection of Junk from a Match-vending Machine : When G. B. Shaw was Tricked.

jyjOST SEAMEN have a hobby of some description with which to beguile their free hours when at sea and in port, and with Captain H. G. Booth, who is visiting Lyttelton as master of the City of Tokio. that hobby is cabinetmaking. He is an expert craftsman, and his quarters furnish many examples of his work. At present his pride is a Louis XIV. table, beautifullv worked in oak It is a model of a 1500dollar table he saw in New York on his last visit, and is faithfully reproduced. In form it is simple, but the top, fitting into slots, lifts off as a tray. In its production Captain Booth was assisted by the chief engineer (Mr J. L. Smith), who prepared the measurements. Captain Booth is at present working on another table. lie has his bench and store of timber on the bridge beside his cabin, and works there most of the time when the vessel is in port. Captain Booth yesterday exhibited three beautiful pieces of teak, parts of a door of the old Rewa, which is now a part of the breastwork in Auckland harbour. The wood is in beautiful condition, but it has also a sentimental interest for the captain, as he once sailed in the Rewa when she was named the Alice A. Lee. The wood was given him by Captain Alic Davieson, of the Marine Department at Auckland. © 39 A LTHOUGH one of the youngest skippers i in the City line, Captain Booth holds a square-rigged master’s ticket, having served his time in sail in the old “ Glenalwyn.” He has commanded ships for the past ten years and has previously visited Lyttelton with the City of Adelaide and City of Bedford. He had the unpleasant experience of being shipwrecked on his first voyage. He was an apprentice on the three-masted barque Matterhorne (Captain Salter), when on November 11, 1909, she was caught by a sudden gale of wind with her goose-wing main-tops set, and went on her beam ends The sea poured in through her patent ventilators and she sank shortly afterwards. The mate, an apprentice and three ordinary seamen went down with her. the remaining twenty-three of the crew crowding into the one boat that had been

floated. The ship was bound from Oregon to Ipswich, and the mishap occurred 97 miles north of Cape Flattery, British Columbia. The crew were two and a half days at sea in the open boat before they were rescued by the U.S. Revenue cutter Tatoosh off Tatoosh Island. The first officer of the City of Tokio (Mr Stephen Hoare) is also a man of distinction. He holds the rank of LieutenantCommander, R.N.R.. and was mentioned in despatches during the war. IJOW MR BERNARD SHAW was fooled by a determined autograph hunter has been revealed by Mr Kenneth MacDonald, of Detroit, who says that he recently made several applications for Mr Shaw’s autograph. but received no reply. Thereupon he wrote asking for permission to use Mr Shaw’s name to advertise a new vegetable cure for digestive troubles, adding that he would accept failure to reply as assent. This finally roused G. 8.5., who sent Mr MacDonald a scorching autographed letter forbidding the use of his name and threatening “ every legal step in my power to restrain you and to warn the public I know nothing of your remedy.” The “ digestive cure ” was. of course, entirely mythical, but the threat of it gained Mr MacDonald what he wanted. 3$ 32? GIXTY YEARS AGO (from the “Star” ° of May 7. 1574) : The Primitive Methodists.—This church is making rapid progress in the province. A new church was opened at Greendale on Sunday last, and one is in the course of erection at East Malvern, while several new districts have recently been opened up ; A clergyman to assist the Rev J. B. Westbrook in the Greendale and Malvern districts is expected to arrive from England during the next month, and two others are expected to arrive before Christmas. A Maori Feast. —At a Maori christening in Hawke’s Bay, there were 500 pigeons, 20 pigs, two tons of fish, 200 crawfish, one ton of flour, 291 loaves of bread, potatoes in galore and a fair quantity of spirits.

r JMIE EXTRAORDINARY LENGTHS to which some people will go to get something for nothing has been demonstrated by the collection of junk which has found its way into a match vending machine standing in Cathedral Square. During the past twelve months there has been dropped into the machine washers, lead dies, tokens such as drapery firms used to issue some years ago as a means of giving discount. French ten centimes pieces, Spanish coins which resemble a penny in size, pieces of tin, discs of cardboard, bent wire and a portion of a metal “ slug ” used in newspaper production. In the collection there is also a good sample of a split penny, backed with lead to make it the requisite weight. Had the foreign coins and the various pieces of meial performed the task they were supposed to perform the owner of the machine would have been defrauded of twenty-four pence, but actually they proved only a source of annoyance to him, as they repeatedly clogged the apparatus. The machine is so finely adjusted that it is only pennies of the regulation weight and size that will operate the mechanism and release boxes of matches. MAN who, by his hypnotic powers, claimed to have cured blindness, deafness, paralysis, and drink and drug addicts, and to have restored lost memories, has died in London. He was Mr William Alexander Erskine, and he has been described as father of the modern practice of hypnotism. He was a nephew of the 12th Earl of Mar and Kellie. It is nearly hrlf a century since Mr Erskine returned to London, after studying in the United States, to practice the healing power of the subconscious mind. He believed that the subconscious mind was in reality the soul, and that all functional disorders could be cured by hypnotism. Under the name of ‘‘Professor Alex” he toured the halls, and at the time of the Crippen case he offered to trace the murderer, but his help was declined.