FLIGHTS OF FACT

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3182, 26 May 1932, Page 6

FLIGHTS OF FACT

SOME INTERESTING INSTANCES. Under the heading of " Flights of Fact" the London Times publishes a number of interesting letters showing how in real life amusing coincidencesoccur. One correspondent writes:— When I was a boy in Scotland a local lady, Miss Mary Maiden, was joined in matrimony with a Mr George Mudd. ' A wag penned the following:— Lot's wife in days of old, For one rebellious halt, Was turned, so we are plainly told, Into a pillar of salt. The same propensity to change Still runs in woman's blood; For here we have a case as strange: A maiden turned to mud. Another local lady named Mary Jane Lemon married a Mr Ebenezer Sweet. The following commemoration l'hyme caused some amusement*. Some curious changes here we meet 'Twixt Mary Jane and Ebenezer; She was turned from sour to sweet, And he became a lemon squeezer! Other interesting letters in " Flights of Fact" correspondence are:— "In the early years the present century the then rector of Hawarden. the late Rev. Stephen Gladstone, had bn his staff a curate named Caine. A few months after the later's arrival Mr Gladstone found that he was in need of another curate, and the most suitable candidate proved to be one Abel, who was eventually chosen. I believe Mr Gladstone hesitated a good deal before making his decision, solely on account of the surname." " In the 1882 roll of scholars elected , to Winchester College it was headed by Edwin James Palmer, lately Bishop of Bombay; two consecutive names were Little and Child. Is it to be thought of that the ' Posers ' should have either degraded Little or (more probably) exalted Child in to have their little, childish joke ? " " On 12th July, 1929, under ' Births,* in your paper, the following names occurred next to each other:—Pease Pudden —a curious conjunction considering that the pudding of that name is always, or used to be, called ' pi>ddem'"