Here and There

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 1, 4 January 1908, Page 33

Here and There

Pedestrian President. President Roosevelt shows an increasing partiality for the strenuous life, says an American paper. Since his return from his Louisiana bear hunt he has amazed every one by his powers of physical endurance. The secret service detectives who form the President’s bodyguard when he leaves the White House are thoroughly exhausted. On two afternoons Mr. Roosevelt went for a thirty mile walk to the intense disgust of the two rather stout detectives who happened to be on duty at the time. Mr. Roosevelt celebrated his forty-ninth birthday by walking twenty miles in a heavy rain, while the detectives plodded sulkily behind. <»<?>«> Miser’s Strange Will. A strange will was left by an old man named William John Watson, at Portadown, Co. Armagh. Fifty years ago he emigrated to Australia, and made a fortune of over £ 10,000 there. A few years ago he returned to his native town, and has since lived the life of a miser in a small three-roomed house, where he was found dead. His will leaves the whole of his property to the torvn of Portadown, for the purpose of providing healthy recreation for the people, but he bars football or race-rowing. The will further provides that the urban council shall, out of the interest, have a dinner every five years, the expense not to exceed £ 1 per head. At each of these dinners the will is to be read publicly. <S> <S> «> Reformed Gambler. A white-haired, benevolent-looking, old man, Mr. John P. Quinn, an American ex-gambler and card-sharper, gave a startling demonstration at the Cannonstreet Hotel of various gamblers’ tricks, remarks a recent London paper. His object was —as member of the International Anti-gamblers’ League—to expose the tricks by which he made a fortune some years ago. Standing quietly at a table, a picture of virtuous old age, he showed how the accomplished gambler can make money at the expense of people who are foolish enough to think he is playing fairly. By means of sleight of hand and a quite mysterious control over a roulette wheel he did several amazing tricks. He asked one of the audience to spin the pointer, and back a particular number or colour, and he offered to give £lOO to the Lord Mayor’s Cripples’ Fund if it stopped there. It never did. He also made the pointer, when spun by someone else, stop at any colour or number selected. Picking up a dice box he offered £lOO to any one in the audience who could beat him at throwing dice. Several persons accepted the challenge, but Mr. Qu.nn threw exactly the numbers he wanted. “I started gambling when I was fourteen years old,” he said, "and was. as 1 realise now, unfortunate enough to win fifteen pounds straight away at the three-card trick. That gave me the gambling fever, and for forty years 1 never lost a chance of enriching myself at some one else’s expense. ‘‘But one day I realised what a shameful life I was leading, and now no one knows better than 1 do what a fearful curse gambling is.” <s> <s> <s> Golden Threads. Another chapter in the remarkable career of prosperity which has followed the great combination of the principal cotton thread manufacturing concerns, under the title of J. and P. Coats, Limited, ended nt the recent annual meeting, with the announcement that the business is again able to pay its ordinary shareholders a 20 per cent dividend, with a bonus, making 30 per cent in all. The balance-sheet deals in large figures. The net profit amounted to £3,050,125,

and of this sum £500,000 is placed to reserve and £ 854,000 carried forward. The capital of the company is £lO,000,000, and within the past five years the company has paid out in dividends th;- enormous sum of £ 14,375,000, divided as follows: Preference 6 per cent £750,000, preference 20 per cent £3,000,000, ordinary £ 10,625,000. In addition to this large sum paid a-way to shareholders, the company has accumulated a reserve fund, which now amounts to £4,000,000, a dividend reserve fund of £OOO,OOO, and oth >r reserves amounting to nearly £900,000. «><?•«> The Fall of an Empire. The “Century Magazine” begins the publication of “The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill” by Mrs. Geo. Cornwallis West. Lady Randolph Churchill, it will be remembered, was Miss Jennie Jerome, of New York. The most interesting "portion of the first instalment of the ■■Reminiscences" is the description of life in Paris during the days preceding the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. Describing a brilliant little party g’ven by the Emperor, Mrs. Cornwallis West quotes the following remark of Count Hatzfeldt, late German Ambassador to England: “I never saw their Majesties in better spirits than they were last night, and God knows where they will be next year at this time.” “In the light of subsequent events,” she says, “we were much impressed by his having said this, although I cannot believe that he knew much at the time.” The "Reminiscences” are full of little anecdotes of the Emperor and Empress. One of the best is the following: "His Majesty, when describing his Ministry one day, said laughingly: ‘How ean you expect my Government to got on? The Empress is a Legitimist; Morny is an Orleanist; Prince Napoleon is a Republican; I am a Socialist —only Persigny is an Imperialist, and lie is mad!’ ” Describing her first visit to Cowes, Mrs. Cornwallis West writes: “My first ball was at the Royal Yacht Squadron Castle, long since abandoned, but then an annual events during the Cowes regatta week. It was there, in 1873, that I had the honour of being presented to the present King and Queen, and made the acquaintance of Lord Randolph Churchill.” <S> <s> <•> Yard Glass of Champagne. At the annual dinner of the ancient Corporation of Hanley (England), new councillors, in accordance with custom, drank champagne from a glass a yard long. Those who did not succeed in finishing the draught had the remainder poured down their shirt fronts by two stalwart cup-bearers. <?><?> <s> Science Helps the Fainter. Nearly all very old paintings arc badly cracked —a misfortune due to the circumstance that dampness and cold cause the canvas to shrink and the paint to expand. the result being that the paint layer breaks up, a multitude of cracks seaming it in all directions. On the other hand the gradual darkening which mars old paintings, eventually turning many almost black, is attirbutable to chemical causes. Works of art. on canvas are produced with the aid of oils and varnishes, which, in the course of time, turn brown, covering the picture with a more or less opaque layer, beneath which the original colours are veiled. It is a phenomenon of oxidisation, which may be prevented by sealing the painting between two sheets of glass cemented together around the edges. The darkening of the famous picture of “The Last Judgment,” by Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Shape! of the Vatican, is due to an entirely different and rather curious external cause—namely, the incense arising from the altar which for-

merly stood before the fresco. But there are other causes of blackening which have to do with injudicious mixtures of pigments—as, for instance, where a colour with a had base is combined with another colour containing sulphur, such as cadmium yellow or vermilion. Ultimately, through decomposition, the lead in such a case turns to the form of a black sulphide. Thus through lack of thoughtfulness modern painters (far less careful than the old masters) may be said to destroy their own productions in the making of them. For example, Ingres—who, though a great admirer of Raphael, failed to imitate his technique-— has left behind him only one picture that ean last for any length of time. His Triomphe de Cherubini, in the Louvre, which is dated 1842, is in a lamentable condition. So far as the mischief of cracking is concerned, it is a fact worth noting that when the layer of paint is thin it maintains a certain elasticity, accommodating itself to the shrinkage and expansion of the canvas with variations in temparature and humidity. When thick, however, it cannot do this, and consequently breaks. It is noticed that all the old paintings which have conic down to us without cracking were made very thin—a statement that applies to works of Raphael and his pupils, and to those of Van Dyck and Rubens. The Sistine Madonna, at Dresden, which bears the date 1515, shows no cracks whatever. Dr. Eugene Lemaire, the French Academician, says that darkened paintings may commonly be restored in a measure to their original hues by careful treatment with peroxide of hydrogen. When it is a question of cracks, however, scarcely anything can ho done in the way of cure. As a means of prevention, it would be very desirable, he thinks, if artists would paint their pictures upon some substance less subject than canvas to changes —hard wood, or, best of all, sheet metal. <•><?> <t> Slate Pencils. The slate used for pencils is a kind of schist, of so fine a grain that its particles are not visible to the naked eye. Occasional impurities are accountable for “ scratchy ” slate pencils, which, instead of making a soft, delible mark, are liable to score the smooth surface to which they are applied. This kind of stone is largely silica, and its black colour is due to the carbon it contains. Germany supplies all the world with slate pencils, producing nearly three hundred million of them annually. They are obtained from quarries in the neighbourhood of Steinach, Meniningen. Nearly all the work is done by hand, and is so poorly paid that 15 marks weekly is considered fair wages for a man, who, in order to earn this amount, must call upon his wife and children to help him. Though wages are so much higher in the United States, slate pencils are manufactured there to compete with the imported article by the help of machinery. The rough stone is sawn into pieces of a certain size, each of which, when run through a machine, yields six pencils of standard length—five and a-half inches. They cpme out in cylindrical shape, and are pointed by boys on emery wheels. Finally, they are packed in cases of ten thousand, selling fur about 26/.