People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 20 September 1906, Page 28

People We Hear About

The Empress Eugenic, in a letter which she kas written to a friend in America, says that only three times in Tier life did she wear a costume that cost her . as much as forty guineas. « Once it -was her wedding dress,- and another time it was -the dress she wore at the baptism of the Prince -Imperial.'. Yet the wife or Napoleon- 111. was constantly blamed for* the luxury of her- Court, and for her personal extravagance. - In his Sydney speech Mr. Devlin paid a glowing tribute of praise to' the late Gtenefal Patrick A. Collins, of Boston. (U.S.), as a splendid example of what an 1 Irishman can become under- free conditions. General 1 Collins, who was Mayor of .Boston three times, is—tohave a monument in Boston Park, as a companion memorial to that of another Irish patriot, John ..Boyle* 1 0 Reilly. Five sculptors have already prepared ,-- designs, three of which have already been submitted to the memorial committee. -> Father Bernard Vaughan, whose pulpit denunciations ?JL ™\ ' smart set ' are about to appear in book - -iorm; has ; already had a good deal of his eloquence put .into print. His biggest book -is one of 359 pages, - embodying the ten addresses he delivered in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in reply \o the_ then Protestant Bishop- of that city, Dr. Moorhouse, 6n_ • The Roman Claims. Before he went to London' Father Vaughan was for twenty years associated with the tfesuit Church of the Holy Name in Manchester. -.._ The engagement of the young Lord Gerard to his cousin, Miss Gosselin, recalls the fact that her home, Blakesware, in Hertfordshire, has been immortalised by Charles L,am,b under the name of Blakesmoar. Here we learn from x him, he spent many happy days of childhood. The modern mansion, built in "the Jacobean style by the late Mrs. Gosselin, some twenty-five years ago, does not, however, occupy exactly the same site as the house made familiar to us by the pages of Elia. The Gosselins are not one of the old English Catholic families. Miss Gosselin's father, the late British Minister at Lisbon, was the first Catholic of his family, who originally came from Guernsey. Westinghouse, a young inventor, was trying to interest capitalists in his automatic brake, the device which now plays so important a part in the operation of railroad trains. Pie wrote a letter to Cprnelius Vanderbilt, president of the New York Railroad Company, carefully explaining the details of the invention. Very promptly his letter came back to him, endorsed xn big, scrawling letters, in the hand of Commodore Vanderbilt : ' I have no time to waste on fools.' Afterwards, when the Pennsylvania Railroad had taken up the automatic brake and it was proved very successful, Commodore Vanderbilt sent young Westinghouse a request to call on him. The inventor returned the letter, endorsed on the bottom as follows : ' I have no time to waste ~on . fcipls.' Mr. Chas. E. Jerningham, whose contributions to 1 Truth » over the title of ' Marmaduke ' are the wittiest things of their kind to be found in the London press, is also a famed collector of bric-a-brac chiefly glass and prints. He has just presented to the nation a rare collection of old prints of St. James's Park and the surrounding district, which was exhibited last year at the Westminster Town Hall. The Kine gratefully accepted the -gift. The prints have now been hung in one of the rooms at Kensington Palace which will be thrown open to the public. The King visited the collection recently, and was "-greatly interested by it, warmly complimenting Mr. Jerningham on his taste and public spirit. Mr. Jerningham (says the l Freeman ') has Irish blood in his veins on his mother's side, which may, perhaps, account for his very un-English type of w wit as well as.,, for his rare personal popularity. ' , :* '' ' Mr W. J. Bryan, in the course of his speech at the Irish Club, London, on July 28, when there was a brilliant . reunion,: at which Mr. John Redmond and Mr. T. P. O'Connor spoke, explains his pedigree in Gladstonian style. He said :— "-I have the. testimony of my father that we were of Irish extraction, . 'although" we , don't know when our ancestors landed, in- America or from what part of Ireland, they came. I Know that I am part Irish. " My name helps me out-in that. lam part English^ My- father's mother's name helps me out in that. lam partVScotch. My mother mother's name helps me out in that (laughter). .But I am- all American (applause). ,JL think my wife not only has some of the blood of each of these countries, but, as she goes beyond me" in nearly every other respect, so in this she traces her ancestry to one more race than I do and mixes a little German with Irish, English, and Scotch.