People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 39, 26 September 1907, Page 28

People We Hear About

■* Father Erasmus Hering, who was regarded as the World's greatest linguist, . has' died at the Landeshut Monastery, near Berlin. He - had been a monk there fifty years aud had an absolute command of thirtythree ancient and modern languages. Cardinal Mezzofanti was reputed to have known seventy-two. An Irish factory girl, Miss Mary Guinan, of Middleton, New York State, is the first woman in America to receive a medal from> the Government for - bravery. At the risk of her life she saved a*n old man from being run over by a train, and, having done so, went home and said nothing about-' it. But some spectators approached the" Government, with the result that Miss Guinan has been awarded the bronze medal for bravery. Next year Mr. T.. P. O'Connor will have completed his twenty-fifth sucqessive year as President of the United Irish League -of Great Britain, and a movement has been set on foot to commemorate the f interesting occasion in some suitable, manner. The suggestion has been eagerly taken up, and no-" one who ' knows the admiration and gratitude entertained by the Irishmen of Great Britain for Mr. O'Connor's services to the Irish movement can doubt that . it will have . hearty support from all parts of the country. King Frederick of Denmark presents the" curious ■ spectacle of a father who has become a King at a later date than his own son. When King Haakon of Norway was lately at Copenhagen, King Frederick is said to have asked him : ' How do . you like being King ?' ' I will rather ask you,' replied Haakon ; ' I've been King longer than you have.' Haatfon was elected "King of Norway by the Storthing on November 18, 1905, while Frederick, his father, did not succeed to the throne of Denmark until January 29, 1906, on the death of King Christian. Dr. Edward Dillon, who was entertained to dinner the other day in the House of Commons by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, is well known as the St. Petersburg correspondent of the ' Daily Telegraph.' He has still greater claims to celebrity on account -of .his profound and intimate knowledge' of Continental politics, and furnishes in his own person a , striking instance of the cosmopolitan capacity of the Irishman. Born in Ireland of an Irish father and English mother, hejvas educated in France and Germany, and .married* a Russian lady. The youthful Lady Beaumont, who kept her thirteenth birthday in July at Carlton Towers, the family seat in Yorkshire, is one oi two Catholic peeresses in their own right, the other being Baroness Wentworth (granddaughter of Lord Byron), who succeeded to. that - ancient dignity last year, on the death of her father. The last Lord Beaumont was not only a staunch Catholic, but also a popular and gallanb officer, who commanded the 20th Hussars, and was, unfortunately, killed by a gun accident in the prime of life, leaving a widow and two little daughters. Gounod was 13 years old when he first informed his mother, a widow with an infinitesimal income, that she must educate him as a musician. Madame Gounod not unnaturally was merely irritated and authoritative. , She had no mind to encourage nonsense,, and ' no desire to see her son drift out of the path of respectable conventional professions into obscure and unsalaried Bohemianism. But little Charles Gounod persisted, aifd driven into exasperated seriousness by the child's persistency, she finally confided her trouble to the boy's headmaster, who promised to quench the undesirable* artistic fire by every means possible. It ended by Monsieur Poirson sending for Charles and asking, good-naturedly enough, if it was true he intended to become" a musician. ' Yes, sir, 1 said the small youth, meekly, ' Tut !' answered the other ; ' £j, musician is a 'nobody.' 'it is not being a nobody to be a Mozart, a Weber, or a Rossini,' replied the boy fiercely, and Monsieur Poirson, who clearly must have been 'rather musical, abandoned the argument without further struggle. .__ ____ _ «_« _

A" flight of colds set out one day, Gfreat ugly things, and flew away, Across the hills and o'er the sea, Determined vengeful thus to be. But all at once these colds grew fewer, Vanquished by Woods' Great Peppermint Cure ; AnS" so they died, all one by one, Their deadly 'work left all -undone.