People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 30 July 1908, Page 28

People We Hear About

The late King of Portugal was a sportsman and a good shot as well, and once at a dinner the rather inferior shooting of an English visitor was praised, and someone said, 'And Lord Gadabout, you know, sends everything he shoots to the hospitals.' The King laughed, and, taking the long black cigar from his lips, he said, ' Naturally, since he never shoots anything but game-keepers. '

Reuter's correspondent, writing, of the meeting of King Edward and the Czar, says : — ' On the stern of the Standart (the Czar's yacht) is a great golden Imperial double eagle, surmounting a red shield with white centre. She is a floating palace, speckless and spotless. Her commander is Captain O'Hagan.' O'Hagan does not strike one as a name peculiar to the Muscovite Kingdom.

The Rev. Father Gleason is the Catholic chaplain attached to the American Fleet, which is due at Auckland next week. Speaking of him, the editor of-the Los Angeles ' Graphic ' says :

After listening to Chaplain Gleason, I do not wonder at a story that is told of him. It seems that when the fleet was getting ready to start from the Atlantic coast every one of the sixteen captains asked for Father Gleason as ship's chaplain. "If you all want him so badly," said Admiral Evans, " I guess he is good enough to minister to the spiritual needs of the flagship ; he will be with the Connecticut." '

The King of the Belgians is very fond of travelling about incognito, and has sometimes met with amusing experiences, He was once staying at a fashionable French watering-place, and, while out walking quite unattended, happened to push against a fierce-looking Frenchman. The latter was highly incensed, and rudely told his Majesty to look where he was going to. ' You are probably not aware,' he shouted, ' that I am a member of the Paris Municipal Council?' ' Dear me, no,' replied Leopold, quietly, ' I offer you my humble apologies, for I—lI — I am only the King of the Belgians!'

Hetty Green, the eccentric old ' richest woman in America,* was thus reported in an interview recently : — ' My son Ned was brought up as a young man should be, according to my ideas,' she continued after a little pause. 'He was looked after right. I was brought up as a Quaker myself, but Ned was sent to a Catholic school in Pennsylvania because we knew he would be under close restraint there, and would not have so many temptations as in other colleges. You know, one time not long ago," she continued with a chuckle, ' somebody asked him what church he belonged to, and he replied, " I was born a Quaker; I was educated as a Catholic, and by profession I suppose they call me a Jew." That last, you know, was because he was making so much money,' Mrs. Green explained with another chuckle.

Apropos of King Edward's visit to the Czar, a story is told of an awkward incident which marked the recent visit of the King of Sweden to Russia. As is usual in Russia, the King was offered on his touching Russian soil, bread and salt in a golden salver. The jeweller had been instructed to engrave on the salver the King of Sweden's coat-of-arms. This artist, however, was apparently unaware of the fact that the Union between Sweden and Norway exists no longer. Consequently he engraved the coat-of-arms of the two countries on the salver, and this mistake was not found out before the presentation was made. His Majesty, however, immediately noticed the faux-pas. He said nothing, but soon after the ceremony laid the salver aside and did not take it home with him. The Russians are in a dilemma, not knowing whether to replace the salver by a correctly engraved one or whether they should let the matter rest.

In relating his impressions of King Edward, says a Paris correspondent, M. Noel Dorville, the black-and-white artist, tells how, while drawing the King's portrait at Buckingham Palace for the Entente Souvenir Album, his Majesty criticised his work with great discrimination, remarking, ' We have rather artistic tastes in my family. The Queen, my mother, drew very well, and I myself wielded the pencil when a boy. Apropos, how do you fix your drawings, Monsieur? I used to fix them simply with milk, and remember that during some of my first attempts I drank the milk instead of using it for the drawings.' artist, in the course of the article, recalls an incident narrated to him by Paul Renouard to the effect that King Edward when a boy came across a collection of old -pictures, and utilised them, making sketches of his own^ on the backs. The pictures in question were admirable, Holbein portraits now on: the walls yf Windsor Castle.