People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 28 April 1910, Page 668

People We Hear About

Mr. P. J. Dillon, a well-known and prominent Queensland Catholic, has been appointed secretary to the State Agent-General in London. Mr. W. J. Denny, at one time editor of our Catholic contemporary, the Adelaide Southern Cross, retains the position of senior member for Adelaide, topping the poll with 10,324 votes. - Canon Gadenne, of the diocese of Cambrai, is generally acknowledged to be the oldest priest in the world. The Canon was born at Lille in 1806, ordained in 1832, made Cure of Raches in 1846, and has-still charge of that parish. This shows the venerable priest to be 104 years old. In recognition of his share in the success of exactly determining the reappearance of Halley’s Comet Mr. Andrew Crommelin, of Greenwich Observatory, is to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Oxford University. Mr, Crommelin is a Catholic, and is a native of County Antrim, Ireland. Dr. Goldwin Smith, who is recovering from a serious illness, is 86 years old. For a long time he has been one of the most widely known men of Canada, and his home in Toronto has been an intellectual centre. In England he is ranked among the great men of the nation. He was the tutor of the present King of England. He was personally antagonised by Disraeli, and counted as a friend Lord Palmerston. He has been a leader of thought, and often in a different line from other Englishmen. It appears (says the Dublin Leader ) that two Irish politicians are tattling about one another’s wealth; at least Sweet William’ stated that it was Honest John’ invented the story of William’s fabulous wealth.’ William now says that his income is little more than half that of Dillon’s. William says that to his own knowledge John Dillon is the richest man in all Connaught. We all know that Mr. Dillon is a man of large money bags, but it is news to us that he has nearly twice the income of Mr. O’Brien. However, in a case a fresh General Election is precipitated shortly, it is well for the Party to have an extremely wealthy man like Mr. Dillon in their ranks. Mr. Andrew Fisher, the prospective Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, worked in an Ayrshire coal-pit from the age of thirteenhis father and brothers were colliers he comes from a collier’s family in a colliers’ village of Crosshouse, near Kilmarnock. The pit is one of many small pits in the neighborhood, worked on a limited scale for generations. At twenty-two he came to Queensland. On his arrival in Brisbane he looked round the Ipswich collieries, .then got work in pits at Wide Bay—always striving for more freedom and better wages. At Gympie ho lost his miner’s job in a strike. He qualified as mining engine.-driver at £3 a week, and became president of the Engine-drivers’ Association. Then he was elected, senior of two Labor representatives, to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1893. In 1896 he was defeated, and went back to mining. In 1899 he was again elected, and held office in a short-lived Labor Ministry. In 1901 he was elected to the Commonwealth Parliament, as representative for Wide Bay, and again in 1903 and 1906. He held office for four months as Minister for Works in the Watson Cabinet, 1904,- and as Prime Minister for six months, 1908-9. - ’ Our Catholic contemporary, the Southern Cross of Buenos Aires, referring to the death of Mr. W. Bulfin, whilst on a visit to Ireland, says:—William Bulfin was a remarkable figure in Buenos Aires. Physically and mentally a giant, he was a man who would call attention among thousands. His bright smile was familiar, and his ready wit was proverbial. Gifted with a keen sense of humor, he had the faculty of winning laughter from others, and in every social gathering which he attended he was the centre of a joyous circle. A powerful writer, he would undoubtedly have won fame in the higher walks of literature or in journalism in such a country as the United States, where there are millions of readers and where his articles and stories won unstinted praise from the literary critics. As it is he had, indeed, won world-wide celebrity, for his name is known wherever Irishmen are to be found. Pew writers have his facility of expression, his originality, his picturesqueness of style, or his rapidity of judgment in analysing a situation when writing the articles of the day. Varied were the gifts of our dead chief, but his time and energies were absorbed by the work of the Southern Cross. He was a poet as well as a journalist, and his knowledge of European and American literature was extensive. Endowed with a marvellous memory, he was a veritable encyclopedia of information. It was often said of him that he knew everything.