Personalities.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 380, 20 August 1903, Page 2

Personalities.

JUDGE KOTZEJ: SKTK'HE ex-Chief Justice of the TranstfJ'Jb vaal, Mr John Gilbert Kotze, who fjsLs has been appointed Judge for the Eastern Districts of Caps Colony, bas in his time played an important part in South African affairs. On bis father's side he is of German extraction, but maternally he belongs to a family which has been settled in the Cape since 1691. His father was a well-known gentleman farmer, whose estate, at the foot of Table Mountain, was one of the beauties of the environs of Cape Town. Ho was twice Mayor of Cape Town, and alao represented the city in the House of Assembly. His son was born in 1849, and educated at the South African College. Ha subsequently came to England, and in 3879 graduated in law at the University of London. In the following year he .was called to the Bar of the Inner Temple. Returning to the Cape, he was admitted an advocate of of the Supreme Court, and after practising with considerable success for a few years, was appointed in 1877 Chief Justice of the Transvaal. In this position ho sustained for years a struggle with the Executive of the South African Republic, which endeavoured to make the High Court the instrument of its will. Judge Kotz3 withstood this successfully. Two years later, however, President Kruger and Mr Lev da had their way, and Jadge Kotzs was dismissed, and expelled the country. Mr Kotz9 thereupon threw all his influence on the British side, and appealed to the British Government for redress. Hs was then appointed At-torney-General of Rhodesia, a post he is now about to vacate in order ti take up the judgeship in his native colonj.

L9IDT ANNE BLUNT. Mr Wilfred Scawen Blunt and his wife, Lady Anne Blunt, have a home in the desert near Cairo. Lady Aane is a sister of Lard Lovelace, and married in 18S9. She is a quiet, refined woman, with gentle manners and domestic tastes, and is romantically devoted to her clever, wandering husband. Many years ago, at a stormy political meeting, L%dy Anno shielded her husband from the attacks of bis opponents, and flung herself between him and those who were about to bludgeon him. In their everyday life Me Blunt is the predominant partner, and his faithful wife accompanies hiia wherever he goes, ia England, to Egypt, or evßn further afield. When in the desert, he adopts native fashion?, and the Arab style of dress, for himself and his family, and bis handsome, picturesque face lends itself admirably to the turban and white garments of a desert chief.. His favourite interest is • the breeding of Arab horses ; and each year, at the eHd of the London season, there is a sale of these at Crabbat Park, his country place in Sussex, where Lady Anne Blunt dispenses pleasant hospitality in the form of a big luncheon. Mr Wilfred Blunt is an aubhor, and has produced many volumes of admirable prose and poetry.

MB, SCHWAB AND HIS MANSION. The President of the United States Steel Corporation, Mr Charles M Schwab, whose salary is £200,000 a yoar, is building a mansion which will cost several million dollars by the time it is completed. The splendid residence will have for its master an extraordinary man in more ways than one. He has made his mark with brilliant might of brain and energy. Mr Schwab ia but forty years old, and he began life as a grocer's boy at 10j per week. He was made president five years ago of the Carnegie Steel Company, with an interest in the business besides his £IO,OOO yearly salary—as much aa President Roosevelt is getting for taking care of Uncle Sam's family. Last year, when the United States Steel Corporation absorbed the company, he was made president with a salary of £200,0C0. His interest in the business now amouats to some £5,600,000. He has control of 45 000 men. The Schwab mansion adcU another monument to mental industry in America, where a grocer's boy'may become the highest salaried .man in the world. It will be one of New York's show palaces. The block of ground occupied cost Mr Schwab £173 OQO a year ago. There are four imposing facades. The mansion overlooks the Hudson River and a splendid stretch of country. There are to be an art gallery, a chapel, aad a music room surmounted by a tower and belfry containing chimes. A lodge will be built, sunken below the surface so as to become part of the landscape effect. In this.lodge will be located all the. boilers and machinery of the houso. The landscape effect along the Hudson will be especially elaborate. Gardeners from abroad will be called upon to plan for the magnificent lawn—one of the finest in the United States. There is an impressively grand staircase. Truly palatial are the effects throughout the halls. There is a wellequipped gymnasium; there is a Turkish bath system. On the second floor are the principal bedrooms and conservatory, while the third floor is for guests and the fourth for servants. There is a roof garden and also a look-out towe". As for the furnishings, the rarest and costliest of everything that.the artisans of the world can produce will be purchased and placed in this modern Aladdin's palace.

PROFESSOR BRYCE. Mr Bryce, or Professor Bryce, as he is occasionally called, is one of the most versatile men in the public life of Esglond. He has some claim to be called an ' international' within the United Kingdom, for he was born in Ireland, of parents who belonged to Scotland, and his public life began in England. What Mr Bryce does not know, where he has not been, are hardly worth knowing, or going tq see. He has talked with African kings at the council?, has banqueted with the Dyaks, has climbed soma of the highest mountains in the S bates, has been Romanes Lecturer at Oxford, has leen in Russia, and India, and Japan, and knows the Empire even to the Fiji Islands, and since he was a mere youth hardly out of his twenties he baß been writing classics. The Speaker was right when he called Mr Bryce a walking encyclopedia, and he might bsve added that even the * Ency- , cloriclia Britannica' has some cause to be jealous of this distinguished member of the Front Opposition Bench. Tbe honours and degrees which have poured upon him from the Universities and learned societies of the world have become quite too numerous to mention. Mr Bryce married a lovely Cheshire lady, Ashton, whose fatrer, the late Mr Thomas Ashton, was a friend of Gladstone's, and frequently entertained him when on visits to Lancashire.

LORD SALISBURY A WELSHMAN. Questions of nationality are always of interest. Each quarter of the Kingdom claimed Mr Gladstone. Welshman are now asserting tbat the head of the house of Cecil is a compatriot. Mr Llewellyn Williams, the Welsh barrister and archcoalogist, strenuously ohampiOßs the claim that Lord Salisbury is a kinsman. Mr Williams derives the ex-Premier's ancestry from>< charmingly consonantial personage, John Svssant, the father of Sir William, who was * a Welshman on both sides/ and bora near Whitchurch, in. Glamorganshire!