Ways of Living.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 11 August 1904, Page 3

Ways of Living.

HOBBIES QUAINT AND CUBIOTJ3

ar&SEINTEB is of aU seasons of the feißpMis pursuit of a hobby. The man

who has no hobby is surely missing one of the greatest pleasures of life, for it is a man's hobby which alone can cause him to forget the cares and worries of business, and place him ia a new world, where, he can feel himself to be, like Bobinson Crusoe,' monarch of all he surveys.' Of the variety of hobbies there is apparently no end. One hobby is probably the most costly and at the same time one of the moat beautiful that was ever pursued. The building is a magnificent example of the architect's and builder's art, and would adorn any city in the world, not even excepting Paris. And yet it was built for a hobby, and, moreover, is situated, sot in a Continental city, but on the out. skirts of a small English town in Durham. Erected just outside Barnard Castle, it occupied nearly thirty years la building. It is 300 f- in length, and cost £IOO,OOO. This most beautiful fabric contains the priceless art treasure of the Countess Montalbo, a French lady, who married Mr Bowes, of Btby Castle. All these beautiful pictures and art curios, of untold weath, were collected as a hobby by the countess, who then designed this building for their reception. Unfortunately, she died before its completion, but her widower munificently carried out her wishes, and the building, being completed, was placed in the hands of trustees, who now hold it for the benefit of the public, who are admitted every day until dusk to view these galleries, the result cf a wealthy lady's bobby. At the other extreme of the scale, an old man, living in a humble cottage in Lancashire, a nun close upon 100 years of age, will show yoo, with as much pride as the owner cf the Bowes Museum just mentioned might have had regarding her hobby, the result of the hobby of his old age It takes the form, Btracge to eay, of a coffin t When about 80 years of age this old fellow, desiring a hobby to pass the time, conceived the idea of making his own coffin, and he set to work. Hobbies ar<j certainly health- inducing recreations, for they help, as has been said, to disperse worry, and worry is the glS&iZbt destroyer of health. It was so ; in tbis c;-~c, fir his hobby, strange as it was, b'ip'd tc ;.»va hie iiiS; At any rate, h* is efcii. living, and that is nearly twenty jears ago, and the coffin, which he made and polished with his own bands, stands like a piece of furniture in his bedroom, and Lis pastime now is merely dusting it and showing it to his friends. To construct for a hcbby a hnge globe of stone, and mark it like the school globes, showing the various continents and seas o! the exrt'n, would hardly be very interesting to anyone but the rider of the hobby himself, But when, to carry out his idea still* further, he places the globe en the brink of a sea-washed cliff, where it is poised in a most striking fashion, and then places behind it large slab?, with inscriptions cut upon them giving an immense amount of geographical and astronomical information, the hobbyist ia not only delighting himself, but attracting the attention of others to his favourite subject Possibly he is educating many a stranger, and giving them a taste for the sublime study of the heavens and the earth. Tois is what a gentleman has cone at Swanage for a hobby, and no one visiting this great globe, and reading the inscriptions on the rocks behind it, can fail to be impressed and interested. Moreover, the neighbouring cliffs and rocks have all been called into requisition for the display of other inscriptions by this striking hobbyist. Chiselled on the face of the edimantine rocks, these must have cost an immense amount of time and patience, to say nothing of expense. Another is & hobby which is marely amusing, y6t sufficiently strikisg for record. A retired ssa-capiaiH at Fleetwood has built an immense kite, some 30 lb. in height, adorned in the centre with striking full-length pictures of King Edward and Qaeen Alexandra, surrounded by rose, shamrock, and thistle. About a dczan men are required to raise this mosster kite aloft, by means of cords and pulleys Thousands of cyclists and p?dssiriass pass under some ancient arches every year which stand on the high road leading from Clitheroe to Settle, and fire out of six people believe them to be the ruins of Siwley Abbey, which stood close by this spot. In one sense they are; in another they are not. When Sawley Abbey was dismantled, along with other abbejs, the people in the locality took away the stones to build houses, walls, barns, etc., so that scarcely one stone was left on another.