MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2990, 25 January 1881, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

The latest sensation in England is a drama entitled " The War Hawk, the Thundering Terror of tho Ocean; ov, Brigaldi the Bloodstained Monster of the Peep, tho Demon Bark, and the Ravine of Be-lucl." Rumour has it that tho piece is by an Australian author, and that Q-eorge Darrell knows something about it. Replying to a New York reporter, the irrepressible Sara Bornhardt, shortly after landing in America, said : —" I hope to find some American subject for a new painting, and in Boston I shall execute in marble a bust of Longfellow. One of my friends, •who has arranged the matter, tells me that Longfellow will be much pleased at my carrying out this idea." Although English people are almost as •well known to the Parisians as to Londoners, occasionally a story of the traditional Jiauteur of Milords and Miladies finds its ■way into a French newspaper. One of them stated the other day that a Milady had entered a post-office to buy a stamp. Having purchased it, she turned to her maid, who ■was standing behind her, and made a sign. The maid at once put out her tongue, over ■which the Milady lightly passed the stamp, and then affixed it to her letter.

Madame Pafcti has burned her fingers to the tuneof some eighty thousand pounds with her regal castle in Wales, -which has turned out a grand failure, so much so that the diva has resolved to go to the theatrical Tom Tiddler's ground —America—there to pick up enough gold and silver to repair the breach in her income, and, if possible, to find some American millionaire to take the Welsh domain off her hands. She has also another grievance in the demand which is made upon her, not only to pay income-tax for what she earns in England, but also upon what she makes abroad.

During a conversation with a New York "interviewer" Mdlle Sara Bernhardt said : —" I shall have to leave this country some time in May next. After travelling through Great Britain all summer, I hope to rest in Paris some time —by resting I mean working liard at my painting and sculpture—and then to start on a great tour through Europe, including Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Austria." " And Germany, too ?" " No, I hate the Germans," was the reply to this query, given with eyes flashing with scorn ; " and no matter what they should pay me, I shall never play in Germany—never, never!" On a recent Sunday, General Grant visited the Eev. Mr Beecher's Plymouth Church at New York. At the close of the service he sat down to wait until the audience had gone out, but so great was the desire to see him that hardly anyone went out, and those who did so passed around to the rear door in order to see the distinguished visitor better. As there seemed no prospect of the church being emptied Mr Beecher remounted the platform and desired that the audience would pass out. He added : " A special service can be held if you wish to worship a man. This is a house for the worship of God." At this General Grant rose and started down the aisle. The crowd of j persons then gathered in front of the church, and all waited until he was driven away in "arriage. hit) " *"he police agents was engaged to a One oi «._ "f the Kelly outlaws, and sister of one *,- '"'formation obtained regularly conveyed *».. ' -> until he was from the family to the police, "-■ address partly discovered, With wondertu- _ . o f the same agent engaged himself to a siste* . another member of the gang. By tins channel he obtained information such as he could glean from observation, While she was quite willing to accept the man for his own sake, he being a fine fellow, she would not trust him with any secret, as he was under suspicion. Patting her on the cheek one day while walking through a clump of wattles, the agent put an apparently unimportant question to his sweatheart. Looking up in his face with a very arch smile, she said —" I air not a girl of that sort. You ought to know me better—. You can have me if you wish, but not my brother. " This man paid away his life as the penalty of his flirtations. " Almavina," in the London says : « j| r jyfoy Thomas, I see, discusses in the Daily JSTews the tciCPry that Hamlet should dress in red, the matter fcjne brought upon the tapis by a letter from a Process concerning the red cloaks worn OJ the mourners at Ophelia's funeral. I am nov archaeologist enough to decide what was the general custom in Denmark in Hamlet's time —supposing that he existed at any time —but my impression is that there were no yery strict rules as to costume, either at funerals or elsewhere. ' Evening dress,' at any rate, does not seem to have been ' indispensable' at the play in any part of the house. It is said, I do not know on what authority, that Mr Irving intended to divss the prince in a red cloak, until some one suggested to him that the line ' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,' put it out of the question. 'But, you know,'replied Mr Irving, ' There's such a thing as red ink !' Ultimately, however, as everybody knows, he adopted the ' customary suit of solemn black.'" Vanity Fair says :■ —A sad story concerning one of our oldest and best endowed earldoms will shortly see the light. It seems that a peer, lately gathered to his fathers, whose name he did not endow with great lustre, is now alleged to have been married, and to have had a family at the time he made the only marriage the world has yet recognised or heard of. The result cf this alleged fact, which from all I bear seems but too certain to be established, is that the peer's widow will cease to be Lady H., and will become plain Miss 8., whilst her son and daughters, who have recently been brought out in society, will be placed in a very painful position. The young ladies will, however, as I learn, still retain the fortune of £12,000 a-year each, left to them by their grandfather; but their brother will lose an earldom, and with it an income of £90,000 a-year. I understand that the Queen, who takes the kindliest interest in the poor lady who has been so abused, will, in the event of the worst expectations being realised, probably give her another title in lieu of that whereof she ■will be deprived in so shocking a manner. The juvenile leading lady a good actress and very pretty woman by the way, and a young mother, was cast to play Juliet in Borneo and Juliet. Her baby had been placed in her dressing-room for security, and to be near her mother. But just before the balcony scene the young tyrant became unruly and impossible to control. What was to be done ? A mother's tact hit upon the true soothing syrup, fehe nestled the infant to her breast, and from that moment the young villian became silent as a mouse. Being called she hastily mounted the restrum that supported the supposed balcony, throwing a lace scarf over her shouldes, which concealed the little suckling ; and leaning over the balcony, with the other arm pensively placed upon her cheek, she looked the picture of innocence and beauty. Tho scene opened and went glowingly. But, alas! Juliet had to appear and disappear three times ; and her effort to do so gracefully, and yet conceal the child, she stumbled against the iron brace that held up the frail structure. Down fell the balcony ; and, lo ! the love-lorn maiden was discovered with a baby at her breast—seated on a tub that served as a stool, and at her foot accidentally placed there by the thirsty carpenter, was a quart pot. Tho said carpenter was discovered on all-fours steadying with his back the rickety structure above. Shrieks of laughter greeted the tableau, from all parts of the house, and of the was heard that night. One of the oldest ladies in Europe died the other day in Gleiwitz, a small town in Prussian Silesia, having retained her memory and the use of her senses except that of sight up to the day of her decease. Judith Singer was born on the 11th of June, 1768, and, although she did not marry till she had completed her twenty-sixth year, was the mother of two children when the present Emperor of Germany came into the world, nearly eighty-three and a-half

years ago. Of tho fifteen sons and daughters she bore to her husband, the verger of the Jewish synagogue at Gleiwitz, but three survive. Mi-3 Singers buried her eldest daughter, a venerable dame of eightyfour, last yeai , . On her own one hundred and twelfth birthday, being the fiftieth anniversary of the Emperor's wedding day, she addressed a letter of congratulation to his Majesty, and received an autographic acknowledgment of her communication, enclosing a bank note for a hundred marks, which she forthwith bestowed upon a local charitable institution-. Among the remembrances of Mrs Singer's unmarried girlhood were events which have long since been relegated to the pages of history. Eighteen years of her life were passed under the reign of Frederick the Great, and she had just attained her majority when tho great French Eevolution broke out. She professed to recollect with perfect clearness the rejoicings celebrated in her native town xipon the occasion of the first partition of Poland, which took place three years before the declaration of American independence. A novel and ingenious idea occurred to the late Siamese Ambassador at the Court of St. James', which is capable of considerable development. During his stay in London His Excellency appears to have been fascinated by the gaudy grandeur of the Albert Memorial. Being at some loss what kind of a present to bring home to His Majesty the King of Siam as a memento of his sojourn in foreign parts, the happy thought occurred that a silver copy in * miniarure of his favourite monument •would suit admirably. Although the name and fame of the late Prince Consort have, no doubt, penetrated long ago into the remotest regions of Siam, the Ambassador was too much of a courtier to present his sovereign with the statue of a foreign prince surrounded by the emblems of Western materialism. He therefore instructed his silversmith to fashion the model of the Albert Memorial in facsimile so far as the general outline, but to modfy the details whenever they jarred upon the feelings of a a devout Buddhist, and to replace tho central figure by a spirited model of his Siamese majesty. White elephants are substituted for the groups at the four corners, and the result, which is now on view at Old Bond strett, is a remarkable illustration of the ease with which monuments, like music, can be reproduced with variations. Perhaps some future ambassador, remarks a London paper, say from Burmah, may take a fancy t® the Temble Bar Memorial. If so fortunate an event should happen it is to be hoped that he may bo induced to accept the original, with full permission to modify, if it be possible, the splay griffin into harmony with the Buddhist or any other religion that may be popular at Mandalay. A well-to-do burgess of Vienna died recently, leaving the whole of his property away from his natural heirs and to the son of a retired Austrian General, with wtom he had been personally unacquainted during his life, upon the sole ground, duly set forth in his will, that the Christain name of the young gentleman in question was identical with his own. When the legatee, after proving the will, visited the testator's dwelling, accompanied by a legal official, in order to take possession of the property bequeathed to him, his attention was first directed to a fire-proof safe, as a likely repository of securities. Upon opening the safe, however, it was found to contain nothing but_ scraps of paper, cut up very small ■ m ' ,l '' scissors, and consisting chiefly of old envelopes. A flll " taei ' search through the rooms, however, vt* rewarded fey the discovery of bank-notes to the amount of forty thousand florins, crumpled up into a ball and hidden in a corner behind a curtain. Other twenty thousand florins were presently found in a photographic album, containing some two score' portraits of pretty women in fancy costtsmes. Behind each one of these photographs were concealed bank notes corresponding- in value to the deceased gentleman's appreciation of the ladies' respective charms, a fair beauty's attractive merits being appraised at two thousand florins, whilst those of » handsome brunette were rated at three thousand. The notion of looking behind these? portraits was suggested by marginal notes, appended _to each on the" pages of the album in which they were inserted. These- 'memoranda indicated the intention of the deceased to make his testamentary dispositions in such sort th»t eac h several charmer should inherit the sum hidden away behind her counterfeit presentment. Fortunately for his heir, this eccentric project had never been advanced beyond its valuation stage ; and thus the prizes originally intended to pc awarded to beauty ultimately fell mto the' hands of an infantry lieutenant. :