MEN AND AFFAIRS.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 79, 10 April 1901, Page 3

MEN AND AFFAIRS.

Major-Gen. MacArthur was saved from a fatal wound at Koncsaw by a package of letters in his breast pocket —neither a Bible nor a pack of cards, just letters. Earl Roberts’s is tho first namo in King Edward’s now visitors’ book.

Sir Arthur Sullivan regarded Gilbert as tho cleverest librettist of whom he had any knowledge, yet Gilbert had scant acquaintance with music. He once said that he knew only two tunes. One was “ God Save the Queen ” and the other wasn’t! “There is always room for real talent,” says John Hare, discussing the overcrowding of the stage. Sir Henry Irving has just celebrated his sixty-third birthday and some of his critics find evidences of physical infirmity in him. But on the anniversary in question

he played Shylock to a packed house in Belfast and” is now engaged in tho laborious task of producing Coriolanus, a very taxing role. In our army 304 officers speak Spanish fluently, 224 are handy with their French and 186 are well up in German. Morgan is a name on which the light of history falls with varying significance. There was Morgan the old buccaneer, Morgan the civil-war raider, Morgan who was “ a good enough Morgan till after election.” But the" latest and greatest of them all is J. Picvpont, the continental solidator of railroads, architect of billiondollnr trusts and creator of the new verb

“ to movgancer.” “ How you English can punish a good story ! ” is the American Duchess of Manchester’s tribute to her husband as a raconteur.

In the preface to his acting edition of “ Henry V. ” Mr Mansfield expresses “ a desire to prove that the American stage is quite able to hold its own artistically with the European.” English critics regard this expression as “naive egotism,” but oven those Americans who find Mr Mansfield a little emotional at times must admit that he has done much to justify his ambition. When' Phillips Brooks visited Tennyson the laureate read poetry to his guest “ till the clock said twelve.” In a passage from “ Locksley Hall ” he pointed out two lines os containing “the most perfect poetic image in his poems.” The couplet, which is a well-known school-reader extract, is: Love took up the glass of Time and turned it in his glowing hands. ( Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.