PERSONAL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1544, 28 August 1905, Page 3

PERSONAL.

[Bulletin.] Joseph. Chamberlain, ■when talk o Australia crops up in his house in Birmingham, shows a picture representing an Australian bush fire, and tells how a certain W. N. Willis presented it to him through AgentGeneral Copeland. J. C. Watson has been in rather poor health lately, the hard and anxious work of the year affecting his nerves. He proposes to take a brief spell, and, during his absence, Fisher (Queensland) will act as leader of*the Labor party. Pioneer Baptist minister Kiugsford, who passed out at Brisbane lately, aged 87, married his second wife, Miss Grimes, only three weeks before his death. He fed the flock at Jireh Church for 37 years, and had lived in Brisbano since 1860.

There died recently at North Sydney, at the age of 80 years, an active business woman, who, though living in one shop for 20 years, had never crossed the road in front of her estab-

lishment, and was never in a neighbor’s house all that time.

Veteran journalist “ Bobby” Byrne, of Queensland Figaro, had an unusual operation performed on him lately. After suffering years of agony throngh facial neuralgia, the old man had the principal nerve cut out, and is now battling along as of yore. Politician Crick nowadays is a very angry man when the Lands scandals are mentioned in N.S.W. Assembly. The other night he flew off the handle again, and in three exciting minutes he called another member an old snufllobuster, alluded to someone as a puppy, and undertook to hit a party hard on the nose.

Arthur Morgan, Queensland’s Pre- I mior, is getting grey rapidly. When he held the'. Speakership there was scarcely a glint of silver in the raven I locks; but two years of trying to make ends meet and to answer the verbosities and inanities of Philip and Leahy are enough to bleach any man’s hair. What a relief it would be to a lot of people if Mr W. N. Willis would only die and romain£dead! In the bank troubles of ’93 two big bank managers did the thing gracefully, and saved a lot of trouble by dying at an opportune moment. Apropos, a globe- ] trotter swears that he saw, 12 months ago, in Bruges, the portly figure of one of fch deceased. Yet he has been officially dead for 11 years. A couple of Hindu hawkers, who had made a pile, and were returning Ito the black part of the Empire to vegetate for the rest of their days, evidenced a quaint species of gratitude to the country that had enriched them, by attending Melbourne City Police Court one recent morning and paying the fines of all the drunks. The white man who acquires a pile mostly takes it all away to the Cold Country, and shows his gratitude by lying about I the country whence he derived it.