Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 29 August 1893, Page 3

Notes and Events.

A popular song records the advantages of being a Pirate King, it being " such a glorious thing," but a little learning his altered out* minds on this point, and, were the choice given us we should much, oh, so very much prefer being His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Every one knows what a pretty Irish girl is like, if they don't that's entirely their own fanlfc, but upon unquestionable authority we can declare all Irish girls are pretty though some are prettier than othei'3. To none should we object to observe the etiquette ordered at the Vice-Eegal court. This lucky man, we refer to the Vice-Eoy, is a bachelor, and holds " Drawing rooms " at which the ladies are presented as to the Queen, and the lady when presented is taken by the Vice-Eoy's right hand, and kissed lightly on the cheek. This pleases both parties. If tried out here it would not be called a " drawingroom "' but cool cheek, which makes the difference between a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and any other man.

We fovgob to mention one drawback to this dream of bliss. The Vice-Roy has two married sisters who are always in attendance at these functions whom he has to kiss, to encourage the others, but the proportion, or the odds, are largely in his favour.

There is a gentleman in Wellington very anxious for the Government to assist him in advertising New Zealand, but at Home, the Colony has a splendid agent, in the wellknown Mr J. L. Toole. In his house in London he has exhibited on the walls, a photograph of himself up to his waist in a hot lake, surrounded by a number of Maories. A little anecdote told by this actor may not, in even this enlightened country, be out of place. " I was playing in York " said Mr Toole, "so on Sunday I went to the Minister as usual ; on the following day, a man I knew came up to me and said, quite in good faith, ' Why, I saw you in church yesterday, and you were behaving quite quietly !' Just as though he had expected me to go in costume, and behave as though I were on the stage. But that is one of the ridiculous ideas that people get into their heads about actors. Still, I think, all that kind of thing is dying down now-a-days " (?)

Rider Haggard lived in South Africa for somo five ov six years, at the time the Boers were given back their independence. His grievance led him to write a book " Cetewayo and his White Neighbours" which was successful, and was his first book, though he had contributed articles to Magazines previously. Hi.? first novel was " Dawn " published by Messrs Hurst and Blacketfc.

Mr W. T. Stead has a new literary venture in hand, a new quarterly to be known as Borderland. Mr Stead is to be the responsible editor, assisted by a Miss X, " a lady of good birth and wide education." The Quarterly is to be the means of communication between investigators of all kinds. Nothing is to be taken for granted. The standpoint from which all phenomena is to be in • vestigated is " There are more things in heaven or earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The golden rule in all such investigations is never to fall back upon the hypothesis of a spirit until you have exhausted every possible explanation that is based upon what we ordinarily call natural laws. But when you have exhausted every natural law, and you are still face to face with facts which can only be explained on the supposition that we are in the presence of invisible intelligence "it seems," says the editor, "to be a miserable kind of inverted superstition that would refuse to admit the possibility of such intelligences as at least a provisional working hypothesis."