All Sorts of People

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 152, 30 May 1903, Page 3

All Sorts of People

PUBLIC honours continue to be showered upon the Rev. W. A. Evans. The latest comes to him from the Victoria College Council, which last week appointed Mr. Evans and Sir Robert Stout as its delegates to the Senate of the New Zealand University. All the old members of the Senate have been re-elected, and therefore Mr. Evans has a double honour in that he will be the only newcomer at the Senate's board. The Senate is the highest, as it is the most exclusive, educational body in the colony, and Mr. Evans will no doubt be duly impressed with his newly-given dignity. The Victoria College Council last week also extended a compliment to the leader of the Forward Movement by re-electing him chairman of the Council for a second term— a compliment which the ex-chairman (Sir Robert Stout) said was well deserved. The VC C cannot, allow a member of the Council to occupy its chair for more than two consecutive years. * • • Sir Robert Stout, who was elected a member of the New Zealand Senate hv the Victoria College Council last week, has been a member of the Senate continuously for eighteen years, having during that time been the representative of the graduates of the colony. In proposing Sir Robert as a candidate at the Council meeting last week, Inspector Fleming (of the Education Board) said that the Chief Justice had been one of the most valuable members of the Senate in the past, and he hoped he would continue to be an aid 1o the higher education movement for many years to come * • i * It is given to very few men to rise to the dignity of a Magistrate in his early twenties. Mr. G. F. King Adams is one of the few , and his station is at Etawah, near Allahabad m the northwest provinces of India. Magistrate .Adams is the youngest son of the Crown Lands Commissioner of Madborough, and therefore bi other of Arthur the r>oet and Cecil the tennis player. The young magistrate, who is visiting his people on a six months' furlough, went Home to stud y for and compete in the India Civil Service examinations, which he passed so successful ly that an appointment as magistrate followed in a very short time. He was educated at the Dunedm High School. * • Gieat is the mana of King Mahuta, of Waikato, but greater stall is that of King Dick, of Kumara. Some time ago the Maori King, who complained of certain grievances of his race, was offered a seat in the Legislative Council as a means of ventilating the grievancesi and getting them, remedied. But Mahuta's advisers said it would be infra dig for the scion of the house of Potatau and Tawhiao to sit with commoners. For the Maori aristocrat is as proud as his pakeha compeer. So Potatau the Third declined the Councillorship, and retired still further within himself and the Waikato. Now it happened that after many moons King Dick souglufc out his brother monarch, and cleared the clouds from the Mountain of Doubt in the native mind. MaJiutai was again offered the Order of the M.L.C., with a seat in the Seddon Cabinet — and he became a captive to the diplomacy of King Dick the First.

The new ly-formed Shakespearean Society held its first business meeting last week, and elected Sir Robert Stout as its president. His Honor the Chief Justice is one of the most cultured men in thei colony in. fact he has a reputation which is even wider than, intercolonial, is as well informed, in literaiv matters as in the law", as familiar with Shakespeare as with Burns, and, besides possessing a gifted facile expression in. writing, has the double gift of being an actor. Sir Robert's erudition is all the more remarkable seeing that, his knowledge has been self-ac-quired. * # • A Shetlander by birth, he came out to Dunedin in his youth., endowed only with natural ability, much perseverance and good Scotch blood. In Dunedin, where he settled, he won fame as a schoolmaster, as a journalist, as a lawyer, as a politician, and as a lecturer. Whilst still as young m heart as a man of thirty he became Premier of the colony, and has achieved the highest legal honour obtainable in the land. So tihat iti will be seen the Wellington Shakespearean Society is honoured in the personality of its first president. * * * The vice-presidents of the Society are seven in number, and they will not be the mere ornaments 1 vice-presidents are as a rule. The seven gentlemen have been chosen especially on. account of their ability as Shakespearean students, and it will be their duty to preside over the meetings 1 of the reading circles of the Society. This duty will be no sinecure for the Vs. P., as, owing to the large number of reading members, something like five circles will be formed. This means that every week five Vs. P. will be in charge of meetings. The vice-presidents are all well known as enthusiastic admirers of the Bard of Avon. One of the seven is a lady, Miss Richmond, the other six being • Messrs. H. E. Nicholls, J. M. Joynt, A. R. Atkinson, Gresley Lukin, BT. L. James, and T. W. Rowe. * • • ' Mr. Lukin, who is the editor of the "Evening Post," has been a life-long student of Shakespeare, and was' a member of the famous G. Y. Brookes's dramatic company, which gave productions of Shakespeare's works through Australia some three decades ago. As a reoiter of some of Shakespeare's orations, Mr. Lukin has few equals even to this day. Mr. Nioholls is the head and front of our amateur society known as the Dramatic Students. Mr. Atkinson is too well known to need further introduction, but it is not so well known that the ex-member for Wellington is one of the ablest Shakespearean scholars of this city, and he has especiallly devoted himself to the refutation of the Baconian idea. Mr. Joynt, who. with Dr. Fmdlay, s one of the promoters of the Society, is the cultured Registrar of the New Zealand University. Mr. James was, for a number of years (until succeeded by Mr. C. Wilson), in charge of the General Assembly Library. He is still on the staff of that institution. Another librarian is a vieei-president, in, the person of Mr. Rowe. He is chief of the Municipal, or Free Public Library. The Society chose a working committee of twelve membeirs, four of whom are ladies, and of these Miss Lorimer is in charge of Mount Cook Girls' School, and Miss Hall is on the teaching staff of that school. Mrs. Fell is the wife of a well-known medico, and is herself a skilled amateur actress, and Mrs. 4.. R. Atkinson belongs to a cultured family. The other eisrht members of the committee are • Lieutenant - Colonel Newall, C.B. Cwho was in charge of our Seventh Contingent in South Africai. Dr. Findlay. Messrs. E. F. Allen (of

the "Evening Post" staff), W. Simm (secietary of the Dramatic Students), Basil Stocker (of the Education Department), J. M. Clarke (equally well known as a warehouseman and an elocutionist), M. F. Marks ("Hansard" supervise*-, and well-known in aquatic circles), and A. P. Webster. • * * The ex-Mayor of Masterton, Mr. P. 0. Hollings, who is a solicitor, is about to visit the Old Country, combining a pleasure trip with business which is to take him. to the Privy Council. As Mr. Hollings will be absent for the best part, of a year, he cannot leave his business to take care of itself, and he has chosen a clever and rising yoiung Wellingtonian, Mr. J. Prenderville, to watch over the Hollings interests during the absence of the principal of a business which has been established for some time in thei hub of the Wairarapa. • • • Mr. Prendeville is a son of whom the city should be proud. He has done well as a scholar, an athlete and asi a volunteer. As a student, he attended the schools of the city, including the Wellington College, and also studied at Canterbury College, is a 8.A., and the next presentation of diploma® by the Chancellor of the University will be presented with the parchment setting forth that he has 1 secured the coveted LL.B. So that Mr. Prendeville is a triple bachelor. He has been in the law office of Mr. A. R. Meek during the past five years, and was admitted to the Bar in February last. Mr. Prendeville has been an enthusiastic member of the College Rifles from tihe formation of the corps, and was also one of its marksmen. • • • It is something of a legend among builders that every large undertaking has to be christened witih blood. The big contract which Messirs. King and Mitchell, of Sydney, started the other day at Ngahauranga, for the Meat Export Company, had its' victim m the very early stage of the undertaking in the death of carpenter John Merrion, who fell off the roof of one of the old buildings, which was being demolished. Strange to say, Merrion,, who was a young man, was a native of New South Wales, but was not brought over by the Sydney contractors. Merrion had been working at the trade in Wellington some months before the Ngahauranga job was started. He had worked for a short time in Auckland before coming to Wellington, and had only been on the Meat Company's job one hour when the accident happened. • * * V The several-times Mayor of Wanganui, Mr. A. Hatnck, is one of the most enterprising men in the colony. Not only has the owner of the Wanganui steam packet service, and of Pipiriki House, shown enterprise in his own business, but he has carried the same spirit into his direction of the municipal life of the city on the "Rhine." He told the people of Wanganui, at his installation the other day, that their city had a great future before it, and he prophesied that within a decade W T anga,nui would be one of the most up-to-date municipalities in the land. It already had its municipal Opera House and gasworks and things like that. Within the next eleven years Wanganui, he felt convinced, would also have its municipal electric tram service. Mayor Hatriok did not say anything about his city possessing that other big asset — the steamers which do so much with the tourist traffic. * # * Mr. Rupert Wright, who was the victim of Miss McDougalls sensational attack in the Magistrate's Court one morning last week, is better known in town than his assailant. Mr. Wright is petite in form, whilst Miss McDougall is ample of figure. Mr.

Wright was for some years engaged in business in the city as a weaver of wire mattresses. Folks who regularly attended the Wellington Exhibition of a few years ago will remember him. as being in, charge of a working exhibit in the space occupied by Te Aro House, fot which, firm he was then working. As he is the possessor of a weak heart, Wright had. to give up his trade, and is now well known to young Wellingtonlans as the man who drives the donkeys that buck "for men, only" on the beach at Day's Bay. ♦ * * Feilding is to have a Spain who is not a Spaniard. Mr. A. T. Spain, who entered the service of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company when a boy, in the far South, has been promoted from Oamaru to the hub of the Manchester settlement. Mr. Spain has spent many years in the company's office in the White) Stone City, and his many friends down there are sorry to lose him. He takes up the position of accountant in the Feilding office. • • •- Mr. W. Francis Chambers, the young man who wants to get on, and is a poet, started work pretty early, for he was eleven years with a Ludgate Hill (London) firm of bookbinders, with various assurance companies in the Big Smoke, started' writing poetry in 1879, and is only twenty-seven years of age. He had the courage to write an antiSalisbury poem to London "Morning Leader" when he was twenty-one, and 250,000 copies got to the people. He couldn't get on fast enough at Home, so in 1901 he packed his bag, and 1 'it out for New Zealand, where, for a string of beads and a bit of lookingglass one can purchase several million acres of land, and become Premier if you are good with, the gloves. * • • Nothing else offering, like most Englishmen the new chum drifted into work and poetry. He began by taking lives, but the police didn't interfere, for insurance companies are necessary evils after all. Then, he dyed — for Mr. Barber, now happily M.H.R. for Newtown, heard of him, and approached him on a question of colour. He was evidently of the correct shade for he left the mechanical part of a dyer's business) to form one of the committee' of the successful chrysanthemum grower, and, >n short, Mr. Barber got home by lengths. The young poet has taken prizes in. many competitions m England and New Zealand, has been editor of one or two boys' magazines, and secretary of a, Home bible class for twelve years. He is bringing out a volume of verse, and it is due to arrive in New Zealand shortly. He is at present in supreme command at the wharf book-stall for Messrs. Gordon and Gotch. Although he has a good platform style, he has never yet spoken in public, but it is within the bounds of possibility that the "House" may yet claim him for its own. ♦ • • Mr. Leonard C~ Tennent, son of the manager of the Bank of New South Wales at Thnam, is the only man we know of who bought a battlefield. He is at present living in an accommodation house on Spion Kop, and Mr. Chamberlain was guided by the ex-New Zealander during his tour around the spot where so many gallant khakis died. Of course the spot is interesting from an excursionist's point of view, and no doubt' many picnic parties will go from Ladysmith. Talking about excursions, our late enemies were pretty busin©£-J-like gentlemen. They ran excursion trains; to Spion Kop after the fight so that the ladies and children who were suffering from ennui could see the gallant dead, who had been piled artistically by the promoters of the picnic party. Nice associations! Pleasant accommodation house!

Mr. G. Fum, the shrewd managing director of the Wellington Fresh Food and Ice Company, is an example of lie square-jawed colonial who resolved m infancy to get on. If you have followed the progress of the company for the past five years you will admit that he has made a few strides towards the desired haven. The upstanding, handsome-featured Finn is rather Riven to Looking on the serious side ot Me, although in his off moments he has been known to oraok a joke. It seems a far cry from stationmaster to manager of a thriving industrial concern but Mr Finn was thirteen and a-half years on the New Zealand railways, and was relieving stationmaster at the early age of nineteen. ♦ * * Co produce merchants- He ? a J e ™^ of his daily labours. # heTs an enthusiastic poultry raiser. aquatics. # • The Heretaunga Mounted Rifles held +W annual meeting one day last week, aid " Wellington's only troop of horse signalised the occasion by bestowing t commission uoon one ot +ne Sos? popular troopers that ever threw a lee over ahorse. . His name? We-U m civilian and business circles inthe city he is known as Mr. P. B. Watts, „ roVietor of commodious I'WBtaWes in Harris-street In military life Lieutenant Watts won the P" vlle^ ,';* rearing the South African medn through his service as a sergeant with our First Contingent He had previously seen some life on the outermost parts of the Empire's colonies as a mounted policeman On hi, return to Wellington frointhe war. Mr Watts reioined the He-etauncra*. and no to last week, he er.ioyed the ra-nii nf bat+^lion serceant-maior. JNr> longer Serwamt What's-his-name, but Lieutenant Watts, sir' • * * Wellingtomans and other New Zealanders who took £10 worth of shares in the capital w hich sent the New Zealand Band to England must have been delighted when they read in the cablegrams that the Band had "scored a great success" in its first concert m the Old. Country. This is but another feather in the cap of Lieutenant Herd, who is only repeating the successes ne achieved with the Wellington Gam son Band. Bandmaster Herd has always been enthusiastic concerning the chances of a successful tour by a New Zealand Band m Great Britain, and more than ever sanguine since the colony came so w ell out of the South African war. # w The Band's tour opened at Tunbridge Wells, which is one of the most fashionable and popular of the health resorts of Great Britain. The season is just now "on" at the Wells 1 , and the elite of the Old Land have had the opportunity of drinking in. the music of players from "down under" as they drank their daily quantum of chalybeate waters, which are a panacea for weak digestions. Music from New Zealand should also give the ultra-fashionable a mental tonic. ... Word conies from Home of the success of another Wellington - trained nurse. Miss Rose Shappere, a comely and clever Jewess, who has been appointed matron of the Western General Hospital, at Marylebone, London. Nurse Shappere spent her childhood and youth in Timaru, was educated at. the Main School there, and became a member of its teaching staff. She gave up the teaching profession for that of nursing, and, on the outbreak of the South African war, was the first nurse from Australasia to go to the front for service on the nursing staff. * ♦ » The eulogistic references made by members of the City Council upon Captain. Hugo at last week' 9 meeting of the City Fathers were well deserved. It is generally acknowledged by every section of the communitv — except wouldbe fire-rai«ers — that the appointment of Captain Hugo to the charge of the

Fire Brigade of the Empire City was one of the best evei made by the City Council. In a city of wood such 'as Wellington is, there must be a constant watch kept upon the hie fiend. Since, his comui<? to Wellington, only some three yeais ago, Captain Hugo lias proved himself an ever-watch-ful guardian of the city, and has not only trained the firemen to a high degree of discipline, and skill as fighters, but ha® shown them an example of courage and. daring which has given the men that trust which makes them follow their leader unplioity. Captain Hugo has won the lespect and esteem of not only the City Council, but of the citizens of Wellington generally. • • • Interesting utterances heard in a car bound for New town the other day "I was the first secretary of this car thirty years a<ro. I have been a doctor, lawyer, police' inspector, police sergeant. lam the strongest man in New Zealand, and 1 at Wanganui I lifted 4-Jowt., and was beaten by a little whipper-snapper. I'm only fifty-seven years old, and I'll carry all the men on this car up Russell Terrace. If, as you siay, Mr. Doyle can lift the hydraulic crane on the wharf with a crowbar, I'll beat him. As for your contention that you can wheel more smoke out of the gasworks in eight hours than me, I'm your man. Run a hundred yards ? Not me; you've eot me heat. Well, T ere* off here. S'long." Now who is he? » * • Everybody who is anvhody knows, or has heard of. "Off-side Mac," the representative New Zealand footballer. It is also generally known that for many years he suffered from an acute attack of rheumatism, which happily he has now fully recovered from. A profpos, he tells a good yarn. A week or fo back a canvasser for a bath cabinet "guaranteed to cure the severest attack of rheumatism known to medical science^" called on the lon^ fellow at his office in Carterton. He was busy at the time poring over the latent Wei-

hngtoji Rugby Union's Annual, and, while his visitor related the foregoing "Mac" bestowed but a casual glance on him, and kept his attention fixed on the book he was studying. * * * The canvasser proceeded to relate how he had been infoimed that "Off-side" was a confirmed invalid as the result of an attack of rheumatism, and that a couple of journeys to Rotorua had done him no good. He had sold over sixty of his bath caibinets in the adjoining town, and had many testimonials of the great a.nd lasting good the said cabinets had done people laid low oy rheumatism, and could recommend him with much assurance to try one. The long fellow had stood all this patiently without stirring a muscle. Then he cast a casual glance at the fluent canvasser, and remarked — "Six, I have been an athlete. I have played football all over New Zealand, in New South Wales., and Queensland. I ha-re had the pleasure of representing my province and the colony on thei Rugby football field. I can safely say that T am well known from one end of New Zealand to the other. Give mci one of your cabinets, and your fortune will be made. * * • "If you do. I will write you a testimonial, and get myself photographed in two positions. In the first picture I w ill represent myself as walking with the aid of crutches, and with, my face and head swathed in bandages. In the second I will show myself in the act of kicking a football if you like, and as well as ever I have been in my life. You will then be able to publish that testimonial with the accompanying photographs, and scatter them broadcast, and, sir, your bath cabinets will sell like wildfire. You send along the mraphernalia, and I will do my part." This was too much for the canvasser, and while "Mac" was holding forth he edsred neairer and nearer the door, and left the loner fellow alone in his glory. Needless, to say. "Mac" is still waiting fnr that sure and certain cure for rheumatism.