All Sorts of People

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 273, 23 September 1905, Page 3

All Sorts of People

jf' RTHTJR H. Adams, manufacturer Wk of "Tussock Land," "Th© Na- ■*^ zarene," and many a bit of pretrty Terse, has returned from a fortmight in the countr- but is still unrecognisable as the old Arthur Adams. The process of going through the mill of London town has left its indelible marks all over him. Before he left Tussock Land, Arthur had a neat, brown beard, covering a clear pink and white skin, stretched over a niceryrounded! face, andl owned a luxuriant crop of dark-brown hair. He was, in short, a rather good-looking chap! * * • London and its way® have changed all itiiat. He has parted witii his comely beard, and 1 the pink and white skin., and the plump ±aoe, and m their place is a sallow, worn face, that finds it a struggle to laugh in the old), free way, and! fancies it is doing so when a chance smile appears. His hair, which we said was luxuriant, has lost its fulness, and stray wisps, more grey than any other tint, play about the lined forehead. Mr. Adams says that it is a struggle to make his old. friends believe it is really he. All th« pain and mute 'misery contained in the author's brainy article in a recent "Bulletin" is in his face — he knows what w© direair and vaguely read about. Oh, London ! You ought to have known better. Yet, he will go back. Of oaurse, he will, that is the wonderful part of it all. His Excellency Lord Plunket is not unfamiliar witn vehicle smashes. The frequent presence of His Excellency on the highroads in a motor oar shows that he does his own "ohauf&ng" as a general thing. He recently said, in connection with the Southern motor car road raoe&, that he wem/t in for it a good deal himself until he got a smashup. These Ir.shmen are awfully reckless. • • ♦ Messrs. Alf. Hill and J. Y. Birch, the perpetrators of "A Moorish Maid," have decided to have a dash for the prize to be offered by the New Zealand International Exhibition authorities for the best carrtata written in honour of the big show of next year. Mr. Birch has already outlined a theme, and intends to write words about it right away, so that Mr. Hill may set his crotchets and quavers in order at the earliest possible occasion. If the music is up to the "Maid" standard the oamtata shouH win in one hand. • • • Mr. Howard Thurston, the magic man, who travels like an emperor, and amuses any stray potentates that cross his path, ds the son of a Nebraska senator — but this doesn't make him a less gifted entertainer. Howard wrainited to be a parson, and he was already educated up to paflsonical patch when a visitor to the church college accidentally left a book on "magic" in his room. Thurston devoured the book, and took to magic like a police probationer takes to sly-grog. The Church lost a parson, and the world found! another kind of entertainer. He is coming to New Zealand after all. It is said tihat Mr. Thnrston, although the doer of apparently dark deedls, is religiously inclined, amid can at times be persuaded! to take a prominent part in Church affairs. He is never asked to take the plat© round, bnt he can fill one out of the air or the hair of worshippers.

story about dead 'Pete" Hughes, the well-known J. C. Williamson managed-. "Pete" had travelled Australia tram end to end, amd up and down many times over, and he was a familiar figure in every town of any size. A friend' met him one diay -at the corner of Collins-street and! Swainstonstreet, in Melbourne: "I've beein an hour and a-half coming from Bouirkestreet," said he. This was at "Show" time. "I've met forty-seven old friends, and ten of them have borrowed money from me. I mean to start first an the next one, or I'll be left penniless." At that moment up dashed a big, red-faced, jovial-looking man. "Hello, Pete!" he cried; "ain't seen you for five years." "Lend us a quid," out in "Pete," quickly. "Gk>-d day, Pete!" cried the jovial man, making off. "Won't see you for another five years." ♦ • • The next tragedy queen, to tread the local stage will be that impressive and imperially-constructed young lady, Nance O'Neil, the American actress and CaJifornian peach. Critics were mighty hard-up when they picked out as a fault that Mass O'Neil's trick of turning heir back — a nice, plump, smooth back — upon the audience was not right. Nonsense! The modern American, and proper and artistic, idea is to imagine the audience to be merely the fourth wall of the room in which the stage scenes are being enacted. That is all right, isn't it? Thie stage — of course, it does not — is> supposed to hold the mirror up to nature, and whoever in a room saw the whole of its occupants rigidly facing the one wall, and speaking to each other while so standing. It would be nonsensical. Nance has other theories, and puts them into practice. When she was last m Wellington, both Harry and Harcus Plimmer, of this village, were in the caste, which inspired the late John Phmmer to turn out a poem about Miss O'Neil. He had the idea, somehow or other, that she was a singer, and wrote accordingly. He was informed of his mistake, so wrote another one turning the mistake into a piretty compliment, which conoludled — "I must be right, I oan't be wrong, In calling thee the Queen of Song." Yet he was wrong, for Nance cannot sing a note. * * * What's in a name? The young scion of Austrian nobility who is a cadet on that fearsome warship, the Panther — which would make a good ferry steamer — has to rise every morning trom his hard, narrow bunk with thie weight of a cruelly long appellation, on his fair young Austrian brow. His full title is. "His Serene Highness Alexander Prinz Alfred Marie Oonstantin Hugues Egon Hohenlohe - Waldenbourg - Schillinsf uerst." They call him "AM," for short! What boys suffer! He is only eleven years of age, and they send him round the world m the Panther — the South Pole in the Duchess before that, please ! • ♦ ♦ Character in boots! here is a clever ruse for attracting attention in a certain shop-window, in the shape of a number of ancient and! dilapidated pairs of boots, which purport to be — "Willy Tustin's boots!" "Worn by Don Fisher!" "Worn bv Tommy Wilford!" "Broken by Dr. Wright in alighting from a tram car!" "Worn by Tommy Taylor!" Mr. Fisher's alleged footgear shows the sole ripped clean away from the upper — the lost sole. Mr. WilftnxPs are made of thick brown hide, the antipodes' of the character of their alleged owner. "Tommy" Taylors are worn to the uppers, and are still grey with the upshoot of the recent "voucher" geyser. Of the lot. Dr. Wrights are in the best state of preservation, and really "the Doctor" is looking wonderfully well lately.

_ Mr. J. Oakley Brown drifts ou/t of Wellington life pretty soon into the life of Westland. The journalist of many papers and many experiences has bought the Ross "Advocate." Life's autumn frosts his hair 'and beard, but liis heart is as young as it was m the dlays of 1862, when he set out in newspaper life as office-boy for the Dunedin "Star." Hs father, "Snader" Brown, was one of New Zealand's brightest humourists of the old days, axudi -fc£e young Brown sniffed 1 printer's ink m the Marlborooigh "Press" office — which paper his father edited — and went from there to the wilds of Hokitika, where the said "Snider" planted the "Star." • * • JVtr. Brown's first real journalistic work was otn the old Wellington "Independent," and in 1874 he hrst dlrifted into the Parliamentary Press Gallery, where he has been a pretty familiar figure off and on ever since. Previous to hus appointment as "Evening Post" Parliamentary reporter, in 1874, he put in five years in the telegraph service. In the ancient days of the Press Gallery, reporters had to hustle to get sitting space, and "go out in' thei rain" to write it. The reporter who had to do such things now-a-days would "go out into the rain," and never come back. ♦ * • "Mr. Brown drifted to Melbourne and the "Argus," and found the climate of the marvellous city got on his nerves, so he came back to the "Post" once again, afterwards laying the foundation of a paper at Tauranga, in opposition to one run by Vesey Stewart, the "pilgrim father" of Katikati. He also wrote the first Opotiki "Herald 1 ," and the foundation on which he built the said paper standls good to this minute. He began to drift again, and got back to Melbourne, and reported for the "Daily Telegraph/ now defunct. He was sent as a "Daily Telegraph" man to New Zealand, and wrote articles for that paper and other Melbourne journals, and then went back and 1 started a sheaf of papers in the mallee districts of Victoria — Wimmera "Free Press," Parrot "Ensign," Dimiboola "Banner," and a lot of other hard! names. ir * tr V/Twas at Diniboola in the dark dlays of the "Bank" smashes. He was at the Dimboola post-office, and heard a message being sent warning Dimboola that the bank had burst. Wired the news to his Melbourne agent before it became public, and strolled down the town and lofted! the money in the bank, and informed the bank manager the bank had burst. The mlanager smiled derisively, until a telegraph boy confirmed it by delivering the news. » • ♦ One time "Oakley" began to think of Parliament. In fact he put up against one, Baker, Minister for Education, and member for the Wimnnera district. Youing W. H. Irvine (afterwards Premier of Victoria, wanted to* stand, so Oakley stood down, and killed his own chance of a Premiership. The banks buirst, and Oakley felt that Westralia was good enough for him. He travelled to the great lone land, and got a job as telegraphist in Perth, was drafted to Ooolgardie, left the service (for which he was threatened with all sorts of horrible penalties), and began, editing the Ooolgiairdie. "Miner." Paying sixpence and niinepence a gallon for water, and living on "dog," "damper," and Bemisolid water, sent him to hospital, and afterwards to Gippsland as editor of a Bairnsdale paper. * ♦ * \ A dredging boom was going on ferociously, "and the Minister of Mines wanted to diredge all the alluvial rarer flats, the best land in Victoria. The editor "sooled" him, and started am agitation that deposed the Minister, and kept the flats from beams; dlredged. Reverting to Westralia, Mr. Brown tells

how some blacks' stole a saddle oar two and how the then Commissioner of Police wired to the police post : "Don't waste cartridges ; shook straight!" Just as bad to this day in the awful West/. And now the big-hearted Brown, is tired of wandering, and' he is going to settle on the West Coast, but he wants to saybefore he goes that the Press Gallery of New Zeailaind at this moment is the best Press Gallery he knows anything about, and the men on the. whole -the most expert Parliamentary recorders. . * * • Hsir. Lionel Terry is seventy-six and a-half inches long s was born, in Kent, has been in the Horse Guards blue, in a South African police corps, is a eurveyoir by profession, and, a wanderer by inclination. The Lance has told about him before. Lionel's latest is a walk from Mangomui to Wellington. He has trekked eight hundred and! eighty miles, and is in strong going-order, with a brown skin, a healthy liver, and a bright smile. He has been walking forty days. He walked onie thousand one hundred miles in British Columbia once, and he got sea-sick training it from Cape Town to Johannesburg. * # * •^-HMlr. Terry, on this last trip of his, was variously regarded as a wagerwalker, an eccentric ,and other things, and he has managed, despite rumonirs to the contrary, to sleep in an hotel every night — bar one. Then, he got benighted, and' slept in a saddle^room. He is an apostle of fresh air and naturalness of living. He would go about with less clothes if convention didn't say nay. He met, many swagmeni on tihe road, and travelled' with them. Found them strong, healthy fellows, who swore loudly and were very sensitive. Thinks theire is something wrong about the land laws which keep this sort of person on the travel. * * • use the hurts en route to camp in. Lionel entered some of these huts, and found that "travellers" are inclined to be literary. Found, this on the wall of a deserted 1 house over the Rimutakas: — Don't blame the wealthy squatter if you luck is nearly out, Don't blame the struggling "ioockitaal" if there isn't any work, Don't blame New Zealand's Government or old Sir Robert Stout, But blame the way-side shanty where they hand the poison out. Again, in another hut, occurs this notice, with' a liberal allowance of capital letters : — Tourists Kindly Treat This Welcum Shelter with Respect, For Man's Ingratitudie to Man Makes Countless Thousands Mom. One cheerful person engaged in carrying "Matilda" cries out with a fiirestick on the wall : — "Good luck to every swagman camped here. — Brother Swagger." • • • A tal© is told of a local consul. He was only recently appointed, and there is, as yet, no sign of wear on the brand-new flag he hoists on the least provocation. The consular representatives had arranged! to pay an official visit to the Austrian cruiser, Panther, on Friday of last week. When, they assembled, enquiry was made where Mr. * So-and-so was, and it was elicited' that he had written a special letter to Commander Yon Hohnel, asking when he could receive him, and also that he had decided to visit the warship officially alone. The consular representatives chuckled all the way out to the steamer at tihe curious behaviour of the fledlgling vice-consul. The best of it was the commander was in tihe joke, tory, but the national courtesy of that gallant officer made his chuckle inaudible.

Dr. McArthur, S.M., is a quanicharacter. Has witticisms from the Benoh and his humounsmb in the pi ess show that the weight at his office- 'does nob dam. the genial cui rents oi his soul. It has been, told of him that a few weeks ago he met a cyclist without a light after dark. He called out to the wheeler, and asked him for a match. The cyclist politely handed him one. The quaint magistrate lit the bike lamp with it ' "It might prevent you meeting me again — in my official capacity," he remarked, "if you dad your own match-striking!" Then hie toddied oft chuckling deep down m his waistcoat. » • « "Wullie" McLean is onoe more tightening up his sporan strap, and 1 feeling for his claymore, in view of general election contingencies. "Wullie" is out for Wellington East, as the chosen ohiampioin of the Liberals, and he means to lift his rich tenor to some purpose between the present and the end of November, and the fiery cross "will be sent round to every Scotchman spiritualist and those temporarily embarrassed, summoning them from hill and dale and mountain and moor, to vote wisely and well. "Oh, Wullie, we have missed you." Mr. Fred Graham, the alert comedian, who has taken charge of the stagemanagement of "A Moorish Maid," informed a Lancer, in the strictest confidence, that he thought the Wellington production was going to be even better than the Auckland one. "You have no idlea blow willing; they all are. I tell them to do a thinjr. and it is donie — not like a grumbling lot of professionals who all think they know best. Sing ! How do they sine? No holding back. It should be a treat to listen to the chorus work. And the music; — Heavens!" and he looked up to a sign which read' — "Fish and! chips, 3d/." \/ Mr. Hugh Wilson, who contrived the Hugarde show seen here lately, and who is one of the "Hugardes" himself, is a likeable person, of broad ideas and educational attainments above the average. Hugh is the son, of Colonel Wilson, an Indian veteran, who commanded a Highland regiment, and his son was born in the land of the cobra, the fakir, and the "pice," consequently he speaks Hindustani. But Hugh was torn away from his bejewelled ayah in his fairly early moments, and went Home to Eastbourne College. He was fourth among 1640 in ids French examination, and consequently speaks French very fluently, and assures us he "thinks ktjrre.nch. ' That he is fluent in English those who heard him chatter about Grossi when the marvel-man was round will admit. * * ' Hugh used to dance in comic opera, played in "Morocco Bound," at London Shaftesbury, and drifted round various countries playing many parts. Also was he with Josephine Stantan and Janet Waldorf through, the colonies, and manager for a space at His Majesty's Theatre, Kalgoorlie, a tin shanty with a mud floor, and "the worst theatre in the world," but which has returned the handsomest profits for shows in the colonies. Hugh was associated with Ben Bywater, the Westraiian sport, and the Kalgoorlie tin shanty was under this maniagemettut. On one occasion it was filled with a crowd that paid £603 to see a spar between Turner and McGowan, which shows pretty clearly how dearly the Sandlanders love fighting. i/ * By the way, Grossi writes to Hugh from Africa to say that he is coming round again, and Hugh assures us that he is to be feted by every metaphysical, mienticulturall, and pyschometricail , etc., body in New Zealand. Also, Grossi played in Port Arthur previous to the siege, and only got out two days before the carnage commenced, by the permission of Admiral Alexieff . The mysterymonger left aJ'l his money behind, and says that his Port Arthur audiences were mainly composed of Russian officers, who were all drunk, and who paid an equivalent of 16s a head for seats. ♦ * • t/ Grossd had never spoken English before he got to Australia, andi he used a wealth of the "great Australian language" without in the least knowing its wickedness. He swore with a seraphic smile. An alleged instance of his mindreading quality is given by^Mr. Wilson. A certain society wished! him to give a 'turn" at one of its meetings. The chairman of the society approached him, but did not name a price. Turning to Mr. Wilson, Grossi said, in French • "This silly fool thinks I will show for him for £3 10s !" The chairman understood French, and acknowledged he had read his mind' correctly. / • • • y Mr. Wilson had) passed his examinations when he took a fancy tot the stage. Most of the people the Lance writes about seem to have intended to take to some line of life entirely opposite to the one they eventually tackled. About five out of sax comedians were going to be parsons until they saw the humour of the thing and renaiged.

Patrick J. O'Regain, bohcitor, smgle-taxer, and anti-Chamberlaimast, has stated emphatically that he wdl not contest the Buller seat at the next general ejections. Who will bet that ' Pat" is not up against "Dakn" Fisher for "Wellington Central? That sly witch, Dame Rumour, states that Mr. 0. P. Skerrett, the eminent advocate, has been approached) by the Government to test Mr. Fisher's poll popularity. A petition 1s 1 going the rounds requesting Councillor 'Tom" Carmiohael to stand against Mr. Fisher. "Tom" would, too, only he has a claim against the Government for some £6000 over the Railway Building contract, and the petition is now before the House. half-mast flags of Sunday last fluttered out the news of the death of Captain George Robb, who, for the past seventeen years, has "watched the ship? that glided by to meet the ocean tide" at the Beacon Hill signal station. — that sentry-box of Wellington Headis away above red-roofed Seatoun. His long watch has finished, and! the wandering soul has gone out on the ebb-tide. Captain Robb, long of body and l limb, and slow of speech, was a native of Banffshire, and his earliest experience of the sea was knocking about anywhere between the north of Scotland and the North Pole in search of whales. On one occasion an infuriated bull whale went in search of him, and, with a triumphant whisk of his 10,000 horsepower tail, smashed the boat into splintem. • * » After an adventurous time trading to every hole and corner of the globe, he at length arrived in New Zealand in December, 1878, in command of Messrs. W. a/nd G. Turnbull and Co.'s barque Alexa, which thereafter traded between China and Wellington, with tea, rice, and other Eastern products. When the Alexa was sold, the barque-ntine May was put into the Eastern service, and many ©an remember that it was quite an event when the tea-ship May arrived in port. • • » "'After thirty-one years of the briny, Captain Robb was offered the position of signalman at the Heads, a position he retained up till the time of his death. _ He suffered l from an internal complaint, and about a month ago went into the Wellington Hospital, where he was operated upon. He was apparently making good progress towards recovery^ ,when ho suddenly collapsed at midnight on Saturday last,

and a few minutes later was 1 moored in the calm waters of eternity. Mr. Robb, the well-known member of the Wellington Referees' Assotdatioin, is a son, and there is another in South Africa. A widow and one daughter, too, are left to mourn.