PERSONAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 109, 28 October 1911, Page 4

PERSONAL.

Captain Bone, marine superintendent of the New Zealand Shipping Co., was in New Plymouth yesterday. The Hon. T. Mackenzie, who has lately been laid up by an attack of influenza, returned to his place in Parliament on Thursday'. The Rev. J. W. Burton is spending a week in the backblocks of North Taranaki, where he has gone (is the deputy of the chairman of the Methodist district to report on the work of the church in that locality. Mr. James Fountain, who died at Balclutha on Sunday, aged 83 years, was a man who in his time played many parts (writes the Otago Daily Times). In the forties he said the southern seas round New Zealand as a whaler; for six years he was a pilot on the China Seas, and he gained a master's certificate. He sought "the bubble reputation even at the canlion's mouth," under the flags of three; different nations. He was on the hospital staff of the British army in the Indian Mutiny, and when the American Civil War broke out his adventurous spirit once more drew him into the battlefield, and he became a member of the nursing staff of the Federal army. The next step in an adventurous life was to enlist under Garibaldi, in the war of the Italian emancipation. He returned to England, and fifty-two years ago married in London a cousin's widow, Anna Fountain In 1874 they decided to try their fortunes in New Zealand, and came out in the Surat on the voyage in which that boat was wrecked near Catling Beach. Subsequently the worthy couple were successively warder and matron of Dunedin Hospital, Dunstan Hospital, shopkeepers at Milton, and retired residents of Balclutha for the last eleven years. Mrs. Fountain, who is 05 years of age, and enjoying good health considering her advanced age. was in her young days a nurse at the 'Royal Institute at Hampton Court, where one of her most distinguished patients was Sir Michael Faraday, the .great chemist. She also has recollection? of meeting Professor Tyndall. Mrs. Fountain has one son, eleven grandchildren, and thirty-seven great-grandchildren, and- Sunday was the first time for fifty years that she has been bereaved by a death in her family or descendants.