DOWNING STREET.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 98, 19 January 1901, Page 1

DOWNING STREET.

There was a time when 'colonials heard and thought a groat deal more about Downing Street than they do to-day, when the self-governing colonies are subjected "to comparatively little interference from the Colonial Office in London. Downing Street has had a curious history, as Mr Choate, the American Ambassador, showed in the course of a recent address. The school which lie bad amended in Massachusetts, fm said, was the first-organised in the ihate, and the name of its first scholar was George Downing, Downing was one of the first graduates of Harvard, and in the C'uir.so of lime he found his way to M"land and was a chaplain in CimawoU's army. He displayed an ‘-xiraordinary talent for diplomacy as it was then practised, “ hoodwinking,’'’ Mr Choate called it, and is innately he hoodwinked CiMinv. Ji iiuo sending him as Amba-.-ador lj the Hague. “Well,” columned Mr Cimalo, “ after the Protector died, he tried his arts U):nn the Dump, and be hem\v hiked the Hump, and they re-appomied him as Ambassador, When tho Hestoration came, ho practised his wily arts upon the Merry Monarch, soon after his return, and induced him to send him again as Ambassador to The Hague. He made lots of money, and finally he induced the Merry Monarch to grant him a great tract of land in Westminster, provided, so the grant ran, “ that the houss to be bail upon the premises so near to the Hoyal Palace shall be handsome and graceful. ’ ” Then Downing built a house opposite Whitehall, and many... more mansions between there and Westminster Abbey, and old annals of that time described those houses as “ pleasant mansions, having a back front upon St James’s Park.’* In the natural course of things, according to Mr Choate, Downing would have been hauled to Tyburn and hanged by the nock until he was dead, but he afterwards won his way into the favout of King Charles by claiming that he must forgive his past backsliding because of the vicious principles that he had received, as he said, in'his early New England education. Finally he died, and by his will devised his immense estates at Westminster to his children. Of those estates there remains the strip of land one hundred yards long and twenty wide, sometime* narrowing to ten, which bears In® iliustrious name. Mr Choate hiM some reason, therefore, for claiming that Downing Street was an American thoroughfare.

SAD STORY OF HEROISM. The correspondent of the Centra) News at Knighton, Radnor, telegraphs that a lamentable drowning accident, involving the loss of three lives, occurred late on the night cJ November 20 at Rouybont. Mi James Lloyd, of Doles, and three of his sons, James, Joseph, aiM Arthur, attended by a boy, went out with the intention of spearing for salmon in the River I thou, ;?• tributary of the Wye. No clear accoun t of the disaster has been give u by the survivors, but it is presumed that a fish was seen, and that iu* foremost of the younger met' rushed into the water to spear i. At the point where the accident occurred the river is at ier .■ 4 twelve feet deep, a fact v/tuci: might have been unknown to ii 1 party, as the river’s bed h considerably altered since hist winter. At any rate the you - .: man found himself out of h depth immediately, and screamed for assistance. One of his brothem, who carried a light, went to im-* rescue, but himself forthwith r v into the difficulties, and the Jigi.■* was extinguished. The thud brother then entered the water i render assistance, but with i ' better success, and all wer* drowned, the father and the strange boy standing powerless on titf river bank.