Miscellaneous.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 298, 20 August 1908, Page 3

Miscellaneous.

.... .. .0- ———• Mr H. Bottomley, M.P., estimates that the total value of the unclaimed balances and securities held by the banks of the United Kingdom is at least £50,000,000, Large quantities of plate, valuables and securities, which belonged to familes which were wiped out in the French Revolution, he declares, are still reposing in one London bank, whose unclaimed balances and securities would alone represent £2,000,000.

A Palmerston lawyer tells of a funny incident which occurred during a trial in which a young doctor was called as witness. Counsel for the other side, in cross-examining the youthful medico, gave utterance to several sarcastic remarks tending to throw doubt upon the ability of so younga man. “ You are entirely familiar with the symptoms of concussion of the brain?” “I am.” “Then, suppose my learned friend,. Mr Taylor, and myself were to bang our heads together, should we get concussion of the brain ?”' “Your learned friend, Mr Taylor, might,” suggested the young physician.

Mr Hall Caine is grateful to the “ Mercury” for enabling him to serve a magnificent apprenticeship to the profession of novelist. “ It sent me to the university of life, the university of the London streets, and the London police courts, the London drinking, dancing, and gaming halls, and general underground resorts. and 1 should have had to be a poor apprentice indeed to come through its curriculum without some knowledge of the world, i am now fifty-five years of age and have had thirty-five years’ experience of literary life, and if a beginner were to ask me what school I consider best for the novelist, I should answer, without hesitation, the school of journalism.”

According to a Sydney paper, Melbourne has discovered a promising voice in a young girl—-Clara Kleinschmidt by name—that in time may rival in quality and volume that of Clara Butt. Miss Kleinschmidt has been discovered in some out-of-the-way place among the hills, and lias now been sent to study at the Melbourne Conservatoire under Miss Hack. She made her debut at an orchestral concert lately, and created something of a fuioie, though her training has been very little as yet. She has temperament, a fine range, and splendid physique, and is very youn?. It will be interesting io hear of her development.

A beautiful story is told somewhere of Sir Hubert Herkomer, the great painter. His father was : a poor man, and the professor i brought him from bis native land i of Germany to live with him in his beautiful house near London. The old man used to mode! in clay in his early life, and now that he had leisure he took to it again in. his old age. But bis hands trembled and the work showed signs of imperfection. It was his one sorrow. At night he went to bed early, and when he had gone his : sou would go into the studio, take : his father’s poor work, and make. |it as beautiful as possible. When ’ the old man camo dowm in the i morning Le would look at the I work and rub his hands, and say. J i: TIa! I can do as well as ever I ; did.”—“The Scholars’ Own.” > One of the best stories concernI ing Jfr Grover Cleveland’s sturdy . honesty in politics is told on the , authority b£ a distinguished man jof letters, in Dr H. T. Peck’s “Twenty Years of the Republic.” iAt the Presidential election in 1898 it was hoped that a rich contractor of Irish origin might be persuaded to influence the Irish vote of New York in Cleve; land’s favour. So the literary light, who was a friend of both, brought them together and left them alone for half an hour. The Irishman camo out beaming and reported thus of Cleveland : — “Ah, sure he’s the grandest man lever saw. He’s a fine man—a grand man. He wouldn’t promise to do wan thing I asked him I” And from that moment to the election day the contractor worked and main for the. candidate who had refused to pay