People We Hear About.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4, 25 January 1900, Page 21

People We Hear About.

Mrs Julia MacMahon, aged 105 years, sailed from America on the Cunard liner Umbria for Ireland on July 21st. Her last visit to the Irish capital was paid in 1831. She is a native of Dublin. The current ipsue of the Journal of the Cork Historical and ArchtroUujical Society contains a life-sketch and portrait of the late Rev. Pierce \V. Drew, Protestant Rector of Ynughnl nnd utateß that amongst his grandchildren is the Right Rev. Mgr. Bickerstaff Drew, Catholic military obapUiu at Malta. The Northicext Review, St. Boniface, Manitoba, aaya in its issue of June 27 :— Miss Procter, a niece of Adelaide Procter, the poetess, and Miss Urquhart, of the Canadian Catholic Emigration Society, came up from Montreal last Friday, and left this morning for Rev. Lord Douglas's New South wark farm in the Dauphin country. Madame Adam, the leading female political writer in France for many years, is reported from Paris to have retired from the editorship of the Nouvdle Revue. It is claimed by some that Madame Adam's salon was the birthplace of the Republic, and she claims herself that she was the means of bringing about the alliance between France and Russia. There are only seven Ambassadors representing England abroad. The seven Great Powers entitled to receive them are France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States, and Turkey. Their salaries range from £7,000 to £10,000, the British Ambassador at Paris receiving the highest sum and holding the most coveted post in the diplomatic service abroad. Col. O'Callaghan, R.A., who has succeeded Lieut.-General J. F. Owen in the command of the Royal Artillery at Malta, will have the temporary rank of Major-General while occupying this position. It will be remembered that he qualified for the appointment by the efficiency and aptitude which he revealed at Woolwich, first as secretary and afterwards as a member of the Ordnance Commission. The War Office holds his capacity in high esteem. Lord Halifax, President of the English Church Union, about whom we have hoard so much of late in connection with the Ritualistic agitation in England, was born in London on June 7th, 1839. He is an Old Etonian, and a Christ Church man. After leaving Oxford he was attached to the household of the Prince of Wales. He was elected Chairman of the E.C.U. as far back as 18(58, and since then has led in most of the crises affecting the Ritualists. He is the second Viscount Halifax, the peerage dating from 1866. Miss Hope Temple, who h known to her wide circle of friends as Madame Moss-ager, is Irish by birth, English by parentage, and is married to a Freuchu.an. Her earliest ambition was to excel as a pianist ; and it was only when a succession of accidents to her left left arm, while skating and riding, ruined her prospect of ever becoming a good executant that she turned to composing. The world first knew her through her sweet and sympathetic setting of one of Moore's ballvds, while to-day such sorgs as 'An Old Garden,' and 'In Sweet Scptemb t ' are both fame and fortune to her. Miss Temple is a very beautiful woman, with something of the ripe lovlineßs of a Jewehs.

One of the Grand Old Men of the religious world is Father Depelchin, S.J., first Superior of the Zambesi mission, who after all his arduous labours is still alive, an active missionary in India. He was the pioneer missionary from the Belgian Province of the Society of Jesus in what are now the magnificent missions of India ; and he was the pioneer of the Zambesi mission, collecting in Europe large funds to set it on foot before going out to South Afrioa and enduring great hardship there, amongst other things sustaining a very bad fracture of one leg. He is, though not very far from eighty years of age, in good health. It i" «aid that President Krnger can speak English fluently, but under no circumstances will he carry on a conversation in that language. This procedure when in conference with British offioiala gives him an opportunity to collect his thoughts before replying. He is an inveterate smoker and coffee drinker, and is hardly ever seen at home without a long pipe in his mouth. At his Bid* is a large cuspidor, which he uses freely. The motto of President Kruger for years has been Patrick Henry's memorable utterance, ' Give me liberty or give me death.' This sentence, translated into the Boer language, hangs handsomely framed in his parlour. Estimates of the number of Jews in the world, of course, more or less approximate, calculate their total at about ten millions, of which four and a half millions are comprised in the Russian dominions, and 1,800,000 in the Austrian. The United States oome third with 930,000, of which 350,000 are in New York alone. Germany and Roumania have respectively 560,000 and 300,000, the British Isles but 150,000, Asiatic Turkey a like number, and European Turkey, 120,000. France, in which so much is written about being Jew-ridden, has only 72,000, with another 49,000 in Algeria. The present tendency of the Jews is to increase most rapidly in the English-speaking countries, as in the United States, where half a million have been added to their number during the last decade, and in the United Kingdom, where their numbers have trebled within a score of years. In Russia also, during the same period, they have grown, according to calculation, from two and a half to four and a half millions, despite the persecution to which they are subjected there. There ia no more hospitable host than Lord Iveagh, but he by no means carries out the popular idea of a millionaire, in spite of his munificent gift of £250,000 recently to the Jenner Institute of Preventive Medicine. He rarely pays a fancy price for anything, and though he has been for years an assiduous collector of antique furniture, old china, and pictures, he has secured many valuable specimens at prices which would have delighted a bargain hunter. He has some good pieces of tapestry, too, and a magnificent collection of rare silver. Lord Iveagh knows far more about the working of Guinness's famous brewery, of which he is the head, than many people suppose, and put his eldest eon into the office there in order to give him a thorough knowledge of the business. Lady Iveagh shares her husband's prudent habits, and neither in dress nor in household affairs does she allow any extravagance. Women with only half her wealth wear more costly gownß, and a greater display of jewels ; yet Lady Iveagh with her slender figure, abundant brown hair parted in the centre and simply drawn back from i her broad forehead, invariably looks distinguee and well-dressed. She is a personal friend of the Duchess of York, and the Marchioness of Lome is sometimes her guest.