People

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 8, 20 February 1902, Page 10

People

Captain Horatio McKay, R.N.R., has just retired after 40 years' work in the service of the Cunard Company. He has crossed the Atlantic between 800 and 900 times. Lord Acton, regius professor of modern history at Cambridge University, is the first Catholic to hold office in either of the great English universities since the time of James 11. It is stated that President Roosevelt is connected with the late Archbishop of Baltimore, James Roosevelt Bailey, who was a son of Dr. Guy C. Bailey and Grace Roosevelt. He had been an Episcopalian minister, but became a Catholic in 1842, and 30 years later he succeeded Archbishop Spalding in the see of Baltimore, after having been Bishop of Newark from 1853. The death is announced of the Marquis of Dufferin at the age of 76 years. The deceased nobleman was a great-grandson of the well-known writer Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He succeeded to the title in 1841. He held many important offices, among these being Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India. In addition he spent terms as ambassador at St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Rome, and Paris. The Marchioness of Dufferin is a daughter of the late Mr. Archibald R. Hamilton, of Kellylcagh Castle, County Down. The kindness and humility of the Emperor of Austria are proverbial As ho was leaving the Church of St. Antonius the other day a lad dressed as a baker's apprentice pushed his way through the crowd, evaded the swarms of detectives, and ran up to tho Emperor's carriage, which was already in motion. He held up a letter which he wanted to hand to the Emperor, and Francis Joseph had the carriage stopped to take the missive. Jt ran as follows :— ' Dear Mr. Emperor, — My mother has been very ill for many years, and no hospital will admit her because she is an incurable. 1 can earn enough for myself, but I cannot earn enough to give my sick mother the things she needs. I beg you, dear Mr. Emperor, to order that she shall be admitted to some hospital.' Two hours later (says the Vienna correspondent of the ' Morning Leader ') an ambulance arrived before the lad's home, and conveyed his mother to a charitable institution, where she can end her days in peace. Mr. I. J. O'Driscoll, who is returning to Ireland for the purpose of opening and managing a branch of the Citizens' Life Assurance in Dublin was entertained at a farewell social in Adelaide by the local branch of the United Irish League. Mr. O'Driscoll has had a varied experience. Born near the city of Cork 40 years ago he was educated at the Christian Brothers' school, and at the age of 17 he commenced a successful" course in the Agricultural Colleges of Cork, Kildare, and Dublin, where he developed a special aptitude for land-surveying, levelling, and mapping. Having decided to emigrate to Australia, he arrived in Sydney in 1884, and went into the western districts, where he spent two and a half years. Finding the supply of surveyors greater than the demand, in 1887 he joined the staff of the Citizens Company. The company had then just been .ormed by the late Mr. Garvan, and as Industrial Life Assurance was not then so popular as it is to-day he found the work of ' taking lives ' for the new office particularly onerous. However, success came in time, and Mr. O'Driscoll used to take dozens and often scores of ' lives • in Sydney and suburbs every week. Subsequently he was appointed Inspector of Agencies for the colony' of New

South Wales outside Sydney and Newcastle, and travelled the greater portion of the State, doing a good business everywhere he visited. Early in 1890 Mr. O'Driscoll was promoted to the post of chief superintendent of agents, and in September of the same year, on the death of Mr. Columbus Rochfort, Mr. O'Driscoll was appointed to succeed his much respected fellow-country-man as Resident Secretary in South Australia. In the United Kingdom on New Year's Day the familiar ' Queen's Head ' on stamps, which has been in vogue for nearly 65 years, had passed into the limbo of things that were. With the first week of the New Year appeared the effigy of King Edward VII. on all stamps ; and thus the memory of Queen Victoria disappeared from coinage and stamps alike. To the present generation the boon of postage stamps is not sufficiently appreciated It was only on December 5, 1839, that the postal rates for letters commenced to be' charged by weight, previous to which the tariff was regulated according to distance. Few are aware that it was an Irishman called Archer who invented the method of perforating stamps, in November, 1846 ; and, at considerable expense, he patented a machine for cutting little slits all round each impressed stamp, which, however, was not approved by the Post Office authorities. Nothing daunted, Mr. Archer set to work, and in 1850 perfected a machine which cut out tiny circular holes round each stamp as at present. For this he was offered by the Treasury the sum of £600, but refused the amount as grossly inadequate. Thereupon a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to decide on the merits of the machine, as also the price of the patent with the result that the Irishman's invention was approved of, and he was voted a sum of £4000. An industrious paragraphist has this week (says the London 'Tablet,' December 21, noted the passing of the anniversary of the death of Byron's " Ada, sole daughter of my house and heart.' She died as Countess of Lovelace in 1852, ' leaving two sons and a daughter, of whom the survivors are the present Earl of Lovelace and Lady Anne Blunt, each of whom has an only daughter.' The tradition of only daughters is, however, broken again in the third generation, for Lady Anne Blunts only daughter, the Hon. Mrs. Neville Lytton, has already two children. A more interesting point about the descendants of Byron, overlooked by the paragrapher, (the word has just come into use), relates to their religion. Byron's grand-daughter was herself a convert, and married a Catholic, so that their daughter followed suit as a matter of course. But the Earl of Lovelace, himself a Protestant, took the unusual course (for which, however, Lord Byron's own personal acts and opinions may be cited as offering a precedent) of bringing up his daughter a Catholic. The result is that all Byron's descendants of the third and fourth generations are Catholics — one more link between Byron and Scott.