People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 35, 31 August 1905, Page 10

People We Hear About

D. J. O Donoghue, writing of colonial men in Dublin freeman,' says of Cardinal Moran : •Of Carlow writers, the mosit accomplished and learned is the venerable Cardinal Mojan,. who, curiously enough, was born in the same village as Tyndall. The Cardinal's valuable works in Irish history and archaeology are rather numerousseveral pi <fchem have been brought within popular leach and have had a wide circulation ; others are chiefly known to the learned, and can, be best appreciated by them. ' A few weekrs ago Sir George White received the freedom of E|di-nlburgh in recognition of his long military service and heroic and successful defence of Ladysmith* In acknowledgement, Sir George recalled being impressed by the beauty of Edinburgh 50 years ago, and he did not then think that on his seventieth birthd-ay he would be made a freeman of that lair city. 'He had one disability— he was not a Scotsman ; he was an Irishman, a«(d proud to say It. Mr. Charles Santley, the Catholic baritone, owes much of his success in life to the generosity of one of his first employers, a draper, who invited his numerous employees to dinner, after which singing was indulged in as a means of entertainment. On Santley being called u,pon to contribute his share, he dis t layed avoce of such quality that his master, a musical amateur of much discrimination, at once informed him that with efficient training he would make his fortune, and generously volunteered to pay the expenses of three years' musical tuition in Italy. The offer was at once accepted, with such results as all the world knows. The German Empress is an early riser, and sits down, to breakfast with the Emperor, winter ami summer, punctually at eight o'clock. At one o'clock the Imperial couple dine with their children ; guests are bait seldom invited to this midday meal, and when they are, they are treated quite 'en famille.' She is exceedingly fond, of children, of all sorts and conditions ; and when she is staying in the country she often stops her carriage at the sight of a group of children, and lets them climb into it in search of bomlions which she carries with her for the delectati)u of any little ones she may happen to meet Memorials to distinguished men of Irish blocd promise to become numerous in America. One is projected by Congress to Commodore Jdhn Barry, Father of the American navy ; the Legislature of Ohio last year appropriated §\ O,OOO fo>r a monument in Somerset to Cfeneral Philip Sheridan ; a Bill was introduced in Congress last January providing for the establishment of a national military park on St Michael's Island, Lake Champlain, to be known as McDonough National Park, in honor of Commodore McDonough, in commemoration of his victory over the British fleet in the Ofcttle of Plattefcurgh on September 11, 1814, and in memory of the American sailors and soldiers who perished there ; a monument has been erected in Helena, Montana, to General Thomas Francis Meagher ; and the Government of Canala is to raise ono in Parliament Square, Ottawa to Thomas .D'Arcy McGce. In Boston there are monuments to John Boyle O'Reilly in one of the public j-aiKs and to Colonel Louis Cass, the g&llant commander of the Ninth Regiment, on the Public Garden. Tho Celtic element played a creditable and conspicjous part in the history of the country and the leaders are well worthy of public memorials Mr. OhamVerlalh was 69 yehirs of a/gc on July 8 ; and, apropos, the l Liverpool Post ' publishes a noto on him which contains information that will probably be new to most of our readers. <' Mr Chambici lain's father,' says the writer, ' was a well-to-do shoemaker, a^d was living at the time in question in Camberwell, London. The future Tariff Reformer, wiio 1 spent the last, two years, of his'school life at the London University School, left school at I;he early ago of sixteen, and tegan industrial life in his father's shop, working at the* shoemaker's bench Young Chamberlain, in his last school examination, came out as head mathematical .scholar, was bracketed first in mathematics and French, and was " distinguished "in liatin. His connection with Birmingham began at the age of eighteen, when his father sent him to that town to attend to a screw business in whidh a portion of the paternal fortune was vested, anid at the age of twenty-two we find a "recora in a local debating society's annals of Mr Chamberlain opposing Mr. Bright on the subject of the causation of wars !'