People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 5 November 1908, Page 28

People We Hear About

At present there are six. living recipients of the Victoria Cross among Catholic - officers, namely, Major-General Luke O'Connor, Colonel Paul Kenna, Colonel J. H. Reynolds,,. Major James Masterton,' General . Goodfellow, and Captain .\Crean. General O'Connor, who is the only Victoria Cross :man to rise, to the rank of general officer from a private, won his cross on the heights of Alma. ' • The recent visit of the King «rid Queen of Spain to the exEmpress Eugenic, reminds us that she is eighty-two" /years, of age, having been born in 1826, only seven years after the late Queen Victoria. It argues marvellous vitality that she has been able for so long to resist the sorrows which began to fall on her so thickly just seven and thirty years ago, when she and her consort lost their Empire, and the still heavier blow of nine years later, when her only son fell under the assegais of the Zulus. In retiring from the War Department, Mr. Taft ecased to be a public official for the first time since' he was appointed a judge of the Superior Court of Ohio twenty-one years ago (says the Philadelphia Ledger). He left the Ohio Bench to become Solicitor-General of the United States and then circuit judge, and while in this office he was made President of the Philippine Commission, in 1900. His Philippine service continued until he became Secretary of War, in February, 1904. The Dowager Duchess of Newcastle, who was among the -prominent members of the English laity who assisted" at the Eucharistic Congress, is one of the few Catholic ladies who have personally taken up slum work in the East End. She founded St. Anthony's Settlement in Whitechapel. There she lives, not in the mission itself, but in a small house close by, where she can guide and assist the work that is carried on. The Duchess lives the most simple life among her beloved poor, ! and regards her own least of all. The presidential election in the United States "this week brings to mind the fact that^the present occupant of the White House is in his fiftieth year. He was only forty-three _when he became President. A man must be five and thirty before he can be elected, but the great majority -of the rulers of th_e-United States since Washington's time were much older than that. Of the elected Presidents of the United States, Washington was 57 when inaugurated, Adams and Jackson were 61, Jefferson, Madison, and J. Q. Adams 57, Monroe 58, Van Buren and McKinley 54, Polk 49, Taylor 64, Pierce 48, Buchanan 65, Lincoln 52, Hayes 54, Garfield 49, Cleveland 47, Benjamin Harrison 55. The oldest elected President installed was William Henry riarrison at 68, the youngest, Grant, at 46. The average age of the 20 elected Presidents when inaugurated was above 56 years, including the odd months. Of Presidents reaching their office by way of the Vice-Presidency, Tyler was 51, Fillrnore 56, Johnson 56, Arthur 50 ; average age, about 52 years, Mr. Roosevelt himself* was not quite 43 when he became President upon McKinley's death. He was inaugurated in 1905 at 46, Among the prominent laity present at the Evcharistic Congress in London was General Lord Ralph Kerr, son of the seventh Marquis of Lothian, who is now in his 75th year. Xlke his brother, Admiral-of-the-Fleet Lord Walter *Kerr, he . is a convert to the Catholic Church of many years' standing. - Both are sons of the late Dowager Marchioness of Lothian, who formed one of a group of noble and distinguished Catholic ladies whose names were associated with every charitable work, and were familiar in every Catholic household in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Lord Ralph, who has had a brilliant military career, entered the 10th Light Dragoons (now known as the 10th Hussars) in early life. He was in command of his famous , regiment in India, where he took part in the engagement at Futtehabad, and afterwards attained distinction elsewhere. -From 1891 to 1896 he was Major-General in command of, the Curragh District. Thirty years ago Lord Ralph. KejXs married the Lady iinn Fitzalan Howard, daughter of the fourteenth Duke of Norfolk, and he is, therefore, the brother-in-law of England's premier duke. A devoted son of the Church, he has been foremost ' in the support of every good cause.