Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 10 August 1911, Page 1526

Notes

! —« «w * Wait Till You're Married ' The Chronicle records an amusing incident which occurred in the House of Commons during a period when, in the absence of the Home Secretary, the Home Office questions were being answered by Mr. Wedgwood Benn. Ever on the look-out for a chance to score off Ministers, Lord Hugh Cecil jumped to his feet. ' Why ' he demanded sternly, is there no representative of the Home Office present to answer questions V . Cries of ' Order' greeted this, and then Mr. Will Crooks supplied the unexpected answer: 'You wait till you're married/ he said. Lord Hugh subsided without a word, and the House, remembering the recent birth of a son and heir ,to Mr. Churchill, roared with laughter. Why There Are Baronets . The hereditary knightly Order of Baronets—lowest hereditary title in the United Kingdom—is iust celebrating its Tercentenary. It was founded on May . 22, 1611, by James 1., and, as is well known, a payment of something over £IOOO was exacted from the first grantees of the new title. 'The origin of the dignity says the London Telegraph, ' lay in the King's necessity. Money had to be found somehow for the

troops in Ulster, and the £IOOO that purchased the honor was made up of the pay of thirty foot soldiers at eightpence a day for three years. There was a fair response to this offer. Of this number, eighteen, it is curious to notice that the lineal male descendant of no less than nine still enjoy the honor, though in four or five cases the title has been submerged by the subsequent grant of a peerage. Seventy-three other baronetcies were conferred on the same terms before the year was out.’

Mass Among the Stokers The following is an excerpt from the letter of a priest who sailed in the Empress of Ireland to attend the Eucharistic Congress at Montreal: ' The voyage went on with nothing of note- happening till towards the end, when the stokers, with whom I had. several chats, asked me if I could not manage to get 'them a Mass in their quarters. The result of a lot of negotiation was, that Father Bernard Vaughan would say a Mass down below at 7 o'clock and myself at 8.30." Thursday, I began confessions in one of their bunks at 9 p.m., and went on till 11, the poor fellows rushing up from their . work in all sorts of undress and blackness. I was busy nearly all the night preparing altar, etc., in one of the rooms in which thirty men slept. I wish you could have seen that chapel! It was almost as mean as Bethlehem. Yet, one man told me when he woke and saw an altar there, he almost cried. At 7 o'clock Father Bernard began the place was packed with men who might have been niggers. I said Rosary. B. gave a short morning talk, and all went off well. At 8.30 the room was again filled. B. was there when I began Mass; he said five decades, them sing up "Hail, Queen of Heaven," "O Salutaris," "Tantum Ergo," "Faith of Our Fathers." You should have heard that singing from throats coated with coal dust after four hours' stoking. I gave Holy Communion to about forty.'