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Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2462, 29 March 1909, Page 3

AN ARTIST’S EXIT. Iu its issue for Christmas Day, St. James’s Budget contains the following painful record: — . Examples of sad and pitiful endings of the lives of artists are not few, and among them there are many terrible ones—the deaths of Rembrandt and of Fragonard, for instance —but few have been more pitiful thaii the death of the Dutch artist Ten Kate, in Raris, a few days ago. Ton Kate is, and lias been for several years, a name of some account in the world of Art; it has been seen on many pictures that have made a stir at an auction sale, and on many others which, though perhaps not so valuable in the market, drew words of praise from connoisseurs. The name stood for a kind of landscape which, to say the least, reminded one of no other painter, and which in many ways was artistically and charmingly thought out and executed. But Ten Kate died unknown and unrecognised in the midst of Paris. This happened last week. Whilst walking along the Rue Reaumur, he was seized with congestion of the brain and fell, lifeless. Not a paper or card of any kind was to be found in his pockets, and the face was too little known by any but a restricted group of friends for it to be recognised; so the body was taken to the Morgue. The few days allowed for recognition passed by, however, and the body was taken to a hospital, where it was to have figured in some such picture as Rembrandt has shown in his ‘‘Lesson in Anatomy.” Happily, the liomme d’affaires, who was the go-between in all dealings that Ten Kate had with picture buyers—the other side of the medal, as it were-—be-came uneasy at not seeing the artist for several days together. He drafted a full description of Ten Kate, _ and drove round the city making enquiries. Ho arrived just in time. Ten Kate had a fitting and solemn burial.

WHEN IS A WAN DriUNK? THE OLD QUESTION AGAIN. This is an old conundrum which is always being answered and always cropping up again. The reason why it comes up so persistently is that the question has been answered in so many different wry*.. duo more un>V * **\ W&listhan there days when the people of tne Old Testament danced and became merry with wine. When is a man drunk? Well, it all depends on the man, of course. Sonne men have the advantage. Two men, a. big and a little one, may have the same number of drinks in the day, and the little man be as sober as a judge at the end of it, and the big man —he ought to be ashamed of himself—will have no more control over himself than he has over the courses of the planets. Or it may be .the other way; the big man may show the little one points, and then you get the paradox of a man with a little head in the evening waking up with a big head in the morning. “I ask Your Worship can a man get drunk on four beers?” said a man charged with drunkenness at Cliristchufch the other day. And the magistrate, Mr H. W. Bishop, answered: “Yes, of course a man can become drunk on four beers. I have no doubt whatever on the point.” I’m not going to make any remarks which may be regarded as contempt of Court, but when, a magistrate says he has no doubt that a. man can get drunk on four beers—well, I conclude he must know something about it. At the same time I can assure His Worship that there are some gentlemen of my acquaintance who absolutely can't getdrunk on four beers, and 1 doubt if 14 would have any appreciable, effect on them. Some men are born under lucky stars. It isn’t always the man who drinks the most who gets most drunk; and the fact that some men get locked up for being drunk and others don’t is a mere accident of birth. There are. of course, degrees of drunkenness. I have heard a man referred to as being “slightly elevated,” another as “not himself,” a third as “under the influence,” a fourth as “betwixt and between,” and a fifth as. “drunk.” A witness at a country police court gave a fair explanation of the betwixt and between stage. “‘E wasn’t drunk, Your Worship, but ’e wasn’t himself, and when I last saw ’im ’cd been wash - ing ’is face in a puddle, an’ was try in. to wipe it on a rubber doormat, cursin’ the ’o!es in the towel.”—New Zealand “Herald.”

PAPER CURRENCY. Let the paper currency faddists talk as they like, there is no value to paper money except so far as it is backed by gold, and New Zealand, depending as it does upon geld countries, simply cannot set no a paper standard of her own.—New Plymouth “Herald.”

According to Dr Josiah Oldfield, Noah was the first meat eater, and also the. first drunkard.

ZEBRA