The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-03-20

a pair of the most spirited thorough
breds with as much ease and conf
dence as though they were innocuouS
and doeile as lambs.
At the Woburn stables there are be-
tween thirty and forty carriage and
saddle horses, and with every one of
them it may be said that She is on
terms of friendly intimacy. Being so
fond of horses, and such superb
horsewoman, it is not surprising that
the duchess has successfully resisted
incubation by the motor car craze.
But if any doubt existed as to her
grace's pure and unadulterated feni-.
ninity, despite her devotion to sport,
it would be dispelled at once by the
proof she gives of her. fondnesss for
cats, and this is not confined to those
rare and aristocratic Tables which en-
joy the luxurious and unstinted hos
pita1ity of Woburn. She is president
of the society founded by Chinese Cor {
don'S ;Sister-in-law which in London,l
runs a boarding house for well-f6sdo !
cats and free lodging house for pow
erty-stricken ones. Her interest In
cats extends even to the men who
make a living in London by selling
cat meat. She occasionally attends
the annual dinner given to them, and
at one of them made a pretty little
speech, in which she besought them to z
be charitable to the stray and hungry
cats whom they encountered in their
rounds.
Among the arts It is music to which
the duchess is most devoted, and when
In London during the opera season
seldom misses an evening at the Royal
opera house in Covent Garden. The
fact that the duke owns it and that she
is therefore on the free list, has moth
ing to do with it, of course.
That the duke should have taken for
his bride a daughter of the church
and endowed her, according to his mar
riage VOWS, with all his worldly goods,
is not without a certain appropriate
Vess. Indeed, it might be termed an 8
act of restitution.
The duke owes the largest measure I,
of his prosperity to the spoilation- or
the church by which his. ancestors
greatly profited. Covent Garden, which
used to be Convent Garden, before the
fifteenth century, and the ducal Long
Acre property belonged originally to
the monks of Westminster, but bluff
King Henry, the much-married mon
arch, took the land from them and be-
slowed 1t on John Russell. the first
Earl of Bedford and lord high admiral
of England. AT that time the property
was Of the yearly value of six pounds,
six shillings and eight pence.
1t is probably worth now consider
ably more than as many million
pounds, and is one of the most colossal
examples on record of the profits de-
rived from unearned increment.
In addition to this Bedford and Lon
don property, the duke owns estates In
Devonshire Cornwall, Cambridgeshire
and Northamptonshire and has long
string of titles appertaining to them.
Altogether his landed possessions
amount to $4,000 acres. This sounds
inconsiderable compared with the l. =
100000 acres owned by Englands
greatest land owner, the Duke of
Sutherland. Yet the Duke of Bedford
is far and away the weather. man
of the two. 1t is his property in Lon
don that makes his bank roll so much
the bigger. He is reputed to own
more of it than any other one person,
and to have more tenants than the
Duke of Westminster.