The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-05-07
TODAY'S BIRTHDAY PARTY


 was born at Everleign. in Dull
 szoA. Eay ', 1865, and will thus begin his hftieth year to-day. AC
 Oxford he was a, leader in anna
 teur theatricals, and decided upon
 stage career. For several years
 he toured the .sprovinces'' with
 minor com panies, and eventually
 decided that his talents were not
 in that direction. He was thir-
 ty years old when he published
 his first novel. "A Romance of
 westdaIe.'' Very few people man
 ifested any. enthusiasm over this
 work, but in 1896 MT. Mason
 scored a big success with "The
 Courtship of Morrice Butler.
 This novel. like many of his sub
 sequent books, was drana.tized.
 Among his works most widely
 read on this side of the Atlantic
 are 'sThe Witness for the De-
 fence,'' stCIementina ssThe Four
 Feathers, = and t"The Turnstile.'' z
 The latter book is based on his
 observations while a member of
 Parliament, where he represent ed Coventry as a Liberal from
 a London home and country villa on the Isle of Wight, both
 places being bachelor quarters, since the author himself has new CT been involved in a. romance
 which ended with wedding bells. : He has travelled widely, and his
 principal recreation is climbing
 up mountains and climbing down again.
 Joseph GurneyI Cannon. pri- born in Guilford, N. C., seventy
 of Hoa fn-7au former Speaker of Uncle Sam's
 House of Representative who long occupied the seat where now champs the Democratic Clark, entered Congress in 1873, and since then has seldom been ab- : sent from it's halls. Not long ago he was reported as ..su- premely confident that the next Congress will be Republican and that he will be a member of that body.' Tn a Linco1n's birthday address last February the former alleged tCzar of Con gress'' attributed the downfall of the Grand Old Party to MT. Taft
 ..Mr. Taft he said ..is a great man, has one of the greatest minds in the country, BUT he was such a searcher after har- . est creator of party discord. Why added Uncle Joe. "if Taft had been chosen Pope of Rome he would have fired the College of Cardinals and appointed Prot estants, Greek churchmen and Turks in their places.
 Since King George came to the throne it has frequently been said that the authority of Brit ish monarchy was vested in a the Queen and Lord Rosebery Recent events have tended to prove that, within his cohstitu- tional limits, George ". is quite able in a time Of crisis to do his own Ringing, but it is certain that Lord Rosebery's views have always been given due weight by the King. The Earl of Rosebery, who is also Viscount and Baron Rosebery, Baron Primrose and Dalmeney, and viscount of In verkeithing, bears the family name of Primrose. The first of his titled ancestors won a baron etcy by remaining faithful to the cause of Charles T., for which he was knighted in 1851. The Earl added vastly to the family for  Baron Meyer de Rothschild. While Secretary for Foreign Af- fairs in 1893, Lord Rosebery took a leading part in the mem orable debate in the Upper House on the second Home Rule 2 Bill, and one of the most eIo- quent speeches of his career was delivered in defence of that measure. The Earl has written r<f xy<,IV1 1oJ1 Geographical works dealing with Napoleon, Cromwell, Sir Robert Peel, Chatham and Pitt
 The first through transconti- mental railroad, the Union Pa cific was completed forty-five years ago to-day. May '. 1869, affording rail connection be- tween the East and the rapidly cific slope The Union Pacific 1 was the only transcontinental line until 1883, when three rival lines entered into competition for the traffic and opened up much new country. In that year the Southern Pacific linked up its line from New Orleans to Cal completed from Minnesota to Washington and Puget Sound, and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa F'e, with it's connections, formed a fourth road of steel across the continent. In the meantime, the first attempt to build Canadian transcontinent- al line, initiated in 1873, had end ed in scandal and failure. but the project was revived and in I1SS6 the Canadian Pacific system was completed and inaugurated a through service from Montreal to Vancouver. Subsequent trans continental lines include the Ca nadian Northern, the Grand Trunk Pacific, the Chicago, Mil waul<ee & Puget Sound, the Mis- souri Pacif1c-Rio Grande-W West ern Pacific system, and the Great Northern.
 H. M. S. Victory no, the his toric English man-of-war which was Nelson's flagship in the memorable battle of Trafalgar, is perhaps the oldest seaworthy vessel in existence. It has been kept in a fine state of preserva,- ton at Portsmouth, and to-day, as every year on the anniversary