The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-08-29

l hear. Is vastly different This is in iaet, exactly such hospital as that for which John Masefield. the poet. who al- ready has served a Red Cross orderly al the front. and who. one hears, has re- turned there. has recently been collect Ing funds. More details regarding this latest instance of Sir James open hand edness whenever it is a case of doin; good or relieving suffering I am inter . dleted from giving. Everybody who knows Barrie's dislike for letting his left hand know what his right one is about Will understand why
 The author of Peter Pan," is, of course. member of the committee that was recently formed to arrange a me- morial to the late Charles Frohman a memorial that 1t has now been decided shall take the form of a drinking foun- tain at Marlow, the spot in England which the American sr.anager most fa- vored This reminds me that on one Of my own visits there l discovered that the place already possesses one curious
 theatrical" memorial This is the fa- nous picture of the Spotted Boy" which one may see in the vestry of Marlow church. It commemorates a ..patchy" youth from the Caribbean Islands, who died at Marlow in 1S11, after exciting much interest by exhibiting himself about the country under the manage ment of William Richardson, the Bar mum at that time Between the two close friendship sprang up and Rich ardson by his own desire. was buried Tn the same grave as the Spotted Boy
 In compliments uttered by George Der hard Shaw are few and far between, but he once paid exceedingly handsome one to Rodin. whose famous group, 'The Burghers of Calais" has just been un- yelled in the gardens of he bo bankment ''G. B. S.'' had been invited to banquet given in honor of Rodin. He declined the invitation in character istic letter. So far as I am concerned" he wrote, the banquet is superfuous. I have already taken measures to secure my immortality by binding 1t with that of Eodin. Henceforth in every encyclo- pedia you will find. Bernard Shaw. the subject of a bust by Rodin, otherwise unknown
 Sir James Murray the famous and in- defatigable editor of the greatest of all dictionaries. who died this week, was undeniably one of the great men of his time. Little did I think when I was cor. responding with him, not two months ago. regarding the strange story of pr. Minor, the contributor to thes"New Eng fish Dictionary" whom Sir James discov- cred to be an American imprisoned in Broadmoor for a murder committed while he was insane. that a few weeks later the great dictionary maker would be dead.
 What has been published during the past week. or since the death of Sir James Murray was announced, has made 1t more than ever evident how colossal was the task upon which he had been engaged for 36 years and in which sol many Americans, the late Richard Grant White among them assisted.
 When it was first decided, away back in 1S57 to compile great new English dictionary, that would show exactly when and under what circumstances every word came into the English language, all appeal was made for volunteer readers the world over. who would forward quo tations from authors of all periods that might be of service and over 1900 such volunteers were speedily enrolled. From beginning to end the quotations which they sent in aggregated over 100000.
 Somebody computed that the strips Of paper on which they were written, if placed end to end. would reach from one end of Great Britain to the other, 350 miles, while the fwriting on them, treated similarly, would extend vom Lon don to the great wall of China.
 In the 20 years during which this work has been going on before Sir James Murray took over the editorship of the New English Dictionary about 2,000,O00 quotations had been gathered, but these bundles of slips were in all sorts of places. Much of the material had been dumped at the house of the late Dr Furnival, the Shakesperean scholar, who was enc of the promoters. It was stored in hampers and sacks and boxes and filled his house. When the Oxford Uni versty Press finally took over the pro duction of the dictionary and Sir James Murray became editor. the materials gathered previously began to pour iD upon the latter Tons of material, in sacks. filled his rooms. and finally a corrugated iron hut was erected in the garden to hold it all in safety from fire.
 Sir James, who had been 42 when he took up this mastodon of a work, was 7s when he died. with the last of his 10 volumes still incomplete. This last volume was "T to E." and it Is cu rious circumstance that the venerable ed- itor had reached the word turned down" when death. In Omar's phrase, turned down an empty glass; His work, ifl laborious, was certainly full of variety He once stated that he had written in one week to the director of Kew Gardens about an exotic. plant. to a Roman Cath olic priest on a point of divinity, to a Newcastle boatbuilder about a keel, to a sporting newspaper, to another authority about a bloater, and to many more peo- pie on a variety of subjects.