TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14854, 20 December 1913, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

It has become almost a Modern commonplace that there Public is no longer a place for Speaking, oratory in the House of Commons or on tho political platform. Lord Ourzon, in a lecture at Cambridge the other day, dealt with somo of the causes of the decline of oratory, and the substitution for it of either eloquence or "business-like, matter-of-fact speech. The pressure of Parliamentary business, which meant less time for speeches, the more disciplined party organisation, and the wider interests of the public, who in consequence had become more or less indifferent to Parliamentary debating had all played their part. But more potent as a cause of the decline of Parliamentary oratory was the growth of platform speaking. Debating abUity in the House led to Ministerial rank, but it was tho platform that made .or unmade leaders and decided the fortunes of parties. Lord Randolph Churchill would never have become Leader of the House but for his platform triumphs, and Mr Lloyd Goorge reserved his most fiery eloquence for meetings. The spirit that now informed Parliamentary oratory was the spirit of the age, "a temper quick, impatient, practical, business-like, distrustful of paraphrases, scornful of superfluous embellishment, eager to arrive at the goal." Quota-, tions and literary allusions were rarely used. In his own day Lord Curzon could Tecall only two Greek quotations used in the House of Commons, while Latin, except for well-worn tags, had been banished. Gladstone was almost the only orator he had heard in the House of Commons. Disraeli, a master of phraseology, was not an orator. Mr Chamberlain had not had the divine spark, but he had displayed a mastery of all tho arts of debate; in clearness, investive, ridicule, and logical reasoning, he was unsurpassed. In: Lord Cureon's opinion Lord Rosebery is apparently the only real orator in England. Mr Balfour's he describes as "probably the acutest mind that Had been dedicated to politics during the past century." Mr Asquith "represented a typo of public speaking carried to higher perfection than by anyone in modern times." His speeches were "a miracle of succinctness, the apotheosis of busi-ness-like efficiency." Mr Bonar Law possessed a gift held by nobody since Lord Salisbury, of being able to deliver a sustained and closely-reasoned argument or attack for an hour without a single note.

Sir Edward Cook's bioThe graphy of Florence Real Nightingale will not Florence impair the reverence Nightingale, in which we hold her,

but it will cause us to revise our estimate of her character. She has been canonised as a saint; we know her now to have been a human saint. "There are some elements of truth in the popular legend," 6ays the biographer "but it is so remote from the whole truth as to convey a general impression everything but the truth: The real Florence Nightingale was very different from the legendary, but also greater." At thirty she had definitely abandoned all thoughts of marriage. "Now, no more childish things, no more vain things, no more love, no more marriage".; she dedicated

I herself to duty. She has been attracted by a man who fur long pleaded with her to marry him. Whether it was a case of really deep love is not quite clear, but sho was undoubtedly sufficiently attached to him to marry him. "I have an intellectual nature which requires satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a passional nature which requires satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a moral, an active nature which requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in his lifo. I can hardly find satisfaction for any of my natures. Sometimes I think that I?will satisfy my passional nature at all events, because that will at least secure be from tho evil of dreaming. But would it ? I could be satisfied to spend a life with him combining our different powers in some great object. I could not satisfy this nature by spending a lifo with him ' in making society and arranging domes- ', tic things. .. To bo nailed to a con- I tinuation and exaggeration of my prosent life without hope of another would be intolerable to mc. Voluntarily to put it out of my power ever to bo able to seize tho chance of forming for myself a true and rich life would seem to mc like suicide." So sho firmly suppressed her intellectual and passional natures and devoted herself to tho cause to which sho deemed herself called by Providence. The decision, says lier biographer, caused a certain hardness in her in after years, and thero wero times when, on mooting he*- lover again, she was half inclined to repent of hor renunciation. She was no "vestal ascetic." Sho wanted to mako tho conditions of marriage better. In the world in which sho lived, "daughters," she wrote, "can only havo a choice among those people whom their parents know and who like their parents well enough to come to their house." By throwing open new spheres of usefulness to women, Miss Nightingale hoped at one and the same time to improve the lot of those who were marked out to bo wives, and to find satisfaction for thoso marked out for the single life.

An interesting experiment Sydney's in model-suburb-planning Model after the style of London's Suburb, "garden cities" is being

made at Daceyville, near Sydney. There are already 104 houses either finished or approaching completion, most of which are now tenanted, and there are 1500 more to be put up. One acre in every ten in the suburb is reserved for park land, and two in every ten for wide, shady roads, with lawns and trees bordering them. Of 336} acres no less than 125} acres are set aside for roads, parks, and a few public buildings. On the remaining 211 acres only seven houses will bo built to the acre, instead of 40 under the usual style. Wide roads are laid out, but as thero is not likely to be much heavy traffic in so comparatively scattered a suburb, they are only metalled down the centre. The rest is turf, with a wide footpath and more turf, and an infant avenue of trees. The houses are of brick, sometimes covered with rough-cast. In the latter designs each house differs in somo respect from its neighbours, thus avoiding tho monotony which so manysuburban streets present. All front lawns must by regulation be open to tho street, and a clause in every lease has special reference to the care of the lawns and flower-gardens. The houses themselves are all lit with electric light. The smaller contain t_ro bedrooms and a combined living-room and kitchen. Each house has a bathroom; and the front verandah, and in tome cases the back verandah too, is made wide for sleeping purposes. As to rent —that all-important question—the three largest houses in Daceyville cost 21s a week, three more cost 18s 6d, twenty 17s and 18s, twenty-three 16s, and eighteen 14s 6d. The Housing Board is trying to work out the problem of combining a maximum of picturesqueness, comfort, compactness, and general up-to-dateness with a. minimum of expenditure. The lowest cost so reached is £500, and the highest £640. The condition under which one may become a householder at'Daceyville is that one is not already the owner of land with a building on it in the same State. Judging from all descriptions, Daceyville promises to prove the nearest possible approach to a suburban paradise. The only trouble is the big one which is. always the bogey in such. schemes of municipal enterprise—finance. The Daceyville accounts already show an ominous debit balance, and whether Sydney's model suburb will be able to keen its head above water financially only time will show.

Uneventfulness is a term Early that could scarcely be apTlmes. plied to tho life-story of

Charles Mullaley, a nonagenarian, who was once the possessor of £27,000, and has been until recently an inmate of a Benevolent Home for the Aged at Cheltenham (Melbourne). Over sixty years ago, when Mullaley was twenty-eight, he became obsessed by the prevalent gold-fever, and left his father's station at Braidwood for Melbourne. Arriving there he found that a poll-tax of 5s was due from every person coming there by sea. Mullaley, with twenty-nine other men, considered, however, that Melbourne should be glad to have them, without charging them for admission, and they determined not to pay the tax. So when the officials found themselves confronted with thirty fierce-looking revol-ver-armed men, who demanded free admission, they meekly submitted. At Ballarat and Bendigo luck favoured tho gold seeker. 'A startling experience about that time befell him in the form of an encounter with the notorious bushranger, "Gipsy" Smith. Riding one day with £500 in notes and 20oz of gold in his saddlebag, he had dismounted to a drink at a creek, when he received a violent jab in the ribs, and turned to see "Gipsy" Smith standing over him with a revolver. Mullaley grabbed the revolver and was overpowering Smith, when five of his gang rushed up, closely followed—-luckily for Mullaley—by a posse of police. A scrimmage ensued, in which the bushrangers were routed, but succeeded in getting away with the precious saddlebag. Subsequently Mullaley basked in Fortune's smilo to the extent of amassing £27,000 in the course of a few years, but this wealth was not long with him. The veteran gold-seeker relates ruefully how he lost £3000 in one night playing nap and hazard in a Sydney gambling saloon. An interesting episode in Mullaley's varied career was his meeting with the poet Gordon, who was a policeman at the fime. "I was at Mount Gambier_" relates Mul-

laley, "and saw Gordon handlings ltd*. ~ less nag in such a masterly way thai ' - ho immediately impressed mc. To bfr •?' come friendly with him I told him 1' '? wanted somebody to play tho -ftiano >"'■ for a dance, but it was such a perforn-. -'"" , ance that I told him to hand in his resignation, and come * with mo as a horwe-brcaker. This he did." Gordon broke in horses for * Mullaley, receiving £2 a head for the job, and was the hitter's companion ia many curious adventures. Ho wm "always riding and reciting," Mullaley says, "in fact thero was so much of • tho latter that ho got on my nerves at . times. . . I didn't mind him writing 7 poems, so long as he did not drag mc -". into them, but all the same I believe I ''- must plead guilty to being 'Alick' in : 'The Sick Stockrider.' At least, Gkav don's widow always said I was." .$-