ON THE ASPHALT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2400, 14 April 1890, Page 2

ON THE ASPHALT.

[By Autoltcus]."*

'' A snapper up of unconsiderecl trifles." —Shakespeare. _ - _ -: ,•„-..--a^k- " I fought for my own hand:"—Scott,

A Showman, to be any good, must; be a born showman,—like a poet,"-you--know'; or a statesman, or a book canvasser, or an insurance agent, or a Salvationist captain. The. special qualifications; re- - quired in each case mentioned are special gifts, and all the training in the world will not turn out the perfect article. Barring perhaps the poet, the best qualification with them all is the useful bid colonial one of "cheek." In either of the instances I have enumerated the work done would be of the „ leftist^saiisfacfiijjl' nature were the great element -'of yiiaro cheek absent. But a showman would be one of the saddest failures under the. sun were he deficient in that jseconji cousins to genius, impudence. His; cheek is nearly of the same nature as that .of a reporter. , -The ■% latter wants to bore in everywhere to see what is going on, and to make readable matter out of whatever information ho can acquire. Of course he is a philosopher top, and his great quest is.thetruthV '.He usually finds it; but unkind people say he can't stick to it when he has found ifcj He usually manages to live down a calumny like that. The showman's cheek is akin, but on the other side of the street. Heboreseveryonewithuihearingto come in and see what he has to exhibit. I am not an unkind man, so I naive nothing to say about the showman's conversation in the matter of the truth,: only that he must let out a word or,two' of truth in the course of the exordium he repeat^ from morning to night. We have & showman here just .nbSiy who*-!is really a born showman.. He is"ruiining!' the "horned horse," and for the gift of "patter "he licks creation. In describing what he has to exhibit "on the. inside" he makes use of the rising and the falling ■ inflections with a tone Uriah Heap would" have envied, and which he must have picked up at a camp meeting. He dwells with a most persuasive and impressive tenderness on the extraordinary freak of Great Nature in producing "the.fir^yearC old mare Lady Brunswickj wiih.hprna upon each hoof, ladies and gentlemen, over a foot long, to be seen on the inside, I the greatest living wonder of the age, for the small sum of sixpence, and as Shakespeare says, seeing is believing, but feeling is the naked truth." He preaches this, and yards more like it, all day long, only nterrupting the stream to take a tanner or when there is nobody to listen. A thawbacon. tried to tell him he had seen more wonderful things. than-^that at Home. "Oh yes, they have them by the thousand, at Home : thousands of them ; and only charge a penny to go in ; but we have only one horned horse in New Zealand, and we charge- sixpence. The five-year-old mare, etc." And so he went on again. The mare, he says was bred in the North Island. I wonder if the showy, man himself is a product of the soil, br, an imported article. ' \ -.; '-VV

The opening of the shooting season called out quite an army of marksmen.' Some wentcamping outon Thursday night, • so that they could begin their slaughter at daybreak on Good Friday. The sport was somewhat varied, and the baga made by the sportsmen were upon a graduated scale—from what may be called a good lay down to "nix." I saw one worthy gentleman riding home on a jaded horse. Both horse and rider bore evident signs^ of having been in swampy land. Horsemud from fetlock to hook, and rider" mud from ankle to breeching. A long; and weary time of sporb he fhad had, anda long number of shots he had fired, too. < His supply of amunition was abundant* when he went Out, but he had not enough powder left to make a "devil" for a school boy—and his bag, a duck and a ' poor little leveret. Yet he had a grand time, and it was quite absurd on the part of the powers that be to attempt to deprive him and others like him of the day's shooting on Good Friday.

A great fuss was made some time ago about getting a crossingfor foot passengers , over the railway Une from Cameron street east to Cameron street west. The crossing, I understand, was • actually promised by the Minster for- Public Works, and we were led to believe that the thing was to be done at once. B,ut. the^ fuss died awaj and th.^ pjomis,e. !vra^. no.t fulfilled. Now that the days are, shortening and the winter nights coming on, something should be done about that crossing, Just about the railway station, the lines are a network of points, an&J, many a broken shin falls to the lot ofi western residents who dare the dangers of the way there. The crossing would certainly be a convenience, and. it has been a matter of wonder 'why it has not been made. At least I qevep. hear^ ajwi : reason gfven.j ' ' . -. ; J

While upon this matter of the railway, does it not strike some of our public men that the time has come to. agitate for a new station altogether. lam told "on very good authority that the new station would be granted if the peopje of the town and county showed &ny P»rtjculA.p anxiety, about the matter. That a new station, giving, proper acpommodation t0,.. the public is urgently wanted has been' abundantly.proved every time the express , has passed through during the summer and autumn, 'and |Jie crush" wJien an excursion was leaving was something extraordinary—all because of the- want of room on the narrow platform. ; There is plenty of room to build, and it can hardly be asserted that any one of the rooms in which railway business .itj transacted is. sufficient fqk the purposes to whicjr* w devoted, The ladies' waiting room is & very poor apology for one, and now. th^fe : ;; ; the Commissioners Have fixed a teriff of 4 1 their own for the refreshment rooms along the linej and compelled tea to Jbte, sold at .3d per c^p, \ tW. qiisi£ l^q provide a Juncheoii room Targe^ enoiigh to accommodate passengers-who "want • : to drink tea. The time allowed \ to the express passenger at the Ashbur« x ton station is not long, but that tinje ia practically very much reduced by thje^ limited. £tssGk d^vqted to fche $a& aftd the bar, |3ufc the'greW Want is more ' jsa,ii- ■: form room, and the platform to be cohered : ~ in. The scene on a wet day wlien a train] % I arrives is strong evidence in favor q$ a^, *„ qpve.r.ed in platfopn, "EJveKyliqdy, ciiow.da r into' tho'littjo recess between the. bookstall and tJie tickbt office, and to do business at the latter is quite an undertaking in these circumstances. ' ' ' -

How. long is it since we had either a . flower sljow, or a poultry sfyow 1 4 l°ng fcimo anyhow. We used to havo quite a, live Horticultural Society here, a society th.at liolj.l meetings a,t which instructive papers wore road by people well up in gardening matters ; and the annual show in the then Town Hall was anything but n mean affair. Surely after the number of "apple" paragraphs that . have appeared in your paper, showing what can be done in fruit, a niove thould bo niaJu <o form a .Society,"' A paragraph* , in Uie paper is a\\ very, well, find a baskefc iof apples uitli iivoir naine''kbcls on-dis* played 1 in a* shop window is "also all very well ; but what a grand display would^ t

pples of this year s crop have made on tncbenches of a show !

Let me congratulate you on your new type. Your print now of the reading matter will compare with that of any paper in the colony for clearness, and your neat black clean-cut headlines are quite an outset to the paper's appearance. Good print is a great desideratum in the country, where the light is not always very brilliant, but your print is now so clear that it might almost be read in the dark. After that hadn't I now better say.—So long.