RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 212, 5 September 1903, Page 4 (Supplement)

RANDOM SHOTS

BY,, ZAMOEIL.

Some write a neighbour's name to lash; gome write — vain thought — for needful cash. Some write to please the country clash, And raise a din. For me, an aim I never fash— I write for fun.

I am immensely pleased that the general public seems likely to take up the Campbell statue in earnest. Statues are not so easily put up here as one might imagine—witness the experience in the matter of the proposed memorial to Sir George Grey. But the gift of Cornwall Park is so tangible and visible and material a benefit to the city, and the possibilities about it are so great, that even the most casual or. the most parsimonious citizen must feel constrained to do something for this good cause. I hope,, however, that the gentlemen to whose management this scheme is entrusted will not hastily commit themselves to any definite opinion about the site oi the statue. Somebody with mere imagination than discretion has suggested that the Campbell statue should stand on One Tree Hill. I call that distinctly absurd. What place could be mere appropriate than the magnificent park which Sir John Logan C.iiupbel's generosity has bestowed wpon the city? Surely within Cornwall Park and nowhere else must the statue be set Up. The One Tree Hill idea seems to me only a few degrees less ridiculous than another extraordinary proposal that has been made, also with the laudable intention of honouring Sir John Logan Campbell. This suggestion is that the park which our "Grand Old Man" has so generously presented to the city shall be called henceforth not Cornwall but Campbell Park. Now, lam quite prepared to admit that it should have been called Campbell Park from the first. But surely the gentlemen who have taken up this notion remember how and why it got its present nirme, Cornwall Park is so called because it was opened by the Duke and Duchess of- Cornwall, now Prince and Princess of Wales. The name Avas chosen for the purpose of doing honour to the Heir Apparent, and to suggest the .hange of title seriously seems to me an act of formal discourtesy to the Throne that no British community would dare to risk. It is perhaps a pity that the park is not to bear the name of the city's benefactor, but under the circumstances we must accept the situation as gracefully as we can. As to the statue, I cordially wish the promoters every success and the longest and heaviest subscription List on record.

from a note which I have received I gather that at least one of my readers has derived some enjoyment from the little anecdote I' related the other week about the newly-imported, clergyman and the kind of girl he would like to marry. My correspondent has sent me a sad little tale, about a lady who owned up to being 34 when she was 42, and who, haying persuaded her husband to settle his property upon her, straightway ejected him from- the domicile. It is a tragic story certainly, and the gentleman concerned hereby receives my sincerest sympathy. But every story ought to have a moral, I suppose; and I Imve been puzzling myself ever since 1 got that letter to discover what particular conclusion I ffr 1 my readers are supposed to draw from it. Is it that no man ahould ever marry a woman eight years older than she looks? —or a woman who looks eight years younger than she is?—or that no man should ever marry at all, lest his wife should persuade him to settle his house upon her,' and then turn hhn out? —or that no man should ever settle any property on his wife lest she should turn out to be eight years older than _he was?—or that no man should ever buy a house lest all or any of these other dreadful consequences should supervene 1 Personally I am free to confess that these bewildering alternatives have preyed upon my imagination till 1 am reluctantly compelled to "give it up" and submit this problem to the intelligence of my readers. I know it means something, and I ahould be so glad to discover what the moral of that story really is,

A few days ago I received a pamphlet wluch bade fair, to destroy the even tenour of my ways and set me going on a fiew -and perhaps dangerous path. In "Brief, it was a booklet issued by a firm of patent agents in the excellent cause of inducing people to invent, and afterwards—fair and reasonable corollary—to patent what they had invented. It told me of men who had made fortunes out of shoelaces and pigs-in-clover, out of perfumes and ping-pong, out of collar studs and tie clips. How easy! And also how noble and ideal. Hadn't I been told from childhood that the inventor was the most valuable member of the commun with the explorer who had been oaten by cannibals* the musician who died in _, garret with his last composi tfbn under his pillow, and the poet who expired at the same moment as the guttering candle which illuminated his hardly finished five-act play—that like these he was a true friend of humanity and an apostle of the ideal? But wha' to invent? Now, that's fust whpre the humour of these patent agents comes in. "Piga-in-clover, tip clip, collar stud! What could be simpler? Examine the idea underlying each of these useful or playful commodities. Is there anything t"ia: you or I need have been proud of had we thought of them, had we had the courage to place them upon the capricious market, had we likewise made a fortune from their sale? Certainly not. Underlying each is a principle so assin inely simple, so ludicrously wanting in all real originality, that it veritably seems to set a man below and not above the average to be able to think of such things. What, then, is this quality, and why don't I possess it? It isn't that I lon't want the money, and it isn't thao ! don't want the undeserved rpputation )f being an extremely ingenious fel-

low. No; these things would in themselves be very nice. Why, oh why, then, is it that. I can't make my fortune by discovering one of these idiotic toys and these ridiculous collar stud 3 (any collar stud is ridiculous that has any "dodge" about it, or in actual fact that is not in one rigid piece, and that kind is too good to get invented twice!). Anyhow, it is certainly not brains it wants; it is rather a sort of low cunning. And if you are not born with that kind ol low cunning you can't get it; and if you can't get it, where's the use of thinking about it? As for pigs-in-clover —but one would need inventiveness to describe the intellect of the man who plotted that game. It hurts me to think of him.

The discussion about what we are to eat, what we are to avoid, and how much we are to avoid, and how much to eat. appears to be as enthralling to the average of mankind as it was when the question was first broached, and as to when that was I will not insult my readers by even a hint. The fact of the matter is that it i 3 the first of all questions. Or, rather, it is the second. The first is the question of early rising. But 1 pass that over, because in my case, at least, it is sub judice. The food question is, then, to all inten.3 and purposes, the most important with which in every-daj life we are confronted. Hence the Australian battle between the carnivorous and herbivorous, the old-fashioned butcher and the up-to-date greengrocer, lentils versus tripe, and the vegetarian versus the world. It is an enthralling problem. I have spent much thought and eaten two vegetable luncheons in my anxiety to decide. The thought was fruitless, the luncheons were fruitful of two accelerated dinners and smiling faces. To be just, I will confess that, theoretically, those luncheons shouid have sustained me longer than they did. But one is human enough, having learned to treat porridge as a preliminary, cabbage and tomatoes as an accompaniment, and barley-water as a sick man's p'-c----tenee, to treat these things as auxiliaries and not as constituting a self-complete diet. Hypnotise me, and I, might do better and live longer on .the flesh of trees and plants and shrubs. Meantime I apologetically prefer that of the beasts of the field. The "cue", for these reflections appeared in a Southern paper, which sarcastically summed up the conflicting opinions of local members of. the medical profession upon this problem. Here they are as this authority reads thpm: "(1.) We eat too much' meat. (2) We cat just the right quantity of meat. (3) We don't'eat enough, meat. (4) Dr. Haig's theory is well worthy of study. (5) Dr. Hflig is a faddist. "(0) A nieat diet would be quite sufficient for an ordinary man to get along- with if he took enough of it. (7) Dr. Hair's diet would be quite sufficient for an ordinary man to get along with if he took enough of it." The critic in question grows ironical over these results. I don't; I read them coolly and calmly; I think them out; I interpret them. And my interpretation is this: (1) Both parties are wrong; (2) two wrongs make a right; (3) one advocates ment and the other trees; (4) (the conclusion) therefore the right thing is to eat trees and meat as seemeth good. I have, do, and shall.

A curious phenomenon is the excessive averseness—dovbtless it is a specips of reaction from the modern, advertising spirit—from saying a good word for anything when one might conceivably be putting a penny in one's neighbour's pocket. Generally speaking, this ntMrude is no worse than harmless. But for the life of me I cannot see why I should not in passing advertise anything I please so long as I am convinced that it is for the public good, and T am doing it for that sole motive. Now T mean to advprtise Shakespeare, that bard having promised to appear in Auckland in the course of next month. Not for the.sake Of furthering the interests of anyone, much less myself but solely because I believe that Shakespeare will do as much srood in his season in thin city as any ten State schools put tbgpther in a whole year. What astonished me the othpr day was to hear from a well-informed individual that the Shakespeare societies of the colony have done absolutely nothing to encourage the production of tbe plays of the dramatist after whom they are named. Perhaps some of them nre of the unhappy class T have just cited— the class that will not further a good cause, because, it happens by the way to help to.fill the treasury of others. In this ca_e I hope a policy that I can't help regarding as a somewhat narrow one will be exchanged for that in which pnthusiasm for Shakespeare will take first place. Our dramatic situation —one might say (excepting France, Germany and Austria) that of the world —is too desperate to allow of our affording to consider where these productions come from, or how they come; to see that they do come, and to help them along when they have, is our sole business. That is to say, if we care a fig for the ideals of art, and if our worship of great drama is better than shallow conventionality. Therefore I shall begin to advertise Shakespeare.