RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 149, 23 June 1906, Page 12

RANDOM SHOTS

SiliT

Feme write a neighbour's name to last; Some write — vain thought — for needful rash. Some write to please the country clash. And raise n din. For mc. an aim I never fash— I write for fun. "Does anybody ever walk in Auckland." asks the "Star's" London correspondent, apropos of ihe A.T.C'.'s annual report, -and his deduction that the whole population of this town made more than 2si> tram journeys in the course of one -\oe.r. I am lazy .at st tistio, =»o I will Lake his word for what looks like a big statement, and merely hold that the question with which he starts off is pretty justified by those figures. Rut ii iil !i to tell, one hardly needs figures to demonstrate the very palpable truth that the. average Aucklander i.-> getting more and more averse to the oldest and most natural mode ol" progression. He pretends he is in a hurry; but it is really toe desire t > savi himself hurrying by letting somebody else hurry for !d,".i —one of rh-'se subtle little difi'erre ■:■-■■ '!nr people never will appreciate. TVr.-omlly. my la/.ii;<--s happen.- to take other forms, and 1 am tolerably con-vi'.i-c-! thai the sV.iiv or' 2SO theoretic tram journey* assigned to mc as a eonrriliu'iiig unit happen* io multiply my aita.il achievement 1 ■;> something like ten nr twelve. And for once T think I am \\i*e. For people who lead anything of a sedentary life I i tram it home to dinner, train it out for the evening, and then tram :t to bed, is a form of slow suicide, if (rainless and even pleasant; and tiie man who will really bring the m.:-s of the population to see that walking i* an essential adjunct to a stationery life, if it is To l,e passed healthily .nd happi'y, woud not be doing 'lis fel-low-creature a bad turn. Having rend a paragraph in Zamiel's column last week that in his opinion b.dittled the romantic realities that ar.- still to be found asociated with the Hrilisb mercantile marine, a mariner of sonic experience in matters pertaining to craft called the other day, and persuaded mc to a new belief concerning "wind-jammers" and the romance of them that go down 1 o the sea- in ships, even to this day. He told mc. he was very earnest in the telling, and wore the appearance of n man desperately deter mined to convince his audience of the truth, that the romance of life at sea was as fresh and slowing as ever; that the ships that swam in it were simply alive with romance, even unto the biscuits that were doled out to the ''bullies'' wherewith to vary the flavour of their ration of salt-horse. The tale be related of lliose biscuits, in short. v, as a romance in itself, Tho jaunts and excursions they were wont to make-. 1 the domestic diversions; and all the otlicr peculiarities of iho-c ships' biscuits, branded them at om-e as a rare and wonderful variety of comestible. Bio assured mo also that the water supply was not a matter for a man of tolerably nice attention to the outward manifestation of gracp, to think upon with any degree of complacency, (hi a British merchant ship, quoth he, and he produced his own articles as 'witness, the daily allowance of water per man hot weather and cold, thirsty or droughty, is three quarts per diem, and devil a drop more for washing. With some sarcasm ho conceded that on '"colonials" an extra, pint was usually ladled out as largesse. 1 have had to exist on less water myself, 'but I confess it was not a continual joy to mc, nor was it my solace to regard the >ituation as a fixed and abiding one. Three quarts of water, if you pour it all out and look at in one regard, my brothers —I have seen a thirsty man drink well nigh as much in one quad. And that mariner's manifest was in other respects not calculated to beguile the land-fed youth to a life on the roaring main, while the accounts of accident and sudden death that be poured forth within a few brief minutes are not to be lightly repeated. 1 recanted unconditionally at the recital, for if the tenth part of it was hut ten times magnified, there is still more, oldfashioned romance lurking within bark of the whistling shrouds than the Hoard of Trade have any official cognisance of. So appendicitis has gone out of fashion. "It can only be mentioned," so I read, "with a shrug of the shoulders, like crinolines or peg-top trousers." From being smart to have appendicitis, it has become "hopelessly middle-class," says the "Weekly Despatch." And since no one likes to be "hopelessly middle-class," 1 here is, I suppose, a growing distaste for the disease, which certainly seems to in- ■ hide a hundred victims where it did one ten years or so ago. What happened to ]. ople with appendicitis in those days I don't know. They may have died; they nay have been cured of stomach-ache by some far more simple remedy: they may have had a hair's breadth 'scape and reio\ crcd from the full measure of the evil. Hut, anyhow, it wasn't fashionable thou, and there, was no excited competition for 1 lie honour of first case. Then came the great appendicitis rage, in whicli it is i.lleged that if you whispered "stomachache" before some surgeons they very mm,n insisted in opening up your internal economy and looking for a refractory appendix. But now the glory of it is gull' . and some unique complaint must be loiuiil to occupy its once honoured place. The many problems connected with thi' use of the '"big, big D" received an accession to their number last week in the Sydney case in which a wif* claimed that bad language by a husband constituted cruelty. The judge, however, took an unsentimental view of the matter, and held that while in certain circumstances it might be cruel, it did riot constitute legal cruelty if the wife were accustomed to hearing it Perhaps he might have gone ° fur . tber and held that in t -er tain circumstances the- sudden abatement ot bad language roi-ht l,e cruel. The shock involved i n a s ""j d . den descent to '"botheration!" or "l wish yon wouldn't!" might b e mos t disastrous. Anyhow, his Honor did not • jhink that sweating was cruel,

way of reason he defined cruelty as something which affected, 01 was likely to affect, the health of the person said to be injured. Which argument, when you come to think of it, goes all the other way, for it has been repeated ever since swearing was first philosophically considered, that it is a medium chosen as a safety-valve by otherwise dangerous people. I don't wish to defend swearing as a practice (for where it is really a practice it is certainly an unpleasant one), but I do wish to express my acquiescence in that view that the man who swears often blows off steam that otherwise might prove dangerous. To the occasional swearer this° truth does not so much apply, and the occasional swearer, of course, Denetrates every social condition, even into the Church itself—as I am reminded by an extract from the "Yorkshire Observer," in which the vicar of fit. Chrysostom's. Bradford, announced his intention to preach a scries of sermons on "The Damnable (? Education) Bill!" As a commentator points out, the vicar had not learned to follow the example of the bishop who, when a waiter had spilt the soup in his episcopal apron, begged a layman to utter the profane words which he considered necessary to the occasion. Our vicar, on the contrary, plainly saw an advantage in choosing his own language.