RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 172, 20 July 1907, Page 12

RANDOM SHOTS

i&fiMllSm

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

5 have often heard that this is a demo- . cratic country, but I don't know that I ever properly realised the truth about it till this last week. My enlightenment, I may explain, has been due to the Tramway trouble. Everybody in Aucklandmore especially everybody who lives in the suburbs, and usually goes home on the tram—knows that for the last fortnight the tram service has seemed somewhat confused and confusing. But that is all a delusion, and in reality the present state of things in Mr Hansen's domain supplies the only genuine illumination that the' people of Auckland have enjoyed for a long time past on the subject of public transit. For the last year or so the City Council and Mr Hansen and the long-suffering public have all been arguing about the number of cars supplied by the Tramway Company, and endeavouring to show that they are, or are not, sufficient for our needs. No one seems able to decide the point, when all of a sudden the conductors take the law into their own hands and by the simple process of turning off the cars everybody , who has no right to be on, reveal the true inwardness of the situation beyond, a shadow of doubt, and bring to bear npon the opulent directors and shareholders of the Tramway Company the pressure we have so long in vain expected somebody else to apply. Now, I call that Democracy "in exoelsis"—literally "goyerament by the people, through the people for the people;"'and I take off my hat tp the tram-conductors whenever I think of is. When you come to consider it, the men have worked up a delightfully humorous situation. The City Council can't object, because all that the conductors are doing is to enforce the city by-laws. And Mr "Hansen can't object, because he hasjieen saying all along that there are or that there soon will be cafs enough to satisfy everybody —of course, without breaking the above-mentioned regulation. And the general public can't object, because it is naturally anxious about its individual life, and, therefore, cannot recklessly connive at the overcrowding of tram cars. And if the general public does resent waiting in the rain while cars dash by it in the gathering dusk, and dinner is getting cold miles away —well, it knows that the conductors are not to blame. We really can't ask them to lose a considerable percentage of their weekly wages in tickets missed through overcrowding, or lisk trii Is for manslaughter because they can't force their way through the multitudes hanging on to straps and steps and platforms, so as to attend to their duties. I have been brought up to speak respectrfully of dignitaries, so I won't explain what I think the City Council ought to have done long ago. No, I will confine iyself to the social and political aspect of the conductors and their plan of (Campaign; and I can only say that it is about the°most democratic thing that has ever come under my notice—which is meant for high praise. •i"t , i"i"fri'"Wrt* Are the people of Auckland musical? I am not a musician; but just now I am inclined to think they must be. On Monday morning I happened to be passin- through the Victoria Arcade rather earfy and I saw a seething struggling mass'of men jammed in a small doorway, and apparently unable either to «et in or out. I stopped to find out if they were breaking in to capture a burglar or to rescue the inhabitants from a fire; and I was told that they were all musical people, trying to book their seats for the opera. It was then something past nine, and I remarked that they seemed very much in earnest. ''Oh, that's nothing," said my informant, "two men were here at 6.30 a.m., and at 8.30 it was really good fun; something like a crowd"; and he went into a, series of ecstatic details. Now, I haven't been into a crush after tickets since the never-to-be-forgotten occasion of- the visit of the last British football team. So I looked on at the scrimmage from a safe distance; and as I came away I couldn't help thinking that if some of the-people of Auckland get up early enough to be down in the city at 8.30, scrambling for tickets for the opera, why, what a very musical kind of people those musical people must be. _»$.-_"£ _»>_-i"i"i' And yet I don't know. How many of • the people who have put themselves down for " Lohengrin " and " Tannhauser " and " The Flying Dutchman " will really understand much of the performances? I don't know in what language the Wagner operas are going to be performed; and so long as it isn't English it doesn't much matter. But whatever it may be, the audience needn't expect to get much satisfaction out of the " book of the opera," because Wagner was {chiefly interested in his music. And' Wagner's music is by no means the sort of thing that the average human ■being can venture to say he understands at sight. Mind you, I think he ought; at least, he ought to try. I hope that everybody who can possibly squeeze in will go and get as much Wagner as possible. Because there is no human doubt that his operas- are the culminating point of musical composition in their own particular line. But what I am afraid of is that the people who go and listen to the operas Will try to talk about them afterwards. Now, if they are musicians, with a knowledge of technical terms, I will certainly not be able to understand them; and if they are not trained musicians, I will know that they don't understand themselves; so that I look forward to the effects of a course of Wagnerian opera upon Auckland musical circles with highly mixed emotions. I will certainly |go myself; but. if anybody says "leit 1 motif," or anything like it to- mc, I will can lor the jgoifce; ' 7?