Dunedin Doings

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXI, Issue 2, 10 January 1905, Page 5

Dunedin Doings

[by fritz.J

Monday. In the armor-plated days of knight-errantry, a man might speed .with much more safety to the rescue of Beauty in distress than in these degenerate times when- indst ' of us c;o abroad armed with" nothing more deadly than an umbrella, or a penknife. It is therefore not surprising that if on the. impulse of the moment, you find yourself rushing' towards ' the wrong doer and carrying nothing "but a, righteous indignation," while" the villain has a stout stick, the adventure may bring you something more than renown. 'And so it fell out that before the year of grace 1905 had begun to get warm, our worthy and respected Dean of All Saint's

was the victim of a cowardly and brutal assault

from a' ruffian who had so scared a fair parishioner that she- fled to her spiritual adviser for

help. It seems that the lady who lives just beside All Saint's found' that an individual, vaguely described by. the papers as a " noctur-

nal prcvler," was trying to get iuto her house,

The same wretch has been making a practice

of calling uninvited at residences in the north

end of the town, always when the male meriv bers of the family are away, and whether he is on burglary bent, or is a new kind, of itinerant evangelist, or a simple lunatic, nobody seems N

to know,*.;-.- Anyway he seems to tithe his visits at the hour when twilight is shading into the

semi-darkness of our sumriier nights, and when

the nerves of a good many people are just in the trim for "jumps." / The good Dean, browsing among- his calfbound tomes in the quiet- of his study, hesi-

tated riot a moment. Did there flit through

his mind a faint vision of an Eastern fold,

menaced by prowling wolfibr cruel hyena (the

allegory of the Christian .flock from time im-

memorial), and of shepherds sallying forthwith pikes arid staves to drive off the wild beasts ?

I cannot say, but the Dean soon rah. his

quarry to earth, bidding it begone. Instead. | .. of slinking but into the night : grateful for no \

harsher measures, the man turned and struck the Dean with a stick, causing a painful wound on the head. He then decamped, but let us hope he will receive the reward of his evil

deeds in this life, as well as any reckoning

which may be in store for him at a future date.

The incident recalls a personal experience,

happily unattended by any serious consequen-

ces but none the less instructive. It is apropos of the prudence of adopting the role of peacemaker at any price, when a dispute is in progress, as many good people are sometimes

fond of doing. It was also about New Year —

several New Year's back, at the : Caledonian

Sports. Two youths exbilirated by overmuch

festivity and beer, were engaged in ; trying to

damagii 'the contour of eacrr others faces,

regardless of the fact that nature had already

modelled their features on an exceedingly

homely plan. With a great deal more zeal

than I could now Thuster, under similar circum-

stances, I was aboutVto try and pull the combatants apart. - Seeing my intention, an

acquaintance who is" something :~over six feet high with his -lioots off, pushed me out of the way and stopped the fight. ..After looking

him up and down, neither of the parties to the quarrel seemed to; want to dispute his advice to

go and get under a pump, and the story ends as far as they are concerned. But the big man had some advice to giv£ : "Bones," he said to me,' using a rude nickname that was my portion when we .played marbles together, "don't you go looking for any-of the beatitudes that are supposed to settle down .on the: peacemaker. See that,' 1 and he pointed to a jagged scar running^ilong from the. upper part of the temple down to the ear, arid on which he was trying. to get some hair to grow ; " that came of being anxious to make": peace, and it's time you learned' that the proper time to interfere in a row is after the knocks out blow has been

dealt. Then, like John Bull, you step in and claim your right to settle up the whole thing as the man who stood by and saw. fair .play." I think the moral isVfairly. wide one.

A life on the rolling wave, etc., usually has most charm for the male persuasion when he is at the age to enjoy stories of Malay Pirates and Red Indians, but whether the inclination passes. or not,' there is generally little "chance for the colonial youth- to go to sea irf His. Majesty's service- and Qualify as a man-o'-wars.-l man of the first rank. At the present time the second-class cruiser Phoebe is iri Port : Chalmers, and it is open to any young manwho thinks the Navy is the place for him to go down and offer his services. The Phoebe is

going to be here about. two months, and no one can pretend to say whether she will be rushed by recruits or not. / At anyrale, there will be the opportunity for anyone to join who can pass the doctor, and it- will be interesting to note the result. " '^-' * : •

The reign of the melodrama, which usually commences about holiday time, has set in, and unfortunately; shows no .sign /of; collapsings Unsually, even ; Dunedin 'gets surfeited with the cheap drama, and its frowsy heroines, and impossible heroes and villains, . after three weeks or so, but the people have been, rushing it with so much avidity that one of the comr panics jiow! stowing here : threatens to .keep : going till the ifirst week in. February. I/have beard it stated that there is a dearth of good playsi and that managers .would be only top ready to put them on if they could get them ; but.at the same time I have seen legitimate drama of a high order, played by a talented company to an .empty house, while : the • incoherent penny-novelette kind, of play, full of situations as irnppssible as the characters taking part in it, yield handsome profits. Of course there is melodrama and melodrama, at.onetime it was of a fairly healthy order, and when we got it from Bland Holt-it was clean enough to be unobjectionable. But ' melpdraina, as later exponents produce, has resulted in the most unblushing vulgarity being paraded on the stage until it is little short of a scandal. In point of literary merit, the'melodramaof to ; ' day has absolutely none. It is bolstered up with tons of gaudy scenery, and absurdly impossible women in evening wear gasp 'their way about amid crimes innumerable, aristocratic looking villains stalk through the play,

recognised exponents of vice of all kinds, and the allusions to each other's wrong doings are often indecently suggestive. The stage manager stops at nothing short of a scene from a house of ill-fame, and the public pays its money night after night, to go and feast on this pernicious rubbish, just as it flocks into the divorce court when a particularly unsavory case is expected. Most surprising of all, the free and independent daily press does not lift up its voice in protest, and apparently is quite content to let the melodrama, however bad, come and go, without doing anything more than adjusting the length of the notices to the relative size of the advertisements.