THE "DOWNWARD BUSH."

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXII, Issue 3167, 10 September 1894, Page 3

THE "DOWNWARD BUSH."

Not so very long ago the line between the aristocracy and the other classes of the community was very decidedly drawn at trade. A poor family might lay claims to gentility and one or more of its members might now and then figure at, say a country ball, but a tradesman's family— never. Now it is otherwise, the aristocracy themselves haying stepped over the dividing line. Lord Shrewsbury and Talbot, for instance, who takes precedence of all other Earls, unbluabiogly became a cab proprietor; 'Lord Haleigh ' is the inscription that may be read on the signboard of one or I two London dairies. The Marquis of j Londonderry is prepared to deliver I coal by the ton. *No agents .—such are the final words of this nobleman's advertisement, put in just as any trader born and bred might put them in. This descent from aristocratic seclusion into the arena of commercial conflict is not confined to the male portion of our nobility. Titled ladies under disguised names carry on millinery establishments and run cafes. Tbeir dainty fingers, too, are not above manipulating flowers for profit. s So generally, indeed, has the sacred thirst fur gold infected the upper tea, that whereas they were wont to be accused of living in idleness, the? are now accused of taking the bread out oi the mouths of those who depend entirely upon business for their support. Far beneath these noble ranks can be traced a similar descent. Street music, for instance, used to be discoursed by the utterly abject and broken down ; now men and women, warmly clad and well fed, go about with organs. Troops of men sing, rattle the bones, and do a breakdown in a public thoroughfare, to the time of not less than the better part of a sovereign per day per 'man. Two hundred a year in an assured titufttion wa» iht »alatf that one young man threw up last summer to join a nigger troupe at the tea-side, and he does not regret it At the end of the season he bad more money than he ever had at one time before, and during the season he ate better dinners, and drank better wine* than he had ever eaten or drunk before. Hawkiog matches or laces or any other trifle in public house bars Used to be, and still is, A way of evading the law ( agaihst begging. Indeed, the custom of singing on the street arose out of the same necessity for those in want not to incriminate themselves. Now you will be in the saloon bar of a first-rate re* freshment house. In comes a tophatted well dressed man with a bag. Some successful stockbroker, you think, if it be in tbe city* - You fancy you are the victim of a delusion. Here is this mat j as well dressed as your principal, holding bis open bag before yon, and asking you to buy a box of yestasi Well dressed Women are going about from public house to publid houee, pursuing similar callings. They speak well, too, do these people, betraying a fair amount of education. If tradesmen haveany ground for complaining of the aristocracy trenching bit their territory, surely the poor tend, needy have grounds for similarly complaining of having the instruments of their pro* fession thus confiscated by an apparently Superior class. Of course, with such ageneral downward trend, the poor and needy are driten lower still, and this in a measure is seen in the evei -increasing charitable instutiona, relief agencies, soup kitchens, and so forth, and the ever increasing strain on the resources of such establishments.— Cassell's Saturday Journal.