TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8483, 15 May 1893, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The English are supposed The Growth to be a truth telling nation, of but too many of them lay Lying. aside entirely that charac-

teristic when they enter a Law Court and make their statements under the sanctity of an oath. The Judge of the Birmingham County Court the other day declared that not even among the natives of India, where he had been a magistrate for several years, had he met with so much wholesale perjury as he had among the witnesses who came before him in the Birmingham Court. In the Divorce Court, we learn on the authority of the Spectator, gross unblushing perjury is expected in every case as a matter of course. Co-respondents think it a matter of honour to perjure themselves to save the reputation of the wives with whose names theirs are linked. Apart from this, a good many cases rest on the testimony of private detectives and their subordinates,'and of waiters, chambermaids and domestic servants, whose bona fides is often open to very grave suspicion. In fact, as our contemporary puts it, they are constantly treated by judges, as well as by counsel, as purchased perjurers. One charming specimen of the class was bowled over in most dramatic fashion during the infamous Howard de Walden case heard the other day. The drunken beast of a husband—whose conduct generally was such that a soberminded journal like the St. James's Gazette expressed its regret there was not a pond or horse trough near the Law Courts— brought a counter-charge of adultery against his wife. It was uttbrly baseless, but the noble lord had no difficulty in getting a couple of servants to come forward and swear to a circumstantial story in support of the attack which he made on his wife's honour. One of them swore that in 1890 she found Lady de Walden's watch, marked with her initials, in her alleged lover's bedroom. That, as the Spectator remarks, looked very formidable evidence indeed till the maker of the watch stepped into the witness box, and proved by his own oath and the testimony of his books that the watch had not been sold to Lady de Walden, and consequently not engraved, and consequently not left in any bedroom whatever, till six months later. The jury immediately stopped the case without calling on Lady de Walden for her defence, and returned a verdict at all points in her favour. Again in the Bankruptcy Court, perjury seems to have become almost as much incorporated in the proceedings a* filing petitions or kissing; the book. As a rule it goes unpunished, because it is left. to private individuals to witiateaprosecution, and often private individuals have at this stage had quite as much of law and lawyers as they care to pay for. The Spectator suggests that there ought to be some summary course of procedure by which witnesses who had clearly perjured themselves mighe.be at once sent to gaol for the offence. It is to be hoped that some steps will be taken to cope with the evil or there is no telling to what limits it may spread.

The publication of a On Party-giving new edition of a wetl-

and "Lions."

known work on •• Party-

I Giving" has led a writer in the Daily News to discourse on the well-known difficulty which exists of

finding a sufficiently attractive form of entertainment to satisfy the exacting demands of the blasts individuals who make up such a large proportion of London Society. The favourite device, as we know, is to trot out a " lion" on these occasions. But "lionB" are few and far between —a fact which was sufficiently impressed on the minds of New Zealand when " King" Tawhiao went home and found himself foisted into that position. Then, unlike Mr Fillis's " lions," it appears tliat tho social lions cannot always be depended upon to perform in the right way and at the right moment. Tho author of the book in question has known a great novelist spend all her time in the tea-room and has seen a great violinist look exactly like a frightened bare. The writer almost seems to imply that the author evidently had not enough to eat at home, and that no great violinist has a right to look frightened. It does not seem to have occurred to the writer of tho handbook that a shrinking from personal notoriety is almost inseparable from literary genius, and that the musical temperament is proverbially sensitive and retiring. However, the result is the same. The guests resent being asked to inspeot lions who have not so much as a growl in them and even do their feeding in secret; they consequently vote the whole affair " dull," the hostess has "a strained expression," and her husband wears " a nervous Bmile." All this is very sad, of course, but it is too bad to put all the blame on the poor "lions." If we were asked to specify the real reason why party - giving lias become such a formidable undertaking, and why so many people complain of being "bored" at entertainments provided for them, we should say it is due to the downright, thorough-paced selfishness of those who go to the parties. They go hungering and thirsting for excitement of some kind, and their jaded appetites are not satisfied unless something very much out of the common is provided for them. They do not realise that there must bo a good deal of giving as well as of taking about the highest form of social enjoyment, and that a guest ought to go to a party, not in a censorious mood, but with a cheerful readiness to be pleased, and quite prepared to do his best to make it pass off pleasantly, instead of expecting all the entertaining to be on one side.

At the same time Wanted, it must be admitted A Social Benefactor, that there is room for a great Bocial reformer to arise, who shall bring forward some new and satisfactory method in which people may divert themselves in social intercourse. The writer of the hand book on party-giving, already quoted, deals with the vexed question of music. She thinks " most of us prefer our own voices to the most lovely solo that ever was sung." It is not quite clear whether she means the "most of us" to apply to her own sex only; if so nothing more malignant regarding them has ever been said by the most spiteful male writers. From the fact that she decides against music for afternoon parties—when ladies are in the ascendant—but advocates it for evening " At Homes " there is some colour given to the theory that she means her remark particularly to refer to women. Unfortu nately she is not ready with any very original suggestions for the relief of embarrassed hostesses who are at their wits' ends to find new methods of entertaining their guests. It is a difficulty that is not confined to London " society," strictly so-called. When we hear of middle-class households, together with their friends, giving up their evenings to the delirious N excitement of " Tiddleywinks" and other games of tho like severe and dissipated character, it ia olear that the matter has reached a pretty serious crisis.