TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10263, 4 February 1899, Page 7

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

O.vk learns with pleasure that Library the annual stock-taking at tne Thieves. Christchurch Library in the

early part of last month showed the library book thief to have been less active during the year than he or she had been for some years past. The pleasure is, however, dashed with some dismay when it is mentioned tliat even last year some sixty or seventy books disappeared unlawfully from the shelves. The year before the number of volumes stolen from the Library amounted to some 120, and we believe that in some preceding years this number has been largely exceeded. We are in doubt as to whether the improvement thus shown is to be attributed to the increased vigilance of the librarian's assistants or to the growth of a moral sense among those who in past have shamefully abused their privilege. As this paper took an active part in the successful agitation against the erection of the "barrier" which prevented the subscribers having access to the shelves, and therefore feels a good deal of interest in the matter, we should like to think'that the latter theory is the correct one. It is not at all improbable that it is. An astonishing number, of books are still taken from the Library without the borrowers going through the formality of registering them at the desk. But whereas at one stage in the Library's history a good many of these books never got back to their shelves, nowadays most of them are smuggled back, which is, we think, evidence of an awakening conscience. We notice that the Chairman of the Dunedin Athenaeum had to complain, at the annual meeting of subscribers, of the mutilation of books, and periodicals, while a valuable work had been stolen from the reference library, the loss of which almost completely spoiled a whole series of works. Similar thefts have occurred in connection with our own Library, and it appears impossible to detect' them. One must live, in hope that in time the force of public opinion will put a stop to the pilferings of sneak-thieves, though we are rather afraid that such a hope is but a forlorn one.

The habit of kissing popular A Kissing heroes, which broke out when Campaign, the troops serving in Cuba

began to return to America, shows no signs of abatement. From admirals to dying "Rough Riders," all Americans who had fought in the war with Spain were liable to be* kissed publicly by young ladies whom they had never met before. Some of the "heroes" liked it, to others such experiences were a good deal'worse than Mauser bullets at Santiago, or fever in the Cuban swamps. Lieutenant Hobson, who sank the Merrimac in Santiago harbour, was one of the first to be thus distinguished. He took kindly to tne habit from the very first, and has taken care that it should not die out. He appears to have been lecturing on incidents of the war in different cities of the States, and to have wound up most of his lectures with a kiss all round. The crazo first 'developed itself on a large scale at Chicago, where the daughters of a former State Governor broke the ice. "Then the kissing fever seized upon other ladies, but Lieutenant Hobson seemed to like it. He grasped each of his admirers by the hand, and drew her towards him, and to many of them, in addition to a kiss, he gave a hearty hug. The pretty ones would put their ' hands over their faces, but they were kissed all the same.* When the supply was exhausted the scene ended." It would, perhaps, have been too invidious to have encored the performance of any particular young lady. At Kansas City this truly heroic lieutenant kissed 417 women in one evening. The reception at his hotel was mostly attended by women, 'from fashionable ladies to schoolgirls, and the lieutenant refused to give his autograph to any one of them unless he got a kiss.in return. "Some of them professed to be indignant, but they all yielded, many of them after playful struggles." ■It is not surprising that the osculatory'performances of this gallant young aea-dog have attracted the attention of his superior officers, who—most unreasonably, as the lieutenant's fair admirers no doubt thought—seem to have come to the conclusion that that sort of thing was calculated to bring the navy into contempt. "Undue kissing" was not to be found among the catalogue of offences in the navy regulations, but the authorities nevertheless regarded ■ Lieutenant Hobson's conduct as "open to criticism," and so they decided to ship him off to Manila, where he will be able to superintend the refitting of the captured Spanish cruisers, and whera, if the kissing habit has so grown upon him that he must ) keep it up, there will at least be no American j reporters to blazon his exploits over the j length and breadth of the land.

Is it true that with the century genius is dying out?