NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1361, 12 February 1912, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY.

The Test cricket matches have all been interesting in their own particular way, but none more so probably than the game now in progress. If any lingering doubts still remained as to the relative merits of the two teams they should have been dissipated by the play on Friday and Saturday last. At the outset of the Test games it was universally conceded that the Australian team was a remarkably strong batting combination—the strongest in the world its enthusiastic admirers proclaimed it. Its bowling strength was open to question and when Whitty failed to reproduce his old-time form in the earlier games, the success even of Hordeiin, great as it undoubtedly was, left an unpleasant feeling of uncertainty in the minds of the more experienced of those who wished to see Australia retain "the ashes." That these doubts were fully justified has been amply demonstrated in recent games, but the really surprising feature of the three last 'Test matches has been the amazing first innings collapses of the Australian team, ft cannot be a matter of bad wickets, for the Englishmen have had little, if any, of the best of the luck in this respect, and yet they have invariably followed the meagre score of their opponents with a very substantial total, gaining a handsome lead which in two of the three games has ended in victory and which looks very like a similar ending in the third. One result of the Test games should be to strengthen the hands of the Australian Board of Control in its dispute over the manager accompanying the team to go to England. The players who have threatened that unless they get. their way as to the selection of a-manager they will not go with the team have not covered themselves with glory in the recent "Tests," and not a few cricket enthusiasts would be rather pleased to see the places of some of them filled by promising aspirants to Test cricket fame. Ol course the game now in progress may have a different ending to that which on the face of things seems inevitable—almost anything is possible in cricket—but it is a forlorn hope. The. | Englishmen thoroughly deserve, the j success they have met with. They 'had bad luck at the outset in losing I Warner's services, but their plav has improved as they grew accustomed to Australian wickets and they now | have every prospect of taking (he j coveted "ashes" back with them to the Mother Country.

Probably some of those who have lately been renewing so pleasantly their acquaintance with Hamlet \vould_ be clad of 60me good reason for discarding altogether the idea that the Prince was corpulent. The words of the Queen in the Inst scene of the play when Hamlet is fencing with LAfiTtTPS are distressingly plain: "He's fat and scant of breath." But imagination refuses to picture a fat Hamlet, and Jin. Hiving and his predecessors have nut made him so. Quite apart from Ophelia's description of her lover as "the glass of fashion and the mould of form, 1 ' and "that unmatched form and feature of blown youth,'' evervhody feels th'nt Hamlet if not fa't, ,A correspondent of. tho Nation now

Cimics In Ilic ri.'scui' and proposes to eonvcl tli" Tlic suggestion, which sonic have favoured, "faini and scant of breath," hv dismisses as tautological. By far the best reading, he urges, is that of Pi.ehwe, who proposed "hot" insteadof "fat." In support of this emendation a line is quoted from tho speech in which the King unfolds his stratagem to Laektes—"When in your motions you are hot and dry." The writer might have pointed also to the context of the peccant line. Tin: Queen goes on, "Here Hamlet, take my napkin, nil) thy brows."' This shows that Hamlet is pevspiring, and follows naturally after the. observation that he is hot. The correspondent adds that Hudson is the only editor who, so far, has followed Ple'hwe's suggestion. We should think most readers of Shakespeare would be inclined to give it [ welcome.

The Emperor of China, the cable tells us, will in future be known as the Emperor of the Manchus. The Republic will allow him a bodyguard, the present palace staffs and four million dollars a year, and "the Chinese will show him due courtesy, but not fealty or obedience." We wonder how the Emperor will like the change. Just at first, perhaps, he will hardly notice it, as he will still be surrounded by .the same crowd of functionaries. He may still be put to bed at eight and awakened by the singers at six. He may have the accustomed ten high officers to dress hiin every morning., and even the Dowager-Empress to affix the imperial button of the Son of Heaven. But it is reasonable to suspect that there, will be gradual changes. Etiquette demands that the Son oi Heaven shall be g'iven everything he asks for, and last summer when Pu Yi cried for coconut cake, a whole kitchen staff had to be roused in the middle of the night to make it. Perhaps the etiquette may not ho just tiie same under the new system of "courtesy but not fealty." ' He j said to be very fond of darting into the middle of a flooded courtyard after rain, because etiquette requires the most cxaltecWlignitary present to wade in after him. That little joke will probably miss fire in future. At meal*times he often hides a portion of his food in his robe and awaitf.a favourable opportunity for thrusting it down the neck of the most dv nified functionary within reach, but perhaps that sort of thing -will not bo deemed to come within bis newly restricted prerogatives. Of course. Pu Yi, or, as they call him in tlv Forbidden City, Wan-Sui-Yen, cannot bo expected to understand just yet why the decision of the Chinese to have general elections pretty often, instead of a civil v.-ar every third century or so, should make any d ; ' ference to his daily life, but if tin Dowager-Empress gives him back 1 his mother, and if they let him havi some children of his own age to pl,v with, he probably will not at present worry ovennuch about the loss i his Empire.