WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 129, 25 February 1925, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM,

IDurinp the absence on holiday of “T.D.Ii." this column will be conducted by "WL”J

According to Australia’s experience it looks as if State enterprise would be all right if it wasn’t for the Arbitration Court.

There’s one consolation, if these pilotless aeroplanes really come to pass we shall be able to make war comfortably by the fireside.

A correspondent sends me from Palmerston North a most interesting bit of old parchment, dingy with age, and closely written in the old-fashioned penmanship of very early Victorian days. It is the “history sheet” of No. 319, transported on a life sentence to Van Diemen’s Land—for stealing a cow! . A veritable human document, this. With the aid of a .reading glass, I was able, even then with difficulty, to decipher the story. Here it is, word for word:— No. 319. Life (per Lady Harewood). Tried Staffordshire March 13, 1828. Transported for stealing cows. Gaol report: Has been in custody before on several charges of robbery (bad charges), receiving stolen goods (a cow), once on suspicion of robbery (discharged) ; second time on suspicion of sheep stealing (discharged). May 20, 1830. General impropriety of conduct in his service, but particularly yesterday; tread wheel, 14 days, and returned to prison warder. August 3, 1832. Drunk; admonished. . March 2, 1833. Drunk; 8 days’ soli- ' tarv confinement on bread and water. March 11; 1833. Insolence and . disrespectful conduct on the 27th ultimo, and neglect of duty; 3 months’ hard labour and imprisonment, and returned to his master’s service. October 15, 1833. Absent without leave and carrying off various articles of clothing, the property of his master; 12* months’ imprisonment and hard labour. April 4, 1836. Absconding; hard labour for six months in "Jerusalem Road party,” and conduct to be reported. August 9, 1837. Drunk; 4 days’ cell on bread and water. August 22, 1837. In a public house after hours; admonished. December 4, 1837. Drunk; 5 days on tread-wheel.

February 8, 1838: Drunk and out after hours; cell and bread and water one week.

May 8, 1838. Absent without leave in the night of the 4th instant, remaining absent unFtl the night of the sth instant, absenting himself on the morning of the 6th instant, and remaining until the evening of the 7th; hard labour one month, town surveyor’s gang, and returned to his service.

August 27, 1838. Drunk; admonished.

October 5, 1838. Drunk and neglect of duty; also misconduct during this neglect by making away, with one and five, the property of his master months’ hard labour in chains and"retumed to chain gang, conduct to be reported. Tanuarv 10. 1840.—Absent without leave, ten months’ hard labour in chains, with chain gang, New Town Bav. then returned to his service. January 8, 1841.—Absent without leave and drunk, six months’ hard labour in chains, New Town Bay, and returned to his service. 4 July 4, 1842.—Drunk. Tread wheel. Three months’ hard labour on the roads. Out on ticket of leave, August 25, 1843. Ticket of leave revoked March 3, 1850. At this time of dav the. above makes rather pathetic reading.. If a man stole a cow nowadays, and it was .the first cow. he would probably be given probation and have his name kept out of the papers. The puzzling part of this historv sheet is the apparent facility No. 319 had in procuring sufficient liquor with which to get drunk on. Even our mildest probationers are not allowed to have a drink nowadays. One wonders what became of No. 319 after March 3, 1850. Poor beggar 1 He never had a chance, did he?

The other day, more in sorrow than in anger, more in respectful perplexity than audacity, I wrote: “If man would prefer the zest of a baffling study, let him attempt the study of woman. . . .” To add point to my

observations I presented an incident from the domestic life of a blackbird. “T.CS.” very gallantly conies to the rescue of the sex, and in this wise seeks to convert me: “One of vour recent statements was that the study of man is not attended with very great difficulties or perplexities: ’but if man would prefer the zest of a baffling study, let him attempt the study of woman.’ It is true that this opinion was much in vogue for manv years, but in the best circles it has long since ceased to be held, and, like witchcraft, King’s evil, and the divinitv of crowned heads, it Ips, among men, passed into the limbo of lost, stolen, or strayed superstitions. Hear what O. Henry has to say: “ ‘Women.’ said Tudson Tate, ‘are mysterious creatures.’ My spirits sank. I was not there to listen to such a world-old hypothesis—to such a time-worn, long-ago refuted, bald, feeble, illogical, vicious, patent sophistry—to an ancient, baseless, wearisome. ragged, unfounded, insidious falsehood, originated by women themselves. and bv them insinuated, foisted. thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated into the ears of mankind bv under-hgnded, secret, and deceptive methods, for the purpose, of augmenting, furthering, and reinforcing their own charms and designs.” (Vide , “Next to Reading Matter” in “Roads of Destiny.”) ‘ This notwithstanding, the ordiharv man need not, in a tete-a-tete with a woman, restrain, prevent, or debar himself from declaring that she is full of_charm and mystery, and the more charming because mysterious, although he may be slow to believe that, sometime, somewhere, she will mysteriously refuse free chocolates, free drives, free theatres, or the offer of a seat in a crowded tram.” Quite so. “J.C.5.,” but I’ve got past that stage.

The bootlegger paused, and great was his awe, When he saw on the road a boothmb of the law. Magistrate: Whv did you throw the dictionary at your husband? Woman: Oh, well, I was trving to work a cross-word puzzle and asked him several times to tell me a word of five letters, meaning domestic happiness, and he wouldn’t do it. JOY. Poor souls, who think that joy is bought with pelf; The bait that captures joy is joy itself. Mv joy it came mysteriously at birth; I give it to, not take it from the earth. —W. H. Davies..