THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue LXIV, 13 September 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS.

At last (writes "Outis" in the Sydney Daily Telegraph) tho lady politician has arrived. There was a final scuffle on the temple with the ancient janitor, who ungallantly but faithfully barred the way as long us his feeble strength held out. But the Legislative Councillor of the old colonial school lias now passed out of the effective ranks. When the sailing clipper used to come up to Circular-quay and tako his non-union shorn wool on board (for he waa always a squatter) over a long log gangway, he was a different man. No forward female in political pantaloons would have dared to hustle him aaide then. He would threaten her that if she did not go straight home, and put the children to bed, instead of gossiping politics in the Pariiumentery lobbies, capital would leave the country. But, "eheu fugoces!" The wooden woolclipper has gone from the Quay, and an immense steel-hulled twin-screwed steamer is there, the long fingers of whose hydraulic cranes stretch out over the wharf; pick up the pressed fleeces, and put them down the hatchway's throat' like a schoolboy bolting stolen grapes. She thus gets about five of the old-fashioned cargoes aboard, and is away to England and back for another load in not much more time than it used to take to fix up the sailing clipper's ridiculous gangway. Meanwhile the political pace has boen proportionately accelerated. Quite common persons now jostle into the Legislative Assembly even as the representatives of squatting constituent's, and the raucous bawling of the Labour politicians sacrilegiously wakens the echoes even within the Council* own serene and slumberless precincts. All of which shows how the light of other days has faded. As a matter of fact, the sun of the typical Legislative Councillor has set, and he merely lingers on the waning political twilight as a picturesque relic of a time that ha* gone The enfranchised female ironically cackles his epitaph and proposes cheers for the Premier, and frantically shakes hondi with the Labour Party and behaves generally like a foreign foe in a captured city. He lies still and gives no sign. "Sic semper." But there is a .certain amount of pathos in it all the same, and "Outia" is not amongst those who can view the extinction of the old-fashioned Councillor without a certain feelingi of regret. He had some splwudid qualities, and th» further we "progress" from his times and his manners the more conspicuous their absence is beginning to appear. Of his deplorably narrow, but stiffly upright principles, he" had both the courage and the chivalry. When he thought tha* the horses of public opinion were about to bolt over a precipice with the State coach he never vhesitated to rush to their heads and grab the reins. Of course, it was tiresome to have him always doing that when there was no need, but the popular politician of tho present day would let it go over forty precipices rather than take the personal risk of attempting to atop it. You could always get a fair deal from him according to his lights. H» was good-natured, too; and there was no need for the sundowner to evor go short of a rest and a meal and a lift along the road whou one of his stations was reached. Considering' 1 what the country was to him he had reason to be patriotic, and so he' was as far as he knew how. But the worst of it was that he knew so little and declined flatly to learn more. The more a man forgot about politics the better in the old Councillor's view was he educated. There is no doubt that forgetting as well as learning in necessary in any practical education, but something must be learnt. He would learn nothing-