THE CHILDREN AND VOCATIONS

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 74, 30 March 1910, Page 8

THE CHILDREN AND VOCATIONS

INSPECTORS AND BUSINESS MEN AT VARIANCE. "Farmers' Unions, Chambers of Commerce, and similar associations, all seem to look to the primary schools to prepare the boys for the special vocation with which each is connected,' 1 rait a passage in the Wellington School Inspectors' recent report. Tlieiv remark was the subject of a comment to-day by Mr. Duthie, in bis presidential address to the Chamber of Commerce. '•The chamber." he said, "has not hitherto regarded writing, arithmetic, and composition as special vocational training, or as specialisation, but rather as a primary and elementary course of teaching absolutely necessary to enable the pupils to 'learn how to learn.' The common experience of mercantile offices is that written applications for employment sent in by lads \\»ho have passed the sixth standard are too often very poor in handwriting and in composition, and that their arithmetical attainments when they enter the office were not satisfactory, and we have adopted tho best method we can think of to bring about an improvement. This seems to meet with the disapproval of the inspectors, but why so we fail to understand. If boys who have passed the sixth standard are not supposed to have acquired a fair handwriting, a decent knowledge of arithemetic, and the .ability to write a letter ot twenty or thirty words, the disappointing character of the applications received by merchants is explained. However, in view of the encouragement given by the Education Board itself, I think the chamber would do well to repeat its j annual vote for prizes."

Regarding the complaint by a correspondent in yesterday's paper in reference to the crowding of harbour steamers, the manager of the Wellington Harbour Ferries Company asks ns to state that on no occasion has the regulation number of passengers been exceeded on any of the company's steamers. The Postal authorities advise that H.M.S. Pioneer, which left Sydney foxAuckland on Monday last at 2 p.m., has the lette 11 portion of the English mail for Wellington, which in all probability will reach here by Main Trunk express on Saturday afternoon. Lord Fingall, who recently inherited j £12,000 from a man ho had never heard of until the contents of the will were revealed, is not the only aristociat to enjoy such a stroke of luck. In 1814 George Wright, who had lived for years in very quiet style at Pimlico, j died leaving all his landed estates to Lady Ailesbury, £4000 to Lady Rosslyn, £4000 to the Speaker, and £1000 to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had no personal acquaintance with any of the legatees, but cherished a hopeless passion for Lady Rossryn, whom he had seen at the opera and other public resorts. Archdeacon Potts, who attended Wright on his death-bed, testified to his perfect sanity, and the will was duly administered. • In the explosion which turned four Melbourne shops into a heap of splintered matchwood on Friday week, the most wonderful escape was that of a little girl of eight, Mabel Sneddon, says the Melbourne correspondent of a j Sydney journal. She had been sleeping with another in an upstairs room two doors off the shop where the explosion becurred. And this is how one of the fuemen • who found her tells the 3tory : — "The bed was left upstairs, hanging over a hole in the flooring. One child fell into the storeroom below, but was not hurt. The whole floor of the room had come dowii into the room beneath, and lay at an angle, tons of debris being piled into the cavity. The firemen, looking at the confusion of fallen walls, were convinced that nobody undevneath could have much hope of life. 'If she's there,' said one fireman, 'she's dead.' The child's voice came out o£ the debris, 'No, girlies not dead/ she said. A fireman asked her whether she could see his lantern. 'No,' she said, 'but I can see the moon ; it is upside down.' In about half an hour we had her out, very little the worse. A beam had fallen in the angle of the collapsed floor and the wall, and kept the debris off her — a most wonderful oseape. The tottering walls only wanted a puff of wind to bring them down."' Messrs. J. H. Bethunc and Co. w ill hold v Bale on Friday, at 11 a.m., at 2, Waltor-street (off Ingcstre-fctreet), of plumbers', drainlajers', and gasfitters' tools and stock, including the North Island rights to the Simplex Acetylene Ga^ Plant. The fittings will bo lirst offered ns a going concern, and if not so bold, will he disposed of in lots to suit ouyj pr^. The goods will bo on view on the morning o! the halo. Mr. W 11. Ru**ell, a candidate for the Lower Hull Mayoralty, will address the electors nt 8 o'clock to-morrow evening in the Hutt Town Hall.