ON THE WATCH TOWER

Evening Star, Issue 15479, 29 April 1914, Page 2

ON THE WATCH TOWER

p. "f; {By Abiel.] * “Dear Ariel.—Yea invite experiences to the existence of superstition, and X wiah •jpte respond, for onpr On your lecommasda- *'■ tram I bought the cheap edition of ‘ The History of Rationalism in Europe.’ I bad always thought it was e dry-as-dnst treatise on philosophy, and am delighted _ta fidkl.it the beet collection of witch stories Pieter tome across. I hava always regarded the belief in witches and fairies as s degenerate farm of jpoty theism, and have ‘often wondered that Christianity has not stamped sack beliefs oat as anti-Christian, But it seems that they flourish beet where faith has reigned for 15 centuries. Witness the cables of the other day about the witch league in Italy. But I must toa»‘ to my experiences, I was once assured by e wnaa ttat a certain poor neighbor was a witch, and that it was very dangerous to incur her ill-will. She said that another neighbor had been awakened by something treading on him in bed. Be made a grab in the dark, and secured a bunch of turkey-cock feathers. He jumped out of bed, and was in time to see the said witch walking out through the back of the kitchen fireplace—through the wail, of course. This _ was told la hashed' accents under these eonthem ekies. Another instance is this: X wse present when three children of a family were about to start for school. The mother said ‘Have you got your bodkins?’ They said ‘Yes.’ Bui she 'felt them otto by one, and not in any likely regionS'lfor a pocket either. Being satisfied, she let them dol As my curiosity was roused, I , wormed out the fact that she never let her children go out without some bit of steel or iron about therik to preserve them from the fairies. 1 This occurred 'in Otago. Again, I know quite » number of people who find some rebel in touching wood for luck or to avert some evil influence. The nailing up of horseshoes for lack fa a very common practice, and I have often been invited to * turn -my money * at the, first eight of the new moon. I have also heard people say ‘ St. John,’ or ' God bless us,’ when anybody has sneezed. —I am, etc.. Ratio.” #*•»**** A Paris musician objected to the rat-a-tat-tat of the carpet beaters, which woke him up every morning. He therefore got ‘a rifle, and took hk revenge by potting .holes through the carpets. That the bullets had to pass within measurable distance of the beaters in nowise lessened his enjoyment. However, there were objections, and after a week or so of sport tae ■police located the window whence the bullets proceeded. The musician explained Tito grievance to the Magistrate, and tnc Magistrate, who had probably not read Mai Nordau’s ‘ Dezeneration,’ sympathised with art and dismissed, the case. Carpet-beating must therefore be added to the list of dangerous trades, and carpet knights must no longer be derided, lor _a carpet is not only bard to beat, bnt is beaten at serious risk. However, the Jaw, as she is administered in Paris, >s no concern of mine. What- takes my fancy is that * musician, of all men, should undertake to chastise an honest trade that mafas * noise in the morning! Thus the sweep Object® to the stoker having a sum dee on his nose I How many carpetbeaters and others have been disturbed night and day by the musicians! Have the public thought it necessary to puncture them? I mean, have they done it? —there can be no doubt about what they have thought. Next, I would ask, who but a musician would seek to put down the noise of carpet-bearing by a fusillade of musketry? That is musical logic all over. Perhaps the musician and the Mag fat rat-c----are both interested in vacuum cleaners—bat I must not advertise their wares. It may be interesting to tbe curious to compare this incident with the laws of the Sybarites. Svbaris was a Greek town on (bo east coast of Italy. The morning slumbers of its inhabitants were protected by a law that banished all roosters from tae vicinity. **♦*»«* Professor Harnack says, according to a qabte, that “men discuss a thousand things with one another, but say nothing about that which dwells within their souls.” He thinks that if men would communicate freely their inmost thoughts thev would add immensely to the capital of national life. I am not at all sure, as to which side the balance would be on if every soul wont naked and the whole world became a confessional or a Palace of Truth; and even if we grant there would b© a balance of goodness and wisdom, I am not sure that it would be better for every soul to become mured to the gaze of his fellow-man. Eurydice vanished "when Orpheus turned and looked at her. Many of the most delicate and lovely forms of virtue and sentiment are Jijjg ferns aad imrafipß that' love the shade* The stars can shine only in the darkDepend upon it, the soul has its modesty as truly as the body, and nothing but harm can come of doing violence to either loom of modesty. In regard to the virtues, ostentation destroys them and modest retirement glorifies them.. There is a Baying about not letting the left hand know what the right hand does, which meets with very general approval. John Jarndyca was the soul of goodness, always ministering in secret to the wants of others, and he conld not bear to be thanked. Discovery always brought iho wind from the east. On the other hand, Harold Skimpole—not that he ever did any good—was a soul naked and not ashamed, though he must have made those who heard him ashamed. If we turn to thoughts and theories, they are like the flowers ; they bloom when they are ready, “opened by the rosy fingersofthe dawn,” as Holmes says. If you try to expedite *W» with your clumsy fingers you spoil ♦from Every great spiritual and moral tTwYnght. has its period of incubation in the general soul before it is brought to the surface by some one soul.

N* •***■*• * ■* I have just been, reading ‘ Bleak House ’ again. They say one gets ranch more out of a second reading than out of the first. Certainly in the case of a story on© can be more critical, as one is not so much absorbed in the plot. A present-day novelist tells us that he sketches all his characters, studies them from all angles, and becomes familiar with them before beginning to weave them into his story. Dickens may have done something of the kind, for he raibly forgets what he has ?aid about one of hie people. He reminds you a hundred times of the pet gesture’or grimace of a man, and rubs him into you in-that way. Mr Bucket is sure to wag his finger, Mr Jarndyee to rub bis bead, Mr Ghadbaad to mop his oily forehead, Mr Smallweed to slip down in a heap in his chair and need shaking up, Mr Snagsby to say “not to put too fine a point on it,” and so forth. But, in the case of John Jarndyee, Dickens obviously altered the idee* with which he set out. Jarndyee first appears in the coach which is fa»lrmg Esther from her old home :

, A voice in the coach gave me a terrible start. It said : “What the de-vil - are you crying for?” I was so {tight- ’ m «osd that I ooold only answer in a whisper : “Me, sir?” r ‘Yes, you,” he •aid, turning round. “ I didn’t know 1 was ciying,” I faltered. “But you ne,” said the gentleman. “Look hate!” He brushed his furry cuff aexe«« say eyes and showed me that it ww wet. Now yon know you : are,” be said, “don’t yon?" “Yes, 'lit,” I said. “And what are you ■■crying lor? Don't you want to go there*” “Where, sir?" Where’ Why, where.«ver you are going.” “I am very glad toeo there,” I answered. “ Well, then, look glad.” ... 1 said I supposed I was crying because Mrs Rachael was net eorry to part with me- “ Con-found Mrs Rachael!" said the gentleman. “Let her fly away in a high wind on a broomstick ” ... Ho kept muttering to himself in act angry manner and galling Mrs Rachael names. Presently he produces a paper of “the bfgt plum cake that can be got for money ” and a pie “made, in France” of the “livers of fat geese,” and says; “Now 'iat me" see yoc eat ’em.” She is afraid * they are too rich, so he exclaims “ Floored i again!” and throws them out of the winr jpw All suggests the ferocious BoyT . *i~» and js T'tie.rbf foreizn. la Jarndyce

aehe appears late* in the etory--* mask sympathetic gentleman, who never- etu{{& name* nor uses any of the expreaßkaa just cited. It is pretty clear that Dickens reallotted the parts after , writing the early chapters, and that he invented Boythorn to take the part of the fire-earing lamb. «»»»" * »• a * Bleak ' House ’ exceeds all Dickens's other works in what are regarded by some as overdrawn chafactera, who are only caricatures of real people. Here we have Mrs Jellyby, who goes on with her correspondence about the Borriobocla- Gha mission in spite of her husband’s insolvency and her- daughter’s marriage and the rags and dirt of her children. Here, too, is Mrs Pardiggle, who goes visiting the drunken poor with her whole fanally., and insists on reading them long exhortations in spite of their blunt protests. Each of hear children has a weekly allowance, which is regularly confiscated and appears against the individual names in the printed SJibi cri priori Hsfc of aflsne “ cause.” Here we find the ridiculous Turveydrop and unspeakable Harold Skinipole, two of Dickens’s most despicable creations. Here is Boythorn, who talks thunderstorms which always end with a sunny " Ha, ha, ha!” Here is the Stilted and hidebound Sir Leicester Dediock and his haughty lady. Here, too, is Tulkinghorn, the lawyer of great families, who gives his best energies^to ferreting out Dedlock’s secret, 'and who does it so clumsily as to set a lot of others on the scent. * Here also is the ghoulish old usurer Small weed and his impish family. Even the secondary characters are extraordinary 'beings. Take the Badgers, the doctor to whom Richard Corston was proposed as an apprentice, - The pride of Mr Badger is that he is Mrs Badger's third. Her pride lies also in number one and number two. The portraits of the departed, flanked by Mrs B. as she appeared under successive names, adorn the walls. Mr B. swells with pride as his wife dilates on her first, Captain Swosser. i 8.N., and whenshe comes to her second, Professor Dingo, he never fails to put in “A man of European reputation.” AH these characters are very amusing and varv interesting, and present “ enlargements” of real life. But everyone must admit that the enlarging lens had a certain trick of distorting its subjects and patting in humps and hollows hardly to ha found in Nature,- though “Nature hath formed strange fellows in her time.” Yet * Bleak House,’ with its exaggerations of both evil and good, by its scathing satire of the Court of Chancery, did great service in moderating the law’s delay. «- * » * * - * * Dickens will be much quoted by future historians for his descriptions of prevailing customs and habits. For example, we find, especially in ‘ Pickwick,’ a great deal of drinking and drunkenness, which is all part of the fun. It is no disgrace to Mr Pickwick to be wheeled into the pound in a barrow I The teetotallers, then a new sect, are held up to cruel ridicule in Sriggins the Shepherd, as indeed are Nonconformists and their conscience generally. This attitude to these matters as already of the past. In ' Bleak House we have quite a number of enthusiasms presented which have been growing ever since. Just, before the wedding of Gaddy Jellyby her father gave her her dowry in this piece of advice : “ Never have a mission.* Well he might, for his wife had nothing else, and her back always displayed a latticework of stay laces. The guests at the wedding were, first, “ an extremely dirty lady, with _ her all awry, and the ticketed price ox her dress still* sticking on it,” like the hat of the mad hatter in ‘ Alice in Wonderland. “ Caddy told me that her neglected home was like a filthy wilderness, but her church was like a fancy fair.” Next came a very contentious gentleman, who said his mission was to be everybody’s brother, bnt who was on bad terms with the whole of his large family. Then came Mr and Mrs Pardiggle, who talked loudly of their mites and their five boys' mites in the subscription list. Next we meet Miss Wisk, a young—at least, an unmarried—lady, “ who informed us, -with great indignation, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in the narrow sphere Home was an outrageous slander on the part of her tyrant man. . . . The only practical thing in the world was the emancipation of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant.” This lady listened to the marriage service,with a disdainful face, aa to ope of woman’s wrongs. Misa Wisk was, however, sotting her hat at Mr Quale, who was the only one present who cared a rap for anybody else’s mission. This wedding party represents a state of things that has by no means passed away. Hero we have an early stage of the revolt of woman, and at the end of the book we are told that when the BorrioboOla project turned out a failure Mrs Jellyby took, up the of women to sit in Parliament, a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. In this connection it is interesting to note that Dickens narrowly missed hitting on the invention of the hunger strike, which would have been lovely in his bauds. Mr George has been arrested for tfie murder_ of TUlkinghorn, and his friends “have quite failed to persuade him to engage a lawyer. Then says Mrs Bagnet : “ If you are not too headstrong to accept.a bit of dinner, here it is.” "I accept it with thanks,” returned the troper. “Do you though, indeed?” said Mrs Bagnet. “ I’m sure I’m surprised at that. I wonder you don’t starve' in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps you’ll set vour mind on that next!” *******

The University of London appears to fiare met a felt- want in providing instruction in etiquette for foreigners, Net that foreigners nave no etiquette of their own, but that they are not acquainted with the queer war? of the English. A German young lady was quite- shocked to find that the lady made the first sign of recognition in England. “The man always bows first in my country.” Yet the English custom gives the lady the greater honor. It all turn? on the idea in the background. Once it was the’ fashion to clean your plate out of bompliraeni to the quality of the repast. Then came the custom of leaving a little out of compliment to the abundance of it. Once your trousers were not to be creased, lest they should, appear vulgarly Now they are to be creased for some other reason—probably lest they should be thought old. But to return to the foreigners. “Should you take soup from the end of the spoon’” was another German question. “ No, ‘ the side is the correct method with ns,” was the momentous reply- “ Should you take your hat and stick with you into the room or leave them Jr the hall?”' “-Never leave them in the hall; that would seem as if the hops© belonged to you and yon had come to stay.” “Yet,” says the pupil, “.hats and sticks are very much out of place in a drawing room.” Many were surprised to learn that they were not expected to say to the hostess—after a meal “Thanks for the meal,” and that men and women did not leavo the table together after dinner, and that ladies did not remove their hats when making an afternoon call.

The quarrel with Mexico about saluting the American Flag reminds me that questions of etiquette nave sometimes been of international importance. The. French King was mightily offended because Oliver Cramwcll signed a treaty so high up on the vellum that there was no room for His Majesty to sign above him. The Chinese were read;/ to go to war rather than permit the British Ambassador to approach the Throne other than by imgaling on Iris stomach. In the South Seas'an inferior coming into the presence of the chief squats cn the ground. An Englishman wishing to show respect would stand, and be thought to be insolent. Christian men remove their hats in church ; the Jew keeps his on in the synagogue. The Mohammedan removes his shoes in the mosque, and many a European has endangered his life by not knowing the etiquette. A good Jew, in taking an oath , in court, will first put on bis hat, to the horror of the orderly. Travellers and explorers have had many things to endure from the politeness of their primitive hosts. If he has the honor of drinking kava with the Polynesians, his gorge rises, at seeing a girl chew The kava root and spit it into the bowl prior to brewing the drink. Some travellers have been greatly honored bv high chiefs in Africa at *-feast. His Migjafm would d»w