THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1873.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 1641, 7 November 1873, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus PUBLISHED DAILY. FRIDAY, NO VEMBER 7, 1873.

Millab, F.S.A., is a man whose name j and merits, and probably his peculiarities, are well. known and appreciated in Melbourne and p.uriedin. These merits and peculiarities he has made a present of recently to Wanganui, where he is now Borough Engineer. Wanganui will certainly be none the worse for his presence in his professional capacity— probably much the better ; and its society should be improved by association with an accomplished and genial gentleman. It is very questionable if, in some particulars, Millar will be improved by prolonged stay in Wanganui. Learned in the use of the theodolite, the level, &c, and capable of 'tastefully using the brush and the pencil, he never takes a pen in hand for any other save artistic purposes, but he; : whites /.himself down— not quite an ass, but certainly a -most extraordinary fish. This he has done in Dunedin and elsewhere, where' he has 'Had good examples of literary correspondence, yet where he has heeded ; them not as : improvers of his style,- but what is to. become of him among, the physical and literary sinks '■ of 'Waiiganui it is painful to contemplate. He appears to be already suffering from a serious form of literary typhoid fever, caught in the course of his professional wurk in, connection with the civic; ;sewers of his new place of sojourn. He has entered int6 a wordy — very wordy, - -warfaro with one of the local papers, on the sublime subject of eight-inch and' teninch diameter pipes 1 for the water-supply, of the town, arid the manner in which he: may be said to "gush" or "sluice" on that subject ought to be a caution to all chroniclers of water or' small b^eer, and especially to the " Chronicle " of Wanganui. "The learned gentleman," as he characterises the conductor of that journal, considers that Millar was "as legitimate 1 a,n object of public criticism as any other public servant," and the propriety of this sentiment Millar thus politely acknowledges : — " True Hal, very true ; therefore I have never, shrunk, nor do I now, from a truthful expression of my earliest antecedents, home or colonial, professional, public, pr private, willingly submitting my entire career from the earliest j dawn of infancy j up to the year of grace, 1874."' Arid he proceeds to illustrate that, " although an Hydraulic Engineer, I endowed with a modest knowledge of I some little skill in the noble profession to which he has the honor to belong, aided by a little common sense in seizing upon and utilising the modus operandi of the syphon," he possesses scarcely sufficient common sense in seizing upon and utilising the modus operandi of the steel pen or the "gray goose-quill." Compared with Wanganui in the misuse of these articles Ahaura ! and No Town are. nowhere; 'and our lady correspondent at the latter place whose powerful satire we recently quoted occupies the same relation io Millar ; as will be seen by the following extract from one of his letters, which we may most appropriately publish as CIVIC AND LITERARY SEWAGE : "The ' Chronicle's' insinuations (and some of. its contributors, having an eye to profit) re commission is. an insinuation which only could. emanate from a mind diseased, and in which the.smallest scintilla of the principles of honesty of piirpose could never have any lodgment-r-namely, that the additional cost of the main was but to secure a pallry commission at the larger expense of the ratepayers of Wanganui. It is a hopeless task for me, or any other, to argue honesty of purpose with individuals devoid of ordinary intelligence, whose antecedents and actions b'etray 'such mental incapacity. Although I may by science cause the water, for a limited height, to flow up hill by a syphon arrangement, yet it requires: a mightier magician to make water flow from a rock, as Moses isisaidi to. have done, where w'ajfcer haclnpt before existed, or to make the diimb to bebome 'eloquent, or the blind to see ; ; or the mightier, power still of a .'Great Creator of all' thing'! to infuse common sense irito a vacant mind j where I such does not already exist, or to instil the courtesies of material civilization into inirids- diseased.- What is born in the flesh, etc., etc, ; 1. -need not repeat the i maxim ; your readers know the applica l tion. I therefore give up i the taslc in despairing contempt, as a useless • waste of more valuable' time, seeing that I cannot stoop to bandy words (either) with a sweep} or trust myßelf within the unhallowed emanations proceeding from such a fraternity (useful as sweeps may be in their proper sphere) without soiling my hands, arid feeling a shuddering compunction of .conscience, that I have been doing a grievous wrorig'^' not" only to myself but to society at large— that is, to expect telegraphic mußio out of a 'lemon-

squeezed' pulp, or eloquent music put of the cracked bray of the, present, ''leaderwriter' of the Wanganui Chronicle.' I may, however, en passant congratulate the honorable and upright members of the Fourth Estate that ere long we shall have a gentleman occupying the editorial chair of that journal, incapable of scurrility, one who will respect the amenities'of life ; I have also to congratulate the reading public that the : journalistic days of the present creature are numbered, he being in the last throes of journalistic extinction here, leaving the retiring gentleman — God save the mark ! — leisure to concoct the slimy distillation of his slimy poison elsewhere—' in some other borough with a lot of borrowed capital to spend' — where unknown he may for a time be taken at his own estimated valuer until like his great prototype the scorpion, he dies a literary death, retiring into still further deserved obscurity. Owing to some unhappy organism in his composition, he innoculates his own tail with the virus distilled from a spleen diseased, a mind ill at ease, and at war with the human species generally. Influenced by the true spirit of Christian forbearance, mercy, and characteristic compassion, I may assist at the usual quiet obsequies over the retiring creature, committing it to the grave of contemptible oblivion ; solemnly undertaking the task of subscribing the letters R.I.P. over its unhappy memory, without heaving a sigh, shedding a tear, or expressing regrets unfelt either by myself or any other Wanganuite."

How Millar should out-Millar Millar, ■more io Wariganui than in oilier and earlier spheres of his " labor" in literature is probably accounted for by something in the water of Wanganui— a suggestion which might well be utilised as a supplement to the arguments for his own proposed improvements in the supply. The introduction into the town of a ten-inch diameter main-pipe might have more influence in contributing to mens sauna, in corpore sano and in mending men's manners than is. ; commonly suspected. Or there may be something in the air. In factj a contributor to a Wanganui contemporary, in making confession of some of the social sins of the locality, says : — "There must be something iri the air of Wanganui which incites to spleen' arid all uncharitableness. A few weeks' residence is quite sufficient to bring but any latent form of the disease that may have been lingering in the system, or to produce some entirely new one. With visors down the combatants tilt at one another d outrance, not with blunted weapons but with, trenchant blades. It matters little what the cause of offence may be ; that bears but a small proportion to the magnitude' of the punishmp.nt. You, have but to differ with your neighbor upon some matter of trivial import, and like an Asiatic he will slang both you arid your ancestors to • his, , heart's content. The latter does not matter so much, as we are not troubled much in that line in Wanganui. A lexicographer in search of rare words, might, pick up a few by reading some of the varied abuse 'that occasionally finds a vent.- This licentiousness of thought and speech .reflects , but small credit upon us as a community, and is a habit 'better honored in the breach than the observance.' " V