PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON BAZAARS AND BEGGING.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXII, Issue XXII, 26 March 1879, Page 2

PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON BAZAARS AND BEGGING.

The Edinburgh University Students' Club Bazaar was opened on Saturday by Dean Montgomery.- Professor Blackie was atso present, and delivered an address. He declared the bazaar was not open for business till his speech was delivered. (Laughter.) He did not, however, want to make a speech, as there waa too much random talking in the present time, for which reason, being rather too much accustomed to public speaking — (loud laughter) — and being dragged into all kinds of companies — except investment companies, with which he had no connection — he had pertinaciously and persistently refused to have anything to do with opening bazaar 3. He did not to get the reputation of being the promoter of every man's scheme— (laughter) — and it was a bad reputation to get, and if one was always talking, they would be sure to say something wrong, which would be reported in the newspapers, and he would be called a general cracker of jokes and a consummate intellectual fool. (Laughter.) They must, therefore, understand that on the present, occasion he exercised a great deal of self-denial, and this was positively the Jast time. (Loud laughter.) People should not always be talking. He thought Gladstone had hurt himself by that, but he (Professor Blackie) was not a politician, only a professor, and he co'jild say what he pleased, and didn't care a snuff for either Whigs or Tories, Established' or any other Churchman.— (Laughter.) Some people had a very peculiar kind of conscience that was like a too susceptible eye, which could not bear the light, and thus rendered its posssessor as blind as he that was sightless. They did not think it was proper to have bazaars. As for himself, he considered it was the proper thing to spoil the Egyptians on all occasions. (Laughter.) No better thing could be done than taking money out of people's pockets for a good object. He himself was perhaps the most expert beggar, excepting perhaps the Free Church beggars — (loud laughter) — the most expert and successful beggar that had appeared in this part of the world, actually doing a kind of half thief—(renewed laughter) — doing things like old Jacob, adopting all kinds of shifts which a person with a very tender conscience would not adopt in order to conjure money out of the pockets of fellows who would rather not give it. He thought that women should do something in the way of opening bazaars and expounding their philosophy now-a-days when they were getting so masculine as to have M.D. after their name— (laughter) — bnt he supposed they spoke more gently and in a more insinuating way at their own tables, not only with their mouths, but with their eyes, aye, with their fingers, with a gentle touch. (Laughter.) He believed the ladies were wise in their generation. He could not, however, be called upon to speak of a bazaar, with the objects of which he more thoroughly sympathised. (Applause.) Scotch students were hard working fellows he knew, although, no doubt, especially in the Greek class, there were always a certain number of boys who had prematurely left the nursery and their mother's strings, and also a number of medical students, young men, perhaps 21 years of age, stroking their whiskers and marching about like a major of dragoons, knocking at everybody's door until their great procession terminated in the police office. But those people were most always in a minority. (Applause.) Scotch students worked too much alone. They had too little esprit de corj>s among them. They did not even know their fellovs in the same class, aye, sometimes they wouldn't know them — those fine Edinburgh gentlemen belonging to aristocratic society, sons of my lord this or that, who considered themselves defiled by touching a dirty stupid Highlander. Sometimes this might be excused because there were dirty fellows, and by historical reputation the Scotch was a dirty animal (Sensation.) These fine people forgot they were only half redeemed from the unreasoning^ beast— oh ! fie for shame— (laughter)— they sat at meat by themselves, which was a sign of the savage animal which retired to a hole and devoured its bone by itself. (Loud laughter). Eating together was a sign of the human being intellectual. He didn't think he could digest his beefsteak if it were not for his wife and sisters-in-law and the other women, and they spent thre«quarters of an hour over a simple maa*. Uonriug down from the dais oq "which ha 5 was mounted, the Professor B»id— now j that ia Professor Blackie's speech.