SNAPSHOTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11180, 30 January 1897, Page 6

SNAPSHOTS.

- Sfc Albans and Sydenham are very much Alike. Sydenham employed two or three ordinary plumbers to make a sewage scheme; plumbers who were not by any means experts in that line. St Albans got two or three worthy gentlemen—experts .on roses,and grain perhaps—to draw up a comprehensive drainage scheme. But the latter stopped here. In the case of Sydenham, the lamb took poison, and the lion said he shouldn’t; whereupon the 1 lamb i-wants the lion to eat it and the poison—at least, that is how the federation movement iloolcs to me. It is about time Woolston i started to bark. There must be something on in that end of the world; it is not natural for a local body to be so quiet; it can’t have a surplus, because it would blow ■about it ; it cantt have all it wants, nobody ever has that. All things considered, Woolston wants investigating; it is like a •baby, too quiet not to be up to'mischief. It is a good plan to make a row when one is doing anything. Sydenham did its work on the quiet, and fell in; Woolston may do the same. I suppose that when the ’Drainage Board does cut off the Sydenham depot the building will be used as a creamery, or crematorium, or sanatorium, or something for dogs and rpbbish.' If so, • the town will be better off than it is at present. * ■ * * qYI am a lover of Burns myself, and I can take him undiluted; but for all that he ought to be expurgated, seriously, heavily e.4|>urgated. This by the way. There can be no doubt about his songs, and having a saucer-shaped ear of the musical variety, I can enjoy them. What is more, I did err joy them. Yet the Burns affair was flat, very flat. It was not by any moans a :Bums celebration, because that must necessarily be a convivial gathering with questionable stories and poems and Auld Lang Syne. It .was not a Scotch concert, because the singers did not sing Scotch, but bad-English. But the gathering was meant to he Scotch, and one therefore wonders what brought the colonial larrikin in. Having got in he proceeded,to take his money’s worth. There was only one way ■to keep Mm ; quiet. ‘ If the longest recitation, had been one of the, expurgatable efforts lof the poet be would have sat like J a lamb—or a donkey—all ear. New Zealand Scotch' concerts are failures outside Dunedin; and the Dunedin people don’t have any.

There are some people who can never say what they mean., .There are also some people who say what they mean; but what they say often moans other things. Take ,tho case of Spratt’s dog biscuits, as supplied to the Queen and Prince of Wales. If you have got a museum of curiosities, ihere is a specimen: “ Copy of nineteenth .century advertisement; original in Melbourne daily: ‘ Prof. J ohn Blank, 'chiropodist; most skilled in any country; has removed corns and other impediments to the feet from the crowned heads_ of Europe, &c.’ ” One can forgive an advertisement, but a “lover of the wheel” should have known better. He complained of a bicliste on the footpath. Going round a corner she turned turtle, and, lie hoped, ■eat on her pound of butter. “If I see the ■same 1 , lady doing this again, I shall give her name to the police.” If he meant turning turtle he might have saved himself the trouble. Biclistes, of course, should' v hot turn turtle, but they do not do it ■intentionally, and this one is not likely to make an exhibition of herself again. If ■heuneant sitting on her butter, lie is more in theright. No one has a right to make mess of the footpath, and butter is quite as-bad as banana skin. • '* . * * I am just one of those who find delight in, sweeping the terraqueous heavens with lart equatorial telescope.' Having got this off my chest I can get to work. On the' subject of the telescope, where is it F One hears of a tower and a dome, of the mounting of the animal, and of its keeper at so much per year.; but what of the public ? How much admission is charged P Would threepence a peep meet the case? And if it will, how is the keeper to be got at, and who gives you an order to there ? The thing has got to earn its keep, or .it will become an incubus; it must ,be used, or it will drop through the floor. It has been stowed away long enough, and it must not be-like the famous boat, which was not to be used lest it should wear out. We don’t exactly want to see boat races on Mars, but we would like to see the mountains in the moon. *, : * # Good books and bad come in every batch, and the last batch brought the worst of Rolf Boldrewood’s. The “ Sealskin Cloak ” would hardly have done for Miss Braddon at her worst; and, by the way, her last' novel is an excellent excursion into history.' But “ Sentimental Tommy ” is acknowledged to be the best thing Barrie has written. It’s only fault is that it ends half-way, so to speak ; but for this one is consoled, because no author would have the heart to leave a hero like Tommy marching into oblivion. There has got to bo a sequel,' and the readek won’t be happy till he gets it. One expects great things of the boy who can lay siege* to a whole town■ as the Young Pretender, and then become loyalist and chase the Jacobite into exile. But that is not' the best, by any means. ’Tommy had occasion to stray, into a waifs’ tea meeting, and at the same moment as the minister' rose to play for the waifs Tommy rose to pray for the people on the platform, “Oh look down on them ones there, for oh,, they are unworthy of T,hy mercy,'and oh, the worst sinner is her ladyship, her. sitting there so brazen in the black-frock with yellow stripes. Oh, why enmbereth she the ground? Oh”—and the hero is dragged praying tlu-ongh the hall, and cast still praying hysterically into ’ outer darkness. Then there is the maiden lady who is fifty-one and owns to fortynine, and who is secretly fond of romances. But she is very proper, and when fljommy reads aloud to her he transposes a good English “Damn” into “ Word we have no cencern with”—which reminds one of a hint from “Kate Carnegie.” “You willfind,” says the young parson to the porter who collapses with a pile of luggage, “that ‘Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Durham ’ will bo of help to you.” Flaneur.