CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12424, 13 February 1901, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

]>r Parker's editorial cxdb parkek's perience with " The Sun " experiment, was not altogether a happy en-?, and -he ?i--fnis to b'.vc teen rather troubled by the dap waiei's- of " sporting journalism" when he essayed its discredijt fov. paradox.; kike, s&© cdefejitgd

agricultural editor of whom Mark Twain: writes, his excursions into unfamiliar country were fraught, with, unfortunate results. The sporting world laughed derisively at his knowledge of "the odds" displayed in the following "Sum" table:— 10 to 1 on/ The Bookmaker, 2 to 1 agst Ruin, 2 to 1 Welsher, 3 to 1 Penal Servitude, 20 to 1 The Novice, 40 to 1 The. Yokel, 100 to 1 The Flat, 2 to 1 bar one. The " talent" admit that it shows the regular careful adjustment in the interests of number one which is popularly supposed to characterise the dealings of the layer of odds, but they infer grimly, that Dr Parker, as a bookmaker, would starve unless he opened out a, little wider on those behindl the favourite. The Doctor confessed, however, at the close of his experiment, that it had not been wholly a success, ami t that the experiment 'had been at once encouraging and discouraging. He was afraid * sometimes that it wa.s ! not possible for a - London daily to live without gambling and drinking. He could but express the fear tlmt'the theoretical Christian liked to know ;thf betting, and would lay down his solemiii'foobk to see what the odds were. This applied to 'the nominal or theoretical church-goer. There were some narrowminded, ill-fed Christians who were standing in the -nay of the greatest reform Eiiglandl had ever seen, and that was in the region of journalism. The letters he had received from nominal Christians were disgusting. Instead of saying, "Go on and prosper and 1 we will stand by you," they seemed afraid to burden their own souls, if souls 'they hadl 'got. Of encouragement Dr Parker had little to give, and to judge by what he left unsaid, rather than by what he said, he has found his much-advertised experiment a* least unpractical.

Some day a paternal Legisxhb lature, having made life HGUEB wortii living in many other fiend, respects, will, step into the breach, and mat© the propounding and publication of comparative statistics antf proportionate comparisons a capital offence -when they can serve no economic purpose. At present the trail of the statistic fiend is -all over our magazines and daily newspapers. Pictures of the cow that, a man eats in a-lifetime, standing upon the barrel containing the beer -he drinks in the same period, may be impressive and even in. a sense instructive, but they are a form of instruction which is lamentably useless and inartistic. Then the fact that the bootlaces a man breaks in his allotted three score* years and ten, upon which, bases all averages are worked, would go three times round, tie world, and leave enough, over to make a cable a mile long, and thirteen and a half inches thick, may be indisputable, but it is a distinctly vexatious evidence of wilful waste. It is an, annoying piece of information, too, for, unlike the man who planted, an aloe for the purpose of testing the statement that the plant only flowered once in. a... hundred years, it is impossible to try it, as before the calculation is borne intelligently upon us, a certain cumber of broken lacess have been lost in the illimitable years. The. habit destroys ideals and breaks down ambitions. People imagine that there is a possibility of learning chess, at least they have cherished that fond delusion in the past. But now a figure fiend has risen tip, and announced that there are twenty possible v?ap= of making the first move on each side, and 318,979,564,000 of*' making the first ten. W-ii-e one to play..without cessation, at the" rate of one set a minute, at would take more than 600,000 years to go through them all. The number of ways of playing the first- ten moves on each side is... 169,518,829,100,544,. 000,000,000,000,000! And yet this man is allowed to live. He should be punished in the proper Gilbertiaa manner, by being made to devote the remaining years of his life to at least a partial practical proof of his thesis.

The Signora Ristori. one eistori on of the few foreign perfor- .. the dkaha. mere who sufficiently ovef-. came the lions in the way of "English as she- is spoke" to acquire-, a .reputation as a tragedienne in English-speak-ing circles, is living in retirement at Rums, and lias been contributing some impressions on her art to " Ma-cmillan's Magazine.*" ; These possess a special interest to Christchurch people just now. Ristori 'has a, double-barrelled protest to issue, primarily against the artificial manufacture of actors and actresses, like" so many buttons,' by tha - so-called theatrical academies, and second-, arily against the modern tendency to stage realism. Her first objection is, of coursK not aimed at instruction in elocution or deportment, which, she admits, are.the very . grammar of dramatic art; what she does object to is ■that, given certain circumstances, every academy-trained stage lover will behave with identical action and identical expression, except m tHose isolated cases where individual genius triumphs over environment. Her appeal against, excessive realism is aimed not.at the realism of art, but at the realism of artificiality. It is not fidelity of emotion whioli she deprecates, but a too-detailed attention to the: reality of accessories. This she holds is as injurious to dramatic art as conventionalism and mannerism. la proof of this she instances Bernhardt's Parisian production of Clenpa*ra. Much was made, in the preliminary notices of tha tragedy, of the fact that the actress had! trained a small snake to go-into a little bag concealed in tile foils of her costume, and Which was to represent the- asp that stuns the bosom, of tho Egyptian Queen. But the tragic death-scene simply pioducei an anti-climax, for; so intent were the audience on watching the unwinding of tha snake's tail that the reptile actually scored the honour.-, of the. tcer.e. This is one instance among ninny. It is well-known among those behind the scenes that nothing looks more unreal ihan <s real mirror, and that :-lafte jewels have far more cfieet than real ones, "aud what applies to littlenesses bt this character applies with equal fni.ee- ti> greater accessories in the mimic world.