THE WEEK, THE WORLD. AND WELLINGTON.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 247, 17 October 1908, Page 3

THE WEEK, THE WORLD. AND WELLINGTON.

ABOUT HOT WEATHER.—FACTS A B FOR REFERENCE.-PICTURES AND THE HOME-HUNGER.— A MODERN EZEKIEL - KELLY OF HAWAII.—POINTS -IN BRIEF. •

Wo are having day after day of quite delicious weather; -blue skies, gentle warmth, and (for Wellington) wonderfully little wind. Good citizens tell me that the weather is hot; but that, I think, is merely by way of iect. In two years or so, I have only known one hot day in Wellington, and that was not nearly so hot as an average day of Sydney summer. 1 have known far hotter days m Hobart, in Brisbane, and oven m London—to say nothing of the really hot places. There is,' for instance, Rockhampton. Evangelical work is beset by special difficulties m Kockhampton, because you can t terrify a Rockhampton man by talk of eternal heat; he'd never know the difference. There is (I think I've mentioned this before) Mazaffarpur, where they boil eggs by breathing on them, and grill their steaks by laying them gently m the sun. There is Rhio in Bmtang. I: is hot in Rhio that a man named Pizburger, who used to keep a store there, died of a chill through falling into a vat of merely boiling .water. You get so accustomed to heat m Rhio that at the Turkish bath there (kept by a dear old chap named Bubbleheimer), when you come to the stage of the hot douche, a fellow plays superheated steam on you from a hose, and you begin to know^ what luxury is. Heat, you see, is all a- matter of comparison. When it comes to the sort of heat that causes'prof use perspiration, you must count Madras first. You will probably remember the case of the two esteemed civil servants m the Madras Presidency—Dr. Y. P. Bogle and Mr Bungle Strut—who fell into a dry tank while out shooting, were unable to climb out owing to the great heat, and so died a fearful death from drowning in less than forty minutes. I attended the funeral, and I have not forgotten the grief of poor Strut s widow, an elongated blonde with absolutely no other expectations. On the whole, I feel rather glad sometimes that I have got away from those hot countries. Christchurch is hot, I know; but that doesn't matter, because one loves to sleep warm-

Last night I set out to see the show of the Scarlet Troubadours. But, alas! I can't go early to any old thing, and when I reached the haunt of the Troubadours (the rather poky concert chamber of the Town Hall), there was not even standing room. So J went in to see West's Pictures. Because I love moving pictures myself, I can understand the public sentiment that has made shows of this class so extraordinarily popular. West s pictures are so good that one is secure ot enjoyment there.. This seems # to me to be the most rational and instructive of all minor forms of entertainment. Take last night. Wo saw Norway, Germany, Venice, and all sorts of other places, alive with movement, true to the moving life. Twenty years ago, the hasbeens would have laughed at the bare idea of such a possibility. It is very stimulating, this' entertainment that can transport a New Zealand audience to almost every country on the earth. But it is a little saddening to the exile. When I see the home-places, I feel gnawing at my heart a home-hunger that will not be stilled. The bioscope, in short, must tend to call the English back to England, the exile to Ms homeland over all the habitable earth. I suppose that I am about as honest and cheerful a cosmopolite as you shall easily find about the earth; but to-night the scent of dear old fields is in my nostrils, and in my ears again is all the whispering of well-remembered woods. School-mates whoso faces are msre vague pallors in my memory stretch forth their shadowy hands across three oceans, their voices calling, calling. And I

am bitter with longing for my <»wb country and my own folk. 1 .reel tonight that I could stoop half weeping to kiss dear English soil again. \ wonder if such feelings are oommon to English folk who settle among *he outlanders. Robert Louis Stevenson (a Scot, but no matter) had the feeling always, and always poignant!/. There is a certain pleasure even m one's pangs, when one has them m such noble company. You remember:— ' -■/

Home, no more home to me, whither must I wander? i Hunger my driver, I go where I ! ' must. "■. . „ Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather; ..Thick drives' the rain, and my root vis in the dust. • ' -■'_ Loved of wise men was the shade or my rooftree. The true word of welcome was spoken in the door — Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight, Kind folks of old,, you come again no moife. Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces, Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child. Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland; Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild. Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland. Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold. Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed, The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old., Spring shall come, com©'again, calling up the moor fowl, Spring shall bring the sun and ram, bring the bees and flowers; Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours; Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood— Fair shine the day on the house with open door; Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimneyBut I go for ever and come again no more. "When that feeling comes upon a man, one is constrained to admit that life isn't all beer and skittles; Heigho! * * * * « • * For sheer dolefulness, I always thought that Ezekiel put Jeremiah easily out of the running! Wellington Evening Post is .rapidly becoming —if it lias not already become—the tarn? Ezekiel of New Zealand journalism. The Post looks abroad over the visible earth, and over so much of the visible universe as its extremely finite mind can grasp, and utters dolorous lamentations. It still has some apparent hope for the British Isles; but for Australasia—ooo —oooo^ —ooooo ! And the Government!—the Government by this time must be moist with the tears the Post has shed all over it. And Parliament!—the tears of

the Post must have washed Parliament nearly out of doors by this time. The Post is becoming so sad that it makes even me sad to read it._ Now why these lamentations r— whence this doleful mood? I <*unn<>. You dunno. But 1 have an idea. Ihe Post has been alone on a good wicket st long that the mere idea of OPPOSE tion makes it positively ill. And the opposition is coming. Not a doubt or it. A big outside syndicate has/ actually taken premises. And when the big outside syndicate gets to work it will probably hustle with the gloves off. That means much. It means, for instance, that the new paper will be' taking for sixpence advertisements for which the Post has been receiving eighteenpence. All over the world, except in Wellington, evening newspapers take casual advertisements at cut rates, because in the multitude of casual advertisements lies the strength of the .evening newspaper. The Post, secure in its monopoly, has been a little dull in its apprehension. Then the new paper is likely to get the best journalists its money can buy—judging them by their brains land output, and not at all by their pretences and their orthodoxy. JNow the Post has one or two excellent men, but it doasn't seem to know how to ! use them. Mr A. G. Stephens might easily be made into a tower or ■strength for any paper; but on the I Post Mr Stephens is wasted. He is a "writer of strong .virile force and \ originality, and he is one of the. keenlost and sanest literary critics m the ! Southern Hemisphere. Better than that, he is one of the finest and keenest critics of life. But it is an open secret that Mr Stephen^ has not. tipped'smoothly into the Post machine. 'Is to that, he says nothing, being one o£ those admirable and exceptional men who will discuss neither his own private business nor anyone s else. What is known is that the effect ot Mr Stephens' accession to the Post has not been at all what the public expected it would be. Even the. socalled literary criticism^emains just as it was before A.G.S. the staff. I merely mention these things to point the fact that if the.new paper is run by the men that I think aregoing to run it, it will know how to make the fullest and most fruitful use of the men on its staff. It will go straight for what it wants, using with all its subtlety and strength the weapons at its disposal. It seems to mo that that is the way in^ which a newspaper should be conducted- and if the new evening paper in Wellington, is conducted in that way its success is assured. But (you reasonably ask) is there room for two evening newspapers in Wellington? . I don t know?: I think not. But I don't see why the/ new syndicate need worry about that, any more than I do. • ■ '*' #■.«..•■•■ *

The heart rejoices to hear that Mr J. Liddell Kelly has gone m the flush o< Jjis honeymoon to edit a paper in Hawaii. Never have a place and a newspaper-man seemed better fitted for each other. Mr Kelly is a placid and genial man, with an overflowing pleasure in humanity that this somewhat temperate atmosphere restricted. He has written a few good and many very tolerable verses. He has, affectionately cuddled New Zealand s trade interests in the West of England. He has written miles of newslpaper articles on this, that, the other, and the disturbed state of the Balkans. One pictures him over there in Hawaii. He sits soothly under a rustling palm, clothed all in white. He sips a drink of a delicate amber color. He reads a proof without haste, turning his own apt phrases enjoyably over his tongue. And .m the middle distance little brown girls, largely undraped, drive the happy pigs to market. It is an Indiansummer idyl, and it eclipses all others oi recent date. The heart rejoices. So does J. Liddell Kelly. The Labor Day Demonstration Committee has decided not to invite Sir Joseph Ward and his colleagues. to the demonstration on Wednesday. The Prime Minister (I suppose) is suffering acute pain. Women suffragists in London are arranging to rush the House of Com-

nions on the occasion of> the opening of Parliament on Tuesday. The madness of the thing is appalling, and adult suffrage in England becomes more impossible every day If the suffragettes had been advised from the outset by the bitterest enemy of their cause, they could scarcely have made a worse hash of their chances. But they have been their own bitterest enemies. Not content with antagonising the Liberal Government, they have now succeeded in antagonising the women of England-^ ».. .„ A Chinese junk of 200 tons burthen has been discovered in a remote part of the coast of North Australia. Ex pede, Herculem. Most of the junks are not discovered. It is raining heavily. Serves me j right for boasting about the weather.