JOTTINGS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXII, Issue 242, 13 October 1888, Page 4

JOTTINGS.

(.From The Nelson Weekly News.) Fig-ures are occasionally awful liars. Of this we have had convincing' proof of late. The Bank of New Zealand was a flourishing institution whose affairs were so well managed that the shareholders thought themselves the luckiest people on the face of the earth. A few years ago everything , y was prosperous. "Wool and wheat were fetching rattling good prices, and hundreds of people all over the colony were greedy to ■■. grow them. They wanted means to make a ? start, or to help them to carry on when once they had entered upon the venture. These means were easily obtained, for the Bank *"" was always ready to make advances, those who wanted the money merely having to go through the trifling form of signing a mortgage. Of course they had to pay interest but the markets were good, and they had no difficulty in meeting their liabilities. The Bank did a roaring business and the shareholders received . grand dividends twice a year with the , regularity of clockwork. New Zealand Bank shares were a splendid investment seeing the interest they paid, and in course of lime they went up to more than twice their . original value, and even npon the amounts thus paid the return was better than could he obtained elsewhere. But then there oame a change. Prices went down and the mortgagors experienced the greatest ' difficulty in paying their interest. Things got worse and they couldn't meet their . liabilities by hook or by crook. The mortgagees foreclosed and managed the stations . or farms themselves, but still they did not , .provide the interest on the original amounts lent. Still the Bank went on merrily paying the same dividends and bonuses, and year after year they published a full state.ment of their accounts, showing that they were quite in a position to do so. One of the simplest of arithmetical problems is thafc 2-f2=L Now how could things possibly go wrong when the Directors based all their calculations upon this simple proposition that 2+2=4. But they did go wrong, though it has taken a Committee of •experts with a Judge of the Supreme Court at their head to find it out. In justice to figures, however, it must be stated as the result of their investigations, that it was not they whioh were to blame. Of course in these days of widespread education you can't get any sane man woman or child to question the result of adding two and two together. Then how is it that they have not made four in this instance? There is but one satisfactory solution of this, namely, that though the Directors contrived to get -4 as the answer to this little addition sum they hadn't got the 2 and 2 to add together, but they have tried and endeavored to make the shareholders and the publio believe that the same result was to be achieved by plussing — if I may coin a word for the occasionone and one. So that, after all. it is not the figures that have lied. But somebody muat have done, because there is the . in all the half yearly statements for many years past. The question is, who? Perhaps we shall find out one of these days if fche "specific aotion" to which the Committee darkly alluded is taken. If not, there will always be found some who will be disposed to question the reliability of figures, and that would be a greafpity, for it would be tantamount to laying'th e axe to the root of the tree of State Education which is just now in bo apparently flourishing a condition in New Zealand,

There's no mistake about it; watches ore " beggars to go " in and about this part of New Zealandl It will be remembered, I daregay, how a short time ago a watch which had belonged to a dead man at Westport left the drawer in which it had been placed on the night the departed one was being '•' waked ", and travelled to Nelson where it was seen quietly reposing in somebody's trunk, whence again it started off a little later and deliberately committed suicide by drowning in the entrance to the harbor where it was found lying at low water. And now we hear of another peripatetic ticker which was left in the pocket of a waistcoat hanging up in a dressing room at a rink, whence it departed in a mysterious manner, and two months later was discovered in a similar place of exercise and entertainment at Christchurch. That watch was evidently very like a lot of people I know in Nelson who, do what they will, can't stop away from a rink. From a rink it was lost; in a rink it was found.

The worst part of the whole thing is that the incredulous police won't believe that this particular watch possessed locomotive powers. They profess to consider it impossible tbat l! on its own hook " or rather off the hook on which it was hung it should have removed to where it was found elsewhere. And the cruel wretches have aotually ascribed the travels of the ticker to the "curled darling" who was the petted and admired of matrons and maidens innumerable in Nelson. Deep was the indignation, loud the lamentation when it became known that to the degradation of an arrest had been subjected he whose grace and elegance had made so deep an impression upon so many feminine hearts in the town where for a Bhort space of time his motto seemed to be "Veni, vidi, vici." To think that those beautiful hands which had clasped so many pretty little fingers here, the owners of which were in an ecstacy of delight could they but secure tbe privilege of gliding gracefully round with the gay Gibson— to think that those hands should ever be grasped by a heartless detective with a grip from which escape was impossible! There was something heartrending in the very idea, and great was the concern created among skateresses when they became aware of the indignity that had been perpetrated upon their late partner in the mazy rink. lam afraid— no I won't say I'm afraid— l have a presentiment, that, guided by past experience, there are among the fair ones of Nelson some who in future will be not so ready to put their trust in Professors, at all events until they are able to give some little guarantee of their freedom from liability to be persecuted by those horrid prying detectives who are no respecters of persons, but take even a keener delight in placing their sacrilegious hands upon a masher rinker than upon some poor misguided wretch who has prigged a watoh with a view to converting it into drinks wherewith to assuage his burning thirst. Ohi how we do live and learn in this funny world in which our lot is cast.

In connection with rinks let me tell a little story which may be comforting to many of my readers as showing that the mama which has sprung up and developed to so alarming an extent here, is not confined to Nelson, where, as I have stated in previous " jottings," peculiar methods of raising the wherewithal to attend these fascinating J laces pf recreation have been resorted to. t was in a northern town that a young couple lived. The husband, a hard working man, purchased a leg of mutton which he brought home for their Sunday's dinner. They were not endowed with many of this world's goods, so that she had not much money to spend upon rinking. That night, however, she was flying 'round— whether with or without a Professor as a guide, philosopher, and friend, my informant gayeth not. Next day it was found that the leg of mutton had disappeared from the safe, and it oame ont subsequently that it had passed on to the table of another hard working man, whose wife was not a rinkisb, j though the medium of an accommodating tradesman, the sign on whose door was three balls. This, let me add, is an ower true tale. I don't think that we have come to this in Nelson yet, but I am not quite sure. Manfred.