WEEKLY WHISPERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 8 June 1907, Page 2

WEEKLY WHISPERS.

// Here's a hole in a' your coats, / rede ye tetit it ; A chiefs among ye lakin notes, And, faith, he'll print it. — Burns. An amusing incident at the Navigation Conference is related by the correspondent of an Australian paper. A keen discussion tool: placa over a resolution proposed by Mr Belcher in opposition to the employment of lascars, coolies, and Chinamen on vessels owned, registered, or chartered to trade in the Commonwealth or Now Zealand. A representative of the Indian OHice was present to explain the provisions under which lascars aye employed on British ships. Speaking broadly, he said they could not bo retained beyond the latitude of 38deg N. When a captain reached that latitude he had to discharge and ship lascars back to their pet of embarkation, but, he added temperature also counted in fixing the zone of employment. Therefore an isothermal line ' had beeu drawn, which excluded the British Isles from this regulation, although a portion of them were beyond 30deg N. No line had i b^en drawn in the Southern Hemisphere. The Colonial delegates set to work to find what Australian ports would be excluded by the 38deg S., and pitched upon Hobart ; but the isothermal line, it was found, would save Ho- ! Bart also from exclusion. Sir William Lyne misconstrued, the meaning of the word "isothermal." "What!" he ex claimed, "ice? Where there is ice there should be no lascars." The faces of his comrades lit up like a flash, and they were ready to explode. The imperturbable gravity of Mr Lloyd George and the Home delegates, however, restrained them, and the proprieties were respected. A few years ago an American professor forfeited his chair through maintaining that man was not constructed fov the erect position. It is now reported that certain cranks of the great Republic have formed an association — the "Order of Nebuchadnezzarites," pledged to adopt the fascinating "ailfouis" attitude \n locomotion. Whether the constitution providers that they shall also crop the blooming wayside thistle is not stated. The Rev. R. J. Campbell recently asked his congregation at the City Temple, London, to endeavour to restrain their coughing. A few evenings after, at a friendly gathering the following rhyme which a critic had composed in reference to his request was read : — "Can Campbell's flock expected be Tulir cough in church to stay, When, with his 'New Theology,'" lie takes their breath away?" * . * * * .>. . * Transposition of the initial or other letters of words is not peculiar to Oxford academic authorities. A butcher's wife the other day tcok the new twins t i be christened, and when asked by the uiliif.'iting minister what names (/hey were to bear, promptly replied, "Steak and kidney, sir." The agitated woman meant "Kate and Sidney." At many a vestry meeting the Workmen's Compensation Act has been the theme of conversation, (says the London "Daily Telegraph,") and appeals have been made for increased financial support, on the ground that it will be necessary to insure all the paid officials of a church. At the vestry at Leigh, near Tonbridge, a churchwarden pointed out that they would probably be responsible if one of the choir boys fell down and broke his leg while walking up the aisle. The vicar, on this observed that such a condition of things would be unfair. It would bo a different matter, however, if a choir-boy were to dislocate his jaw whilst singing a top note. The fantastic misuse of a form of the diminutive affix "c" or "te" ao a mark of the feminine ("piamste," "cadette," etc.), seems to be extending. A Melbourne weekly published the portrait of "Miss , dentiste." This reminds one of a former edition of "Stone's Direct Dry" whose canvasser or printer got hopelessly mixed about Nelsqn's Bron-ti-itreet." In the alphabetical'list naming a re;ident of the street, and curtailing the word "street" to "st," the entry appeared t "Brown, John, Brontist." Would it be believed that as a result several letters came to "Mr Brown" fro mintending patitnes? What they thought a "Brontist" could cure is not apparent. Some Nelson young fellows had a good time in the Ngatimoti district the other day, but they ! don't say much ibout it. They went out on a pig- ' iting expedition, and though game I "r... scarce they were very enthusiastic I ■•■ i st 'ck to it like Britons. Pro entlv, . . .• having gone almost in a circle S '..'ironn'li '.I' 1 bush, up hills, etr., they atlast, e.ip ».i n veritable pig. They gave chase ,ai A at last brought it down, with several shots in its. interior, and they bore the i qua/iv i their host's farm. Meantime ihe host. nn had reported mc of the domesticai ■: Berkshires auissing, and the search ) rty and the *i'"ilers met jusr. at- the ■"..■ er's.. fence. I."- nno side joyously announced that <.:> ■. ii,kl shot a pi" and the other ask:"J >t" the lm:i 1 -. had seen a stray ■'v A tat '.i <iv followed when the ua. •■ was brought to an abrupt ter.ilin.,;-';. by the discovery that the hun-.»-i- quarry and the missing pig were .no and th? same. It cannot be said hat the relations between farmer and mtilors ara strajnod. but in the tiinit•rs' boarding house they don't talk of pig-huntin; now, except when the hun".ers are absent. (More or less fact.) Is not the Waimea County Council |ust a little hard on thp_ Nelson Instip.te in tfie matter of compelling the Committee to cut down some timber hat shades a romparativelv unused ruad it the Tadmor district? So far as one earns, it had been intended to cut and ell the trees instead of wasting them, nitting off the act till the road was in dual constant use. Now, however, the imber will simply lie around and go to vaste, and perhaps entail a risk of fire in the dry months. There are many other places along county roads where ohade is cast by trees 1 , doing a great deal of winter damage to roads and causing serious inconvenience to travellers. Will action be taken to bring to book also the owners of these umbrageous spots? One will watch with interest developments in this direction to see that a fair field with no favour is offered to all alike. •.•? * * * If thoce junketing "Empire- builders," the Premiers numerous and various attending the Imperial Conference, really ate strawberries at £1 a lb. at the 1900 Club dinner in London as a recent letter quoted by you says, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, for they made mere mock of their democracy. Outside the doors and windows of the guzzlehall there were starving and shivering thousands — lost souls, despairing hearts, aching bodies that the cost of half a plateful of strawberries would have given surcease of sorrow and pain for a while at least. Of course it is all wrong poli-tico-economically that one, after the surfeit of dinner, should toy at dessert with Covent Garden hothouse fruit costing its weight in silver while another should be unable to get a square meal even from street offal. Doubtless it is a fact that though from principle one refused to commit the criminal extravagance of eating strawberries at a sovereign the )b. the poor wretches out of doors might be none the gain,er. But a joint appeal from the Premiers to their hoste that the price of 6001 b of strawberries might be distributed among the London poor instead of being wast/ed on a criminal luxury might have been responded to, even if with astonishment at fche "bad form" that prompted such a request. I can't quite realise that £600 for strawberries tale. Of course, estimate is based on contemporaneous Covent Garden market quotations, But, anyhow, those strawberries were a criminal extravagance which must have made Alfred Deakin at least squirm, though he did not feel l<tmself called upon to say anything, being a guest. One wonders if the fruit tasted any better than those in the Melbourne streets in May at 2d a lb or so ? One doubts it. By the bye,

i is recuoncd tiiat 0000 lioniclc-fJB perJOiis Sj.yp in the open in London every \ nighl, yet tlnwu are three magnificent I homes in the New Uahylon for cats I and dogs .' " ! • •••«* j The cables tall us that Glastonbuiy i Abbey (its ruins) has been sold for I £30,000. It was to Glastonbury (the I Celtic Viiyffvitriii, the Avalon of Ar- 1 thurian legend, the Glaestingaburgh or Ulaestiugs' Borough of West Saxons) that Joseph of Arimathea came, bearing the Holy Grail, planting his pilgrim's staff on Weary-All Hill, and founding the first Christian Church iv Circ.it liritaiii. The Holy Thorn (Crataegus praecox) took root and nourished,, and it was said to hlosj- m every Christmas Eve till an iccnaclu.tic Puritan cut it down. Grafts of it are growing in England and elsewhere to this day. One at Sutton Poyntz actually blossomed on the uight of the sth Januaiy, 1884, in the presence of 250 persons. The burial place of Celtic- and Saxon British Kings— of Edmund, Edgar, Edmund Ironside, perhaps also of Dunstan and Joseph of Arimathea, of Arthur and Guinevere — the Abbey itself was founded in 846 A.D., on the ruins of ths great Church of St. Peter tind Paul, spoiled hy the Danes. Rebuilt in 1184, burned down soon after, the splendid renovation Minster was undertaken by Henry 11., but not dedicated till 1303. In 1539, Richard Whiting, the last of the mitred Abbots, was hanged on the Tor by the Eighth Henry. The nowscanty ruins of tho great Benedictine houss covering 60 acres^ — the place has long been the quarry of the district, and the landmarks are the roofless Chapel of St. Joseph, and the Abbot's Kitchen, of stone, of Mth century architecture, 33| feet square, and 72 feet high, with four large fireplaces and pyramidal roof. The Rev. R. Willis' "Architectural History of Glastonbury Abbey" (1866) gives full details of this ancient fane. Eheu fugaces ! The next we may hear is of the 60 acres of ruins being sold for building sites, and the more or less suburban piano may be heard where once Joseph of Arimathea prayed. Those who have read S. R. Crockett's "Kid McChie" will be reminded of Scott's "Heart of Midlothian" to some extent in connection with the criminal polulation of Edinburgh. There is also a whiff of "Oliver Twist," of Fagin's "Thieves' Kitchen" and training school in the description of the "St. Jacob's College" for burglars at Edinburgh. Crockett, who has written some mere pot-boilers recently, has redeemed himself in "Kid McGhie," aird those who admire S.R.C. at his best should, net miss the book. MOFUSSILITE.