POLICE COURT.-WEDNESDAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 131, 14 April 1864, Page 4

POLICE COURT.-WEDNESDAY.

j I Uvforo Tims. Leckhiun, i:« f „ ]!. M.J j tiii:eati;xi.\o i.angvagk. Peter Storie was charged with using abusive and Dire,-lining language towards Mr. Thus. Cheeseliian, at Hauraki. J>efendaiit not appearing, and the .service of the summons having been proved, a warrant was ordered to be issued for his apprehension. JUU'NKA 10): . Four drunkards wore then mulcted in the usual penalty. j

Cai.ckaft amj the Rei'outehs.—While the reporters were «tanding in one of the passages of the county gaol at Cambridge, in order to discliarge their duties connected with the execution of Green, the M'hittlesca murderer, Calcraft, who passed, said, "J don't like you fellows, you tell such lies," the hangman probably alluding to the descriptions which had been given at the scene of the execution of the woman Holt last weelc. One of the report ars observed, "Townlev, J perceive, has got oft','' when Calcraft sharply demanded, "Who told you that.-" ]t j* stated so in the I/'i 11 lon papers was the reply. "That's what I complain of in your papers," said the executioner, " you tell such lies. I ought to know something about it, and 1 tell vou he was only reprieved for a fortnight, and 1 had a letter from the Governor of the gaol yesterday. There don't nusrht to be no papers, let people have it bv word of mouth. I do hate lies, and there's no good- in these, if they was, I shouldn't say so much about 'em." Calcraft was then summoned to fulfil his oflice.

j THE "OT/UB" VIEW OF WOMKN. | A xovki. lias just appeared which, otherwiso without I niUi.ii merit, is valuable as expressing exact-iy the flub idea of women. The heroes s.re n!l of the mm-of-the world olnss, as lh»t claw; appears in novels, men who art- tr.ll r.na h'utuUome, with *' melancholy tu-os " and pertecS gloves, who fight duels find seduce low-bnrn girls, itvo rigidly exclusive and '• hospitable a?. Arabs," talk bold rubbish about women lo all the ladies they meet, use pi't names among eitcli other, and unite, in i'jict, as far as the novelist cau manage it, the characteristics of the chevalier, the exquisite, and the blackguard. Tliev are absurd enough, but their eon versa! ion, as invented by " Ouidu," has, or but for its cleverness, would have, a dush of reality. The regi'.lar man of the clubs, who has no broader life, anil who sets up as a " man of the world " because he understands the gossip of a dozen houses in Piccadilly and Pall Mall, has a habit of talking of women just as l)e Vigne, and Colonel Sabretasche, and Lady Fantyre do in this olTensivo book. They and their talk have, 011 young men, a curious and a very disagreeable influence. Their one boast is that (/in/ cannot be hoodwinked, they know too much, no muslin can ever be drawn over til ir eyes. According to them, the sole objects of women, otherwise the most frivolous, evil-tempered and weak of beings, arc money and power. Every mother is a mano'uvrcr, trying always to hook a good parti for her daughter, every maiden a mercenary actress seeking only lo win a proposal from any one who will give her a good position. Any one who holds it different opinion is " green," " raw," or saintly, or belongs to the class which is thus piipnuitly described: —"We young men believe in the innocent demoiselles, who look so iia'irr, and such sweet English rosebuds at morning /ilex, and do not dream those glossy braids cover empty, but world-shrewd little heads, ever plotting how to eclipse dearest Cecilia, or win old Hauton's coronet ; we accept their mammas' imitations, and think how kindly they are given, not knowing that we are only asked because we bring Shako of the Guards with us, who is our bosom chum, and has lifteen thousand a-year, and that, Shako being fairly hooked, we, being younger sons, shall be gently dropped." Even when the game is won, and the victim hooked, and the settlements signed, and the honeymoon over, the victor is not grateful. She is only an angel until she is his wife ! There is a peculiar magic in that gold circlet, badge of servitude for life, which changes the sweetest, gentlest, tenderest betrothed into the stillest of domestic tyrants. Don't you know that, when she's engaged to him, she is so pretty and pleasant with his men friends, pusses over the naughty stories she hears of him from 'well-intentioned' advisers, and pats the new mare that is to be entered for the Chester Cup ? But twelve months after, his chums have the cold shoulder and the worst, wine : and she gives him fifty curtain orations on his disgraceful conduct, while he wonders if the peevish woman who comes down an hour too late for breakfast can by any possibility tie identical with the smiling young lady who poured his colleo out for him with such dainty lingers and pleasant words when lie stayed down at her papa's for (lie shooting. Why should flic not be peevish, for nothing spoils the temper like disillusion, and if the chili man may be trusted, gills have little illusion to lose 'i •• Take my word lor it, my dear," said the T'antyre, " if you lind a woman CNtra simple, sweet, and prudish, you will be no match lor her! Sherry's a very pleasant, light, itiiiocent sort ol'wine, but strychnine's sometimes ghen ill it, you know, for all that ; and if a girl cast, her eyes down more timidly than usual, you may lie pretty sure those eyes have looked oil queerer scenes than you fancy." That in the book is the opinion of an old. i!l-born, titled rip, hut it is also the opinion current among the class which makes " knuwingnoss" its (ir.»t boast, the class to which young men look lor education in the world's ways, and for which articles like one which appeared recently in the Sulurilvn Jlt-rictf on "Wives" are mainly wriltcu. Such men liatuniily abhor marriage, and not seeing their wav to denounce it absolutely—for the world must be peopled, and there is a time when the Jfa\market no longer charms, and, besides, some women have money—they direct their artillery against early marriages. 'flu* pour have no business to nairrv at all. A clergy iniiii, fur r_\:iuip!c, as one of them wrote to the Tiirii-x the other day, has no more right to a wile on £'300 a-year than lo ti tilbury, or a pack of hounds, or any other luxury. The notion that a bachelor clergyman is distrusted by his congregation, and deprived of hull'Jiis inl!uencc, and that it may be his rhity to marry, never entered this worthy's head. As to the rich, they should postpone the fatal moment as long as ever they can. L'suully tlicy only choose girls who, the moment they find them out, they regard with sick loathing, with whom they have not an idea in common, anil whose children, sins Sabrctasc lie,, with the funny ignorance of your regular •'knowing hand," they will, therefore, bate. The truth is that : husbands and wives who do mil love each other j much, usually turn to the children in hope of the return of affection which mosl human beings crave, and a very fair proportion arc happy enough to lind ; , but wc may let that pass. fiven if you are not de- ' ccivcd, says the Colonel, and your wile is just what you hoped, you have lost your pleasant freedom, your 1 right ol doing your will, and plunged head foremost : into an ocean of expense. Ouida's heroes are all as \ rich as the snobbish individual who wrolc last month | on country-houses in the Cumhill says those who in- : vitc their friends ought to be, so he does not make i quite so much of the money question. .But the ex- j pense of a wil'c is usually the grand slaplc of these . diatribes, the cost ol her silks, and her maids, and I her valetudinarian habits, and if a step higher ill | grade, of her inevitable passion for society. Under j sttcli leaching mci: learn lo lieliefc that marriage is ' a "rash step" till they have a position which, ex- | cept among eldest sous, is seldom gained before the i shady side of fori v. !

AVe say nothing of the immorality of all this, for facts, il they be facts, are always moral, and if late marriage,ol* celibacy, and all their consequences arc really necessities, there is nothing to do but sigh over the want ol skill JVowdcnce lias shown in establishing human society on snch an unworkable basis. There can be but one moral law in such matters, for there is a revelation older than Script urn assigning one man to one woman, and that is the law of numbers. The sexes are born equally, and every man, therefore, who accepts the llaymarkel theory simply helps to corrupt women belonging to men with as rightful claims as himself. But it is not of morals we wish to speak, for though they lie at the root of the matter, they cannot now be honestly discussed in print. 'I o prove the truth 011 the right side one mustuse the pen upon points which the world has agreed to discuss with the longue only, and violate a conventional rule we have not the nerve to break. 7t is on the singular ignorance revealed iu this view of life that we wish to animadvert. The business of (he " man of the world" is to perceive, and to argue 011 facts, irrespective of all other considerations, and the men of the world who talk like this, simplv ignore (he facts. They must know them, for they cannot all be children of dirorccs, or brothers and fathers of Lady Van tyre's "prudes," but they get their minds into a groove, and become as conceited anil narrow as the worshippers of the Recant, who, by the wnv, look on human nature from exactly the same point of view. Because a class which thev know partiallv, which is very small, and which is not. lialfso world lias it is good hw to appear,—there are hundreds of women who would rather be caught in a dangerous flirtation than kissing their husbands—is apt to mano'iivre and flirt for gold, and make up for the tedium of loveless marriages by the gratification of vanity, therefore tlu.se statements are true of all who make up tociety. As a matter of l'n-. t, known to all men who have seen something bevond Piccadilly, they are not even half truths. In tin- iierce strug.'Jc to which .English life permanently tends, mothers^no doubt, acquire the habit of wishing that their daughters may " settle well," or even of trying bv liulc arts to make them accessible lo the " best "men," hut as to maiueuvriug, half of them have too little Hnn.w, and a large section of (he other half arc dau-'hter-worsbippers, whose one idia is (o forward" s their wishes, and not their own. ff i s to mamma that young ladies turn for defence against mammon-wor-shippmg papa. As.lo the girls themselves, their permanent tendency is not as a mass lo make love to the eldest sous. but. to use novelist's slang, to tlirow theinselves away on the detrimentals. The true charge against them is not one of mercenary motives but of simple silliness, and a tendency (o imitate men' and be caught bv a pretty face. The majority are neither mercenary and sillv buf quiet, sensible women, eager, perhaps, for change and excitement., but. content, nevertheless, to waif till some man asks them whose maimer, and brain, and position, and face promise them some decent chance of passim: life happily as wives and mothers. Their motives of choice, nine times out ol ten, are precisely the same » ia^"«Y vi,h,he lliAre » c « th^ girls lead better lives, and have not the same wide range. Ihey cannot aek, aud eo frequently miss the

| man their own judgments would have selected. So, I too. with wives. So far from wives being expensive, | the common voice of the world pronounces them the ; bi'at of all possible, financiers. and their cost as more J than made up bv the fortune their economy secures. | 'I fie children are costly t\< thev grow up : but ami moderately candid man who has found a wife | will allow that lie used to wn<ite more monev as a ! bachelor upon things he could not recollect than all j his wife ever co«t him. The instinct of wives, pnvti- ; ctilarlv if the husband has married early, and thev j have fought up the hill together, is to he a little /on j saving—too unabb to believe that prosperity can be ; real. j As to the Colonel's peevish and slatternlv dame— j there we touch the root of the whole mischief. Men who can govern their households with a firm but j/entle hand never have these annoyances to meet ; but that is precisely what these men feel that thev could never do. Their notion of the relation is a j compound of harshness and uxoriousness, as far ns j possible from the reality, and of the friendship which ! is, or should be. at the bottom of household love, they have not formed a conception. Asa rule, where the tie is a tolerably happy one, husband and wife J hardly restrict one another more than any pair of in--1 timate friends would do, and are at least as readv to ' make sacrifices for each other's comfort as any pair of | friends would be. Of course, there are bad wives. : and ill-mated wives, and wives whom Providence I meant for olp maids, but let these gentlemen look j round beyond the small hardened circle in which | thev choose to live, and decide which has the maj ioritv. There is a chance of blunder, of course, parj ticularly as to both the wife and the husband's temI p r 'i*' but there is little courage in resigning from fear | of that chance the only prospect most men have of enjnvinp tho luxury and the support of a true and J perfect friendship with a person whose sex deepens j the feeling into passion, who can never be her husj hand's rival, 'and who throughout life must, even against her will, be interested in his interests. Coventry Patinore's view may uot always be absolutclv true, but it is always truer than that of Colonel Sabretasche.—.London Spectator. i i ! ; I ! !