SNYDER'S SENTIMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume X, Issue 2906, 22 May 1873, Page 6 (Supplement)

SNYDER'S SENTIMENTS.

[FBOSI THE " WEEKLY HEBALD."] ON THE BHOAD-AEHOW BUSINESS, —ON CBUEXjTX j TO INSECTS, — ON THE MABKET-HOUSE. Respecting the subject of Government officialdom, I should just like to relate a little incident in connection with one of the created offices. Julius told me about it himself. There was a gentleman who required his demands to be satisfied, so he was appointed to put the " broad-arrow" upon everything which was owned by the Colonial Government. At it he went broad-arrowing everything that could be said to be Colonial Government property. Steel pens, penholders, penknives, wheelbarrows, shovels, pen-wipers water curalTes, buckets, clocks, bibles, constable's stares, panniUins, :ind things on the earth, under the earth, and in the waters beneath. There was nothing that did not have the on it. In accomplishi-Jg this useful work there was a great amount of Government property damaged, and a few wrong articles impressed with the cabalistic mark. One of the newspaper reporters who had left his note-book on the Supreme Court table on the one evening found it the next morning with nearly every page ptamped with the broad-arrow, making it felony, without benefit of clergy, if he dared to claim it. Twelve jurymen who had been locked up during the night to consider their verdict had the blankets they slept on broad-arrowed all over, these belonging to the landlord of a neighbouring hotel. There was a " pocket-pistol" of one juryman, a sandwieh-boi of another, the poncil-case of another indelibly branded. This official at last came to be affected with I broad-arrow on the brain, Belioving honestly that be was Government property, lie did the broad-arrow business on every limb of his body. He desired to do the same by his wife and family. He wanted to do it to his serving maid, but she sternly rofused compliance. At last his imagination took a wider flight. He eont a requisition into the Government for the necessary implements to stamp some hundreds of thousands of railway sleepers with large broad-arrows. The Government said it was not necessary. The broad-arrowist insisted that it was quite necessary ; in fact the safety of the Government hinged upon its being done. The Government said if Buch wore the case, he had better do it. Then the official said ho must have clerical assistance, and he had it. Twelve staunch supporters were appointed clerical assistants, and the stamping is going on vigorously while I am writing these particulars. I have, in the course of a somewhat long and miscellaneous reading, read the " Curiosities of Literature," the Curiosities of various Museums and Repositories, the Curiosities of art, to say nothing of the " Curiosity Shop," by Dickens, the immortal. Now, if any one ever proposes to write the Curiosities of Human Nature, I have something here which may add to his ' stock of information. Down Parnell wa,y resides an intimate friend, who is a humanitarian as well as a man of science. He has been instrumental on several occasions in drawing the attention of the police to cases of cruelty to animals, and by his means men have been fined for brutality to horses and cows and other animals. Indeed I never in my life knew a man with a more tender or susceptible heart. And it is this that has caused me to think and wonder and ponder and reflect until I had nearly lost my appetite; and those who, knowing me, know me best, will know that this is not likely to happen unless under the most adverse circumstances. Well, this humanitarian has of late months been devoting his attention to miscroseopical observations on the insect world. He insisted the other night upon me viewing under a highly magnifying lens a flea which was dying of inanition, a scientific definition for starving to death. My friend was anxious to ascertain the effect of want of nourishment upon the blood tissues of an insect. 3!Tor the purpose he had prooured a flea (where ? I am not certain, only it was not from me). This flea he had placed between two pieces of concave glass. Here he kept it, and night after night he had viewed it through a miscroscope, with the most intense interest until it died. It was ten days dying, and he told me the view of the collapsing blood tissues was semethmg beautiful to behold. Looking him sternly in the face I told him in plainest terms that

le was neither more no less than a monster of jrutality. My friend thought I had suddenly jeen struck with insanity. "You," I said, iffecting at the same time to be indiguant— * You stop moil in the street and chide them "or undue severity to their horses; you get ,hem pulled to the Police Court ; you get ,hem fined. You think yourself a most mmane, tender-hearted man, and yet you submit a flea to be starved to death little by little under your missroscope, and all to enable you to observe how its blood tissues are iffected. Don't you think that flea has felt is much agony, and even more, as ever did a horse under the brutal treatment of its master ?" " Well," he said, " since you put in that light, I must confess you are not far wrong ; but then you see it was all in the cause of science." I merely said, " Science be blowed." This roußed my friend's ire, and he argued his right in the cause of science over two bottles of Gruiuness' stout. I don't want to throw a damper on the new market building, but I think people have got an erroneous impression as to the good it is likely to do. They are under some sort of an idea that the farmers, market-gardeners, and growers of produce,will bring their productions to the market stalls, and there, in their own persons,offer them to the public forsale atgreatly reduced prices to those demanded by ordinary shopkeepers. Now, Xdo not think that anything of the kind is likely to happen. A man who grows vegetables may know nothing about selling them. Besides, if a man is engaged on his garden, or his farm, or his orchard, or in his dairy, he cannot at the same time turn shopkeeper. It may be Baid that he will bring bis produce iuto town one morning ,in the week, will sell out during the day, and go back with an empty cart and a pocket full of money in the evening. Will he? Well, I don't think he will. People as a rule like to make their purchases of a night. Now, farmers and gardeners and dairymen cannot afford to wait for tiiem to do this. When late afternoon comes they will have to sell what remains unsold—which will be nearly all they brought in with them—at a great sacrifice. Tlio idea won't wash. Men cannot be producers and tradesmen at the same time. The town shopkeepers will take a few stalls, and the country settlers will find themselves overmatched on the first trial. A marketplace is very convenient for small, readymoney consumers of a Saturday night between eight and ten o'clock. This in about all. I never knew it any different —any better or any worse —in any town or city I have dwelt in and dealt in in this or the other colonies.