SNAP SHOTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6201, 1 October 1881, Page 6

SNAP SHOTS.

There is peace. The gates of the great talking shop in "Wellington are closed, members have taken their pay, aud recount to all and sundry how things would have been different if they could have had their way. Here is " Willie Swanson " confidential and expository; here is W. J. Hurst rather larger than ever. .Xow, behold Moss, the exemplar of what might be if New Zealand were in his hands. Sly dog, Jloss, not all to be seen on the surface ! Here, too, is Speight. What more can be said than that Speight is Speight? What oE the Attorney-General! Busy, sententious, and profound. It's a mercy to know that Parliament is up, and members returned to the bosoms of their families. If' some of them were to remain there, it might be better for the country. Really, you know, it's not a Parliament which astounds you with its capacity, it's decidedly a shady Parliament, which might be improved by some new blood. Wonder whether the Legislative Council is to be ennobled by the addition of Hurst. Can't think so. W. J. would , shrink from the idea of people thinking he had been rewarded for " work and labour done." That's the worst of your sensitive people, the roughness of public life perils their finer nature. Another sixpence off the policeman. It's too bad. If anything goes wrong, it's always the gentleman in blue whose loaf is diminished. As regards the guardians of the peace, nothing is certain but uncertainty. Xhey are discontented, as a matter of course. It's not a nice life, with the risks of roughs, and noetui'na! watching, sharp raps for slight slips, seven days' work for every other mau's six—it isn't nice. Why do they filch the police pay ? Because it's supposed they'll stand it, and can't create a hubbub without injuring their prospects. A good deal depends on the police, and they won't work well if badly paid. As that philosophical and astute policeman said, when recounting the services he had rendered to an uuappreeiative country, "Sir, the meu do just as much as they must, and no more. Many of the best of them are clearing out. Now, would you like to be everlastingly docked ?" Bah ! Give 'em back their sixpence, and apply the knife to a bigger loaf. Miss Laura Smith has got into trouble by writing to the newspapers about the labour office connected with the Young Woman's Institute. Well, there were some weak points about the letters, but haw about the correspondence it provoked ? I don't mind betting the policeman's sixpence that the labour office people had a good deal to do with it. Saucy people some of them, don't do their work anything like well, some of them. Miss Smith will prove a public benefactor if she'll only weed out the doubtful domestics and do justice to the decent girls; and there are plenty of them and would be more if tliey were properly treated and taught what they didn't know. There's nothing dreadful in their dressing too much, it's better than negligence, and they are not the only representatives of this pleasant feminine weakness. Don't mind being nagged at, Miss Smith. Small places in the incipient state are never all that can be desired, but pleasant places notwithstanding. People who do something, are active minded and outspoken, always make enemies. It's your colourle:-s people, all things to all men, who alone escape criticism. One Highland gentleman down South stole the bag-pipes of another gentleman from the land of the heather, and an indiscriminating Bench inflicted sequestration of his person for three- months. Here is a man who does a public service, relieves a district from one of the most dreadful instruments of torture that the malice of man ever invented for the affliction of his kind, and this is his reward. They do say that, in skilled hands, the bagpipes are endurable. It must be "over the liills and far away," very far. I remember a Highland police magistrate who determined to cure my heretical sentiments with regard to this instrument. He played to me, and well, I desired to placate him, and suggested a change to a tin whistle or any other barbarian experiment. I only remember one man who looked so awfully dreadful—an Irish friend who was chaffed about Smith O'Brien and the secretion amongst the Wido wM cCormick's cabbages, and who would have annihiliated me if his good nature and my objection had not interposed. A correspondent who writes some things about the new Opera-house which he will excuse me for omitting, offers some suggestions to Mr. Abbott. He proposes a notice thus :—" 1. Gentlemen are requested not to block up the top of the stairs, and prevent egress when, the performance is closed. 2. Munching in the dress circle is strictly prohibited, as an invasion of the exclusive privileges of the pit. 3. Ladies are not prohibited from remembering that' an occasional donation to the attendant in their cloak-room is permitted. 4. Opera-glasses may be used to stare ladies out of countenance ; it's .a-proof of "good-breeding, and stamps a man a gentleman."

Tobx Twinkle, I