CALAMO CURRENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7080, 26 July 1884, Page 1 (Supplement)

CALAMO CURRENTS.

/ggnoe la nothing. like strong language for keeping a controversy alive. In the nearoh for troth, it is true, light is a better thing than beat; but it is not always truth that is sought or found in controversy. Strong language is good, showing that the disntanta are in earnest about their subject, ud it affords more amusement to the general observer than any mere dispassionate en- ■ To the dissuasion of political or theological questions some warmth of temper and language to correspond, are all but essential, as everybody knows ; indeed, there ano record of any lengthened argument on these topics that was ever couduoted without (ometbing approaching very near to a per,t quarrel. 80, too, in municipal affairs. C»n two citizens, even in the serene atmohere of a club, begin to talk about public "jLjs, and not end by calling each other «• wind-bag* " and other equally opprobrious ' ei And at the meetings of the Board it ia thought that business has £ ••merely of a formal character," unless words ai " liar," " vile liar," are flying " n# room. Even* literature itself, * Wei seems to be the most passionless of all 'nbieits of human interest, if we except the hj.ber mathematics, has bat few attractions for the general public, unless personalities can be introduced into the discussion of it. It is in this way only that we can explain the excitement which the recent literary skirmish has aroused. If the friends and the critics oi our local bard had, on each side, confined themselves to a dispassionate discauion of the elegancies of his graceful little poem, nobody would have cared anything about it, and we should all ha»e missed an opportunity of enjoyment which, in these serious days, we could have hardly spared. . •

In the days when the world used to be divided about an iota the contest was always in and none but the select few were any the wiser. "Perperam Aldus"Putidi Bronckius" Schaefer $msu plant caret," etc., was the style of thing, as the schoolboy* of a generation ago, before the royal road to learning was made, will remember. Now that things have become more democratic), and the great unwashed decide evorything, it is only right that the people's English should be the medium bt which literary opponents exchange their mutual courtesies. In the refinements of democratic society the barbarous language and temper of older commentators are clearly out of place. When an accomplished scholar writes a little sonnet, and there are not more than two mistakes in every line, this is how the performance ought nowadays to be criticised: " This little poem does intmite credit to its author. We have read it with pleasure, and hope that it is only the first of a long series of similar good things. Even by itself, however, it is a perfect literary treasure; every wordfis a poetical gem. The modesty of the author is no less remarkable than his undoubted inspiration. It is, in fact, the modesty of true genius. WTiereas he might bare made four mistakes ia every line, ha has contented himiplf with an average of only two. The poem reminds us of that great man, immortalised by Goldsmith, to TTaom we owe the profound saying, " Anarchou ara kai ateleutaion to pan." Indeed, if it had not been for the anachronism which such a suggestion implies, wo should not have hesitated to impute this production to that philosopher." If the critic had addressed the poet in language of this temper, •he foundation of a firm friendship between hern might have been laid; so that, in the vent of some hot-headed scholar rushing in and exposing the pretentiousness of the whole thing, they might have "rounded" on him altogether, and charged him, as Walpole charged Pitt, with being "junior as a man." Then, without answering bis criticism*, they might have challenged him, with perfect impunity, to produce something equally silly himself, and raised a multitude ot other side issues, which though they had nothing to do with the merit or demerit of the poem, might have the effect of making the people in general believe that after all the poet was a tree poet, and his friends true friends—for snreJy the. great mark' of true friendship i> on willingness to tell a man an unpleasant though may be a wholesome truth.

We have long had the privilege of paying • higher rate ot cab fares than any people in any other place in the world. For this boon, it is thought, we are indebted to the fact that the cab interest is to ably represented in the councils of the city authorities. The spirit in which the- cab regulations are drawn up leaves little room for doubt on the subject. "For every hiring there thatt be paid," Ac. It is not " The (are is so-and-so," but, in order that there may be no mistake as to who is master, " There shall be paid." Moreover, " Every hiring s/uiU be a continuous hiring, and Full Fare (this is vory property emphasised by capital letters) shall be paid until the cab return to the place from which it came," or something to that effect If a man takes a cab to Newmarket and leaves it there he must pay for tbe return journey, even though the cabman get anoUier'' fare " two minutes afterwards, we are not ouly allowed the privilege of doing this ; it is thrust upon us, and we have so alternative but to do the generous thing. Tbe paternal despotism of the City Council is a thing to marvel at and be thankful for.

like all othe; privileges, the cab privilege is doomed. Whether it is land or cabs, it is all the same thing ; monopolies and rings most all sooner or later be broken up. When the trams run, if ever enough horse-power can be got to move them, a man will be able to drive half a mile, for something less than half-s-crown. And what will the cabmen do then ? Many, no doubt, will return to the more lucrative, if less honourable, pro fession to which they were brought up. (It may safely be laid in-passing, that nobody was ever expressly educated and brought np for a cabman.) Only a portion of them, however, will have occasion to leave tbe ranks. -Trams or no trams, cabs will always be wanted. All that a long-suffering people ask is, that fores may be brought down to something like a reasonable scale. The effect of the new system will be to diminiih the number of privately owoe4 cabs. The cabmen will become drivers, and not owners of their cabs, and they can safely be left to arrange for themselves with their employers the sum that (hall "be paid for every hiring of a hackney carriage."

The epidemic of cholera with which Europe is again threatened teems, as on former occasions, and as might be expected, to be spreading chiefly along the main line* of human intercourse and travel. The moat terrible feature! of the disease are the suddenness with which it determines—death often following in less than a couple of hours from the time of seizure—and the small proportion of those who survive the attack. It u taid that more than half the cases prove fatal. The influence of fear aa a predisposing' cause has been greatly exaggerated, and is oow generally discredited..

There is a story, however, that an experiment was once tried upon the vile bodies of two condemned criminals in Paris. Cholera ragiog at the time. One criminal was put into a bed from which, he was informed, the body of a man who had died of cholera hsd juat been removed. As a matter of fact, |t was a bed and bedding that had never wra used. The criminal, however, it is ■aid, died daring the night, with all the •ypiptoms of virulent cholera. The other criminal was pot into a bed from which a patient had actually been recently removed, but be was not informed of that {apt. Be arose next morning none the worse, and was guillotined in dne coarse. Those who believe story, evidently believe also that the *<*1 home of cholera is not India, but some.where in the diseased imagination of the exceedingly timid.

It is as we feared. Tawhiao has not made »vere profound impression on the English t j badly. ' He entered uonaon as any ordinary man might enter it, *?»hout any flourish of trumpets or other «*siin»tance of royalty. He entered it, wo, from Fenchuroh-street. Now, the uoo-tuiatera will do much and go a long ■V search of their pray, .but.they will , e , themselves or' their: carriages l™*°gh the two miles of slum* by whioh *®™ureh is distant to the eastward from , House. London, taoreover, is Jjjaoe in which merit—onlesa it be of excepthat of some, recent visitors s®®the«e is bat slowly recognised. dt?lLrs. 0 *1°? k® thought great in that v most at least have toe appearance of

greatnesa about tbcm. Ilfaut tt'faxrt valoir If Tawhiao h»d engaged a special train, and had a band of muaio to meet him at the station, or don* eomathing outri to ihook the delicaoy of the British nation, ha might perhapa have succeeded. Bot to neglect, theseJprecaations was to make failure certain; and Tawhiao, itmust be confessed, his# so far been "a hopeless failure. He is now simply a man of oolour, with a grievance and a tatooed face, in a city where men of ooloor attract little attention (except by way of ridicule among the paper-boys and match-seller*), and unredressed grievances are as plentifnl as blackberries. ft is satisfactory, however, to learn that the King and his party "think London a very fine city." It may be interesting to some at this end of the world to receive an acoonnt of their experiences, which have been omitted from the otherwise admirable reports that have already appeared in the newspapers.

One of the party writes to a frieod in Auckland to say that, after an uneventful voyage—in which, however, the monarch nearly lost his life by drinking a bottle of lotion that was " for outward application only," tubbing bis sprained ankle meanwhile with a bottle of tonio mixtnro—the Royal party landed at the Docks on Whit Monday. They thus had an opportunity of seeing how the English amuse themselves on a.bank holiday. The most popular form of excitement, as far as they saw, was to get very drank very early, fight somebody, and spend the rest of the day in the lock-np. Tawhiao, who had expected that Mr. Gladstone and the leader of the Opposition, with Lord Derby and Sir Francis Bell, would be down to meet him, concluded that' tbey too had been having a bank holiday, and had been "run in" before they reached the Docks, He therefore left the ship and went els' alone to look for lodgings. The rest of the party speedily lost themselves, but, being well shepherded by some people of quality who live down that way, they all turned up again within three or four days at the houso which Tawhiao bad taken in Bloomsbury. The purlieus of Ruasell Square, it is well known, are not more than three miles from Hyde Park, and therefore it is, naturally enough, one of the- most fashionable quarters in London. After a vain attempt to present their letters of introduction to Mr. Gorst—that gentleman having told his servant to say he was out of town if any black-fellows called, and might not be back for some days—and being pestered to death by reporters, photographers, , and " bores " of other kinds, Tawhiao and. his friends determined to see London for themselves. Having purchased each a tall hat, a meerschaum pipe, and a pair of patent leather boots, they sallied forth incognito, and took tickets by the " underground" for the Aquarium. After travelling several timos round the metropolis, and being nearly suffocated by the smoke, sulphur, and general naatiness of the atmosphere, a gentleman, who turnod out to be a Mr. Barton, got into the same carriage with them, and being bound on the same errand, took them to the place they were looking for. Tawhiao was much impressed, not only by the wondors of the place, but by tho beauty and fine fresh colour of the ladies whom he met there. They were all members, they told him, of noble families. Thoir freeand affable maimers greatly pleased and delighted our friends. To everyone who addressed him Tawhiao showed the photograph of his wife, which he had with him in his breast pocket, nearest his heart, and though ho offered many of them similar positions of honour if they would come out to his own country, his offer was t-ot acoepted. At midnight the gas was turned off and the hall cleared, to the great disappointment of tho strangers, who had not even looked at the treaaures and curiosities of natural biatory, for which the Aquarium is so justly famous.

The Otago people have founded, cr are thinking of founding, an Early History Society, for the purpose of obtaining and preserving authentic records of the old days when the province was first settled. No doubt there is much in the early history of Otago that would make very good reading if it were written in a book ; and no there is too in that of any one of the provinces ; and it is a thousand pities that Bome society or individnalydoes not take in' hand to write the history of the Auokland province. There are many books that profess to be written about New Zealand, ~ but' not one that' tells us .much about the making of the colony— or rather, of the provinces ; for tho provinces have led independent lives, and have separate histories, so that each one ought properly to have a book to itself. It would not be altogether easy to write such a book, that would give unmixed satisfaction to all its readers; for there are many scenes, especially at the opening of the comedy of colonial history, over which the 'actors in them would be glad if the curtain could now be allowed to fall. But at the same timethere are many episodes in that history which it would hurt nobody's feelings to publish and give everybody satisfaction to read.

That there is no lack of materials for such a work we all know. For who that has over travailed by steamer or coach, or dined'with a friend, or spect a quiet evening in the smoking room of his club, has sot mot the early settler, or the successful storekeeper, or, better still, that generous ns'er-do-weel the digger, and hia companion pioneers of fortune ; or, it may be, some officer of the Crown (appointed in. the palmy days, before merit was the sole pastport to colonial sueccss, as it now is, if we are to believe all that young Mr. Laishley tells as), and heard from bim many a good story of the drolleries by which domestic, social, and political life were all characterised in the young community ? There is the old settler who tells of his voyage oat, not in the luxury of a direct steamer, but in some lumbering merchantman ; of his journey through the bush ; of his difficulty in finding the place he had bought ; how he found it at last and squatted there and cleared the place, and pushed on in the face of many difficulties and without much help ; how he doctored the Maoris, using simple and homely remedies, which, though innocent in appearanoe, were sometimes startling in their effects, and " astonished the natives how they turned him out and burnt his house down, in tho days when the war was begoniqg; and then, how he started again, and " got on," and could have got on much better if some scoundrel of a statesman had not made him disgorge and set a limit to his possessions, in consequence of which our friend has since taken the otber aide n colonial politics. Or the Crown officer is "up," as they say in the Honse, and having once begun —for there is no stopping bim—he pours out a never* ending stream, in which history and romance seem curiously blended, or stories and jokes about the art of government, empirically treated, and the adminiatration of justice in out-of the-way_ places, where there was no resident magistrate, and some makeshift justice of the prqce had to be entrusted with' the work, and justified his commission by the readiness and ability with which he tried all sorts of cates, theft and drunkenness, and rape and arson ; always inflicting a fine, which be divided between the Crown and the injured party, except in anch cases as where the fine was a case of bottled porter or other " perishable " goods, which were, of course, paid into Court and consumed on the premises. Or the anecdotes are personal reflections of the political men of the older generation;- such as—not to mention local names—Fitzgerald or Wakefield, or Richmond or Featherston the downright, and Bell tho unotuona (the Floorer and Fawner of New Zealand, a* Mr. Mantell called them, when they went home together to negotiate a loan), and SewelL and a host of others—all famous men, and furnished with ability, who were the glory of their times, as an apocryphal writer might say. ' Or, again, the speaker is one who in his time has played many parts, including that of the digger; and hia story is as that of the divine son of Laertes, in the Court of Alciooas, and includes lotos-eating and windbags, and men turned into swine ; though it tells also of adventure, and high spirit unbroken by privation and disappointed hopes, and rare generosity and loyal friendship, and tenderness of heart in rough men—; so that tears and nnquenohable laughter by turns fight for the mastery in the hearts of his hearers, and they wish that for them also Time would run back and fetch the Ago (of Gold. Who has not seen these men and heard these' things, and wished they might be put in a book for his own amusement in old age, when the last of the chroniclers shall have gone over to the majority, and for that of his children in those dreary daya that are coming upon us; when universal school boards, and competitive examinations, and success by merit, and the reign of dulness and pretentious mediocrity shall have taken all excitement out of and .it shall be merry in New Zealand no more T Ikdkx. -