LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7656, 5 June 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

Let me have audience for a word or two. —Hh ike/peart. Balaam's ass has been eclipsed by an Auckland horse, as I learn from the following interesting editorial comment in an evening paper : — "One of the children was kicked over by the horse and injured, being taken up bleeding, and the brute, instead of apologising and expressing regret, was abusive. As the caae is coming before the Police Court, and there are half a doz-n of witnesses summoned, we shall see whether the law is: able to cope with such a ruffian." It is interesting to the philosophic mind to enter into conversation with those who are out of work, and who are, to speak generally, " down on their luck." Unfortunately we have too many of these at present. I cunnot aver that we have in this community much of actual want. That cannot be with plenty of fertile land lying all about us unoccupied, and with butchers' meat ticketed in the shop at 2d and lid per lb. But there are a number **bf men about who cannot get the work they like at the wages they like, and these men are undoubtedly a drag on the community, I find they are discussing the relative advantages of being off to Kimberley or of making an endeavour to settle on the land in this country. Here is indeed a subject for local gossip at the street corners. My advice is to try settlement on the land. However good Kimberley may be as a goldiield, the prizes will bo few and far between compared with the blanks. The climate is burely endurable, and, with the condition of hard physical labour in it, is scarcely fit for a white man. Anyone going there runs considerable risk of never leaving it again.

On the other hand, look at what is to attract a man to settlement on the land in the North of .New Zealand. Great wealth may be beyond his grasp, but with patience and labour independence is a certainty ; and that labour is of the kind which is a blessing to man. It is pursued in fresh air, with no unwholesome influences around, but with the healthful breeze and the cheerful sunlight, and all the genial influences of our mont salubrious climate contributing to his happiness. Here the settler may muke a " home," which he never could do at Kimberley, with a cheerful and buxom wife and merry children around him. Mr. Firth's list is full for the present —and I am told that if he had had cows he would have allotted land to twice as many as he has now taken—but there is the Northern scheme, with all its advantages. Land for settlement can be had now on better terms than for many years past, and far mora easily than will be possible in a few years hence. It will be far better for you, my friends, to become settlers than to brave the dangers of Kimberley; it will be far better for you to become settlers than to hang about the wharf looking for chance jobs.

Mr. J. C. Firth ia a patriot and philanthropist, and has already bten brought face to face with the liquor difficulty aa respects Matamata. A good many people were not a little curious to know how he would deal with the problem, and now we have it. He takes high ground, but not the highebt. He says : —" It is my intention, as long as I have the power, to prevent the establishment of any hotel or publichouse at the proposed settlement, or on any portion of my Matamata estates," but he adds, "except in the immediate neighbourhood—say, within a quarter of a mile of the Hot Springs," If Mr. Firth had the lofty temperance principles of a Newman or a Way mouth, he would mako a stand against a publichouse anywhere, and would only permit, even at the Hot Springs, a temperance boardinghouse. Not being possessed of these principles, he is to have one erected near the Hot Springs, because, without that, a great many tourists —those who are accustomed to take liquors, and who may consider it necessary for their healthwould not patronise the Matamata sanatorium. Bat I should like to see the restriction at the proposed settlement, which

may soon become a populous place, arise, not from one autocratic will, bat from tha consent of the majority of the residents.

The proceedings at the meeting the other night, when a presentation was made to Mr. .Noble, were no doubt pleasing to all parties, although to outsiders, who are not acquainted with the gossip of temperance and religious circles, there was something obscure in the references to tho Rev. Mr. Spurgeon taking to himself a "-Rose." But I was rather discouraged on coming to one portion of Mr. Noble's speech. Religious and temperance lecturers are in the habit of telling us that the solo cause of poverty is drunkenness, and that but for the prevalence of that vice we should all be contented and well oil'. But Mr. Noble holds up as a "frightful example" the career of a temperance lecturer, thus :— " Mr. Noble spoke at some length with respect to what ha termed a popular fallacy—the idea that evangelism was a money-making business. Probably, if they omitted Mr. Uough, there was no single instance of a temperance lecturer being a wealthy man, while numbers of those who had given their lives in the work had died in actual want." fie could have said nothing more dreadful about the drunkard's fate. But if this statement bo true, aud I do not presume to doubt it, what a fearful accusation it is against the common humanity and Christian feeling of the tcmperance people. Henceforward, instead of bestowing their charity and Christian kindness on the drunkard, they had better leave him to the tender mercies of the publican, and see to it that the men who devote thomselvcs to the great cause of temperance, do not "die in actual want." Probably the unfortunate wretches who met that melancholy fate did not, as Mr. Noblo does, receive £-5 a week and all expenses."

When Mr. Noble addressed the prisoners at Mount Eden Gaol last week, he expressed his belief to them, it is said, "that there were a good many people down town who ought to be keeping them company." He put it this way in the form of an anecdote :— " Donald had been missed from his accustomed place*'iu the kirk, and a noighbour inquired the reason why. A bystander said, 'He was caught stealing a coo, and has been put in gaol.' ' Hoot, 111011,' was tho reply of the other sagacious Scot,' why did ho no' buy the coo, and no' pat/ for it!' So," said Mr. Noblo, "I am at rani there arc some people in Auckland who have ' bought the coo and no' paid for it,' and they should bo at Mount Eden." Tho hard labour men had a quiet snicker at tho slap at the weaknesses of their more fortunate companions in crime.

Amongst the things which may happen to a Justice of the Peace in New Zealand, we have a singular thing which occurred at the Bryce banquet at W'auganui. One of the great unpaid magistracy found himself seated at the banqueting table next to a man who on'y a few weeks before he had "sent up" for forty-eight hours for using obscene language. This "is one of the glories ol a new and freo country like New Zealand !

There has been a good deal of gossip over that item in the cargo ot the mail steamer Alameda, "six cases of coffins for Sydney." Is this a sample lot, to show the Australian public how the Yankees get up "caskets" tor their " cadavers," or is it a speculative consignment, intended for Auckland, as the outcome of the Waikotniti Cemetery controversy, and misdirected to Sydney. Talking of cemetery matters, a nice point came up for decision the other day, by the trustees of the Symonds-stre ■ Cemetery. A man had married, and had no children by the first wife, who was buried there. One of the children by his second wifo died lately, and he was wiehful to bury it in the family plot beside his first wife. It was decided that the child was not a " relative " of the tirst wife, permission for burial was refused, and the ashes of the infant now rest at Waikomiti. This seems like drawing the line too fine.

There is a gocd deal of dissatisfaction among parents who have children at the public schools, over the continual chopping and changing of school books, which, however protnable a game to teachers and booksellers, who appear to run in couples in this business, is a great anil uucal.ed-for drain upon the pockets of working men. ake only one solitary instance. Instead of a second Royal Keadtsr, for children of from six to eight, there is now thu Globe Reader —one of the "improvements!" A large portion of the book is taken up with stories about the cuckoo, the nightingale, robin redbreasts, foxes, &c., of which the children ate nothing and know less. Notwithstanding, the youngsters are exhorted to follow the song of the nightingale with care. It begins something like this : —

Wheet, wheet, k-u-u-r-r-r. After that it goes on :— Sweet, sweet, iwect, sweet ; Jus, ju,-, jug. iug ; Swot, swot, swot, swotty. " SVotty," foisooth; .titer that who would be a nightingale? Then there is a poetic effusion on Spring, with the cheerful and intelligent refrain, " Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo !" As if there were not enough of superstition in the world, here is a specimen of the "fairy tales" instilled into childish minds " A .good woman had her child taken away by the fairies, and a changeling deposited instead. A neighbour gave the bereft mother a recipe in her trouble, namely, to till two eggshells with water, and place them on tho lire to boil. When the changeling saw the water boiling in the eggshells, he laughed, The moment he laughed, the fairies brought back the child, and carried away the changeling." I'roso fails to do junticc to the fairies, so the Globe reader gets back to poetry again : — Up tha airy mountain, Down the ru»l>y glon, Wo daren't < a limiting, For fear of little man ; Wco folk, good folk, Trooping nil together' Groen jacket, roil cap. And wLlte owl's leather !

They stole little I (always Bridget!) For seven ye irs lull# ; When she came down again, Her friondn were alt gono. Could anything be more calculated to make a young child timorous and siuperstitious '! Next comes a tale of it young woman who, aided by a dwarf, spiud straw into gold, and ultimately becomes a queen, promising if she becomes one she will g re him her first child, Lime rolls on, and the dwarf claims his "pound of flesh." He relents no far that if the queen finds his name out in three days she can keep her child. A grand tuzzlo, lasting three days, takes place over the conundrum, and at last a messenger, through the medium of a funny little man, who hopped on one leg, obtained a solution of the riddle. It was—Kuinpelstilzchen. " A witch has told you that !" shrieked the dwarf, and stamped so furiously with his right foot that it sunk into the earth up to the hip ; then he seized bin left foot with both hands, with such violence, that he tore himself right in two." The tale of "The Three Sluggards" records that a king died, and ere dying, was desirous of making his laziest child king. They each gave hpecimens of individual laziness, but the third son won, for, said he," I am so lazy, that if I were going to be hanged, with the rope round my neck, and somebody were to put a sharp knife into my hands to cut it, I had rather be hanged than raise my hand to do it." i he moral of tho tale, if it has any, is that laziness wins the prize, and that the laziest man is the fittest to rule the State. " Will May" is a love idyll, which, notwithstanding the precocity of colonial boys and girls, can bo postponed a stage beyond the class struggling over tho Globe Header. The book fitly concludes with directions how to make "a snow man," which will be lost upon the Auckland boys and girls. Surely it is not too much to expect, when the Government is spending half a million sterling per annum over education, they might take tho trouble to purchase or prepare school bocks which will teach the children everything of interest about the land they live in, and less about Old World associations, fairy tales, and doggerel nonsense, into which—Heaven save the mark ! —even our old friend, " Mrs. Slipper Slopper," is dragged by the head and shoulders.

A well-known figure in the morning procescession of horsemen towuwurds, is that of one of our learned Professors, who has neither a bad seat nor a screw for a steed ; but good as his nag is, its beauty has been somewhat marred by the reprehensible custom of branding upon conspicuous parts of the equine anatomy. One morning this week, after acknowledging the usual affable nod, my eyes fell upon the horse, and there full and fair upon his hindquarters was the ugly brand, and they nearly started out of my head : I recognised the too, oh ! too, familiar letters •' C, I>,"

When 1 came to myself, I was fain to ask the meaning of the horse being thus conspicuous. Had he been thu§ branded as an advertising medium ? Was it a mere coincidence ? or had the hostility to the measure in question so permeated the entire family that it had even reached the horse, who had thus " broken out" in his righteous indignation ? If this were so, after all one need not now be very much astonished ; for after ladies dabbling in the unsavoury puddle, one need not bo astonished at the " brute beasts" having a dip.

Our Blue Ribbon friends are fond of asserting that the brute creation, in their abstention from alcohol, are a pattern to weak humanity (such abstention, by the way, being a pure figment, for I have known horses, dogs, and other animals, as well as even birds, very fond of itone poor old bird of my acquaintance was drowned whilst " the worse for liquor" in the very vat he had been drinking from, whilst his dissolute brother lay temporarily dead (drunk) outside tho vessel), However, lot this pass; for, perhaps, just as the brutes show us- their aversion to " make beasts of themselves," the Professor's charger may have adopted this means of showing his interest in the agitation.

Over the evening pipe I fall a-dozing, and I seemed to be back again amongst the problems of my youth "Lot Ci> be a certain line and xv any other line, and " — here was a jumble for awhile, until the voice seemed to be saying, "Any other line than CD, yes, indeed! that is too broad to be proper: a right line should be without breadth and without thickness, and that is altogether too broad and too " muddi/." Any other lino than that, ladies ! Verb, sap.

Talking of anatomy reminds me of a funny thing that has come to my ears. We have a lecturer on anatomy in our midst, and his class, I am told, embraces both sexes. On mentioning this to one of the male students, in a tone of surprise he said, " It's all right; ho leaves out anything improper?" But is it "all right" thus to " Bowdlerise " medical studies ? I rather imagine that the students will find their work seriously incomplete if this is to be tho case ; and of course to treat tho subject in its entirety with females present is out of tho question. Why, then, is it done ? Is it one more direction in which our females, young and old, are beginning not only to clamour for, but to seize hold of, " women's rights " (nasty enough some of them seem to be, and such as men would gladly leave alone) ; or is it that, " granted a lecturer, an adequate number of students must be found?" " Honestly, Sammy, if thou canst; but anyhow get —."

A very droll medical discovery has been made during tho past wcok, which certainly should not go unnoticed. The writer of a letter to a contemporary has & friend in the Old Men's Refuge who is suffering from " neuralgia, which is developing into cancer." After this I shall no longer cast any doubt upon the statements oi Evolutionists, no matter how wild or far-fetched thoy may seem—no, not if I know them to be impossible.

Dust! poor human dust! Yes! it's all very well to be reminded of tho unpleasant fact of that return now and then, on suitable occasions ; but we don't want dust thrust under our noses all day and every day. Ss-rionsly, it ■ does seem a monstrous thing that we can't walk down our business streets in the morning without being smothered with the dust swept out of the shop*. Is this permitted ? If it be not, it should be stopped ; if there be no law to stop the practice, one should be made. Fancy having got one's self up to the very nines—naity hat, shiny boots, the perfection of collar and scarf, and raiment guiltless of speck or spot; and to have this beautiful picture irretrievably marred in a moment by the shop sweeper's broom. I say nothing of discomfort to mouth, nose, and eyes, or of the untidyness produced in the street, but for one's dandified riy-out to be thus besmirched—shade ®f Beau Brummcl I it must no longer be !

"In the name of the Prophet, pigs ! " This seems the latest development in the way of excitement. One week our J.P. has to settle tho knotty question as to whether "the highest bid" can be attained by increasing the amount of each succeeding offer ; and the next he has to determine whether passing young swine on constitutes " pig keeping." It strikes me that if a man should " keep " one of my young porkers, 1 should pass him on to Mount Eden, whither, by the way, it is suggested that the porcine babies should be relegated for the night. Capital suggestion ? Those buildings are just about the thing for the purpose, and so is tho conveyance. Fetch out the " Black Maria," and transport the youngsters tenderly to the glades of that suburban Paradise,

So David Goldie, the Archpriest of the Orange and Blue Ribbons, will have none of your loyal and loving expressions to our beloved Queen on the jubilee of her accession. This is what all the clamour and self-lauda-tion is worth, is it, David ? You can shout with the beat, and mako a3 loud professions; but when it comes to spending twenty-eight solid poun's, you are " not in." For shame ! And the Queen doesn't know that there is such a place as Auckland, doesn't she? Then it's about time she did ; and more than that, that there is not a corner of her dominions where hearts beat warmer, than in the premier city of the Antipodos. Mekcotio,