CALAMO CURRENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8928, 17 December 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

CALAMO CURRENTS.

pi is the season at which the columns of lie daily Press are filled with school reports, and with long arrays of names of boys and ]g who have more or less distinguished themselves in competition for prizes. Of course there is a double purpose served by k display, and possibly, in the present constitution of human sooiety, it is necessary that the conductors of these establishments hoold display their wares just as other traders do who are making " alarming sacrU fioeS) " and otherwise appealing for a .share 0 public support. As things go, therefore, perhaps no one has a right to complain of any means of pushing trade in times of depression ; but one cannot nvoid the question whether such displays are for the benefit of the young minds and bodies that are thus made tha means of rmshine trade.

That the children like it there can be little doiibl and probably no one peruses the list with "deeper interest than the child who lons'3 to see his or her name in print. In so far the feeling is natural, but it may be oaestioned whether the moral effect of all this teen competition for places c.nd prizes is a healthful influence for the minds of children. It is quite true that in the present condition of things competition seems a law of our nature, d a we all know, competition seems almost a necessity of our lives ; and this being so it might be reasoned that competition in early life is the proper preparation for the struggle of after years. But when we consider the gentiments and emotions to which competition is the stimulus we may well doubt whether *;hese are feelings that we should encourage in the expanding minds of chil-

There is not one of those prizes won but his been the subject of keen heartburnings. We may seek to disguise it from ourselves, but there are few of those young competitors who have not been indulging feelings of jealousy and even hatred towards their playmates, —feelings which have been gtimulated by the inquiries of parents and their unconcealed desire that their children should distinguish themselves; and there has not been one of those prizes won but fc« caused envy and bitterness in disappointed minds. Smiles and pleasant faces and congratulations may have greeted the youthful conquerors, but in most frequent cases they jure been only dissimulation covering the canker of hatred within.

Are these influences to which the natural innocence and artlrfssness of childhood should be subjected? And are these the principles or feelings which any parent wouid voluntarily desire to produce in his child? He may blind himself to the fact by saying that children do not mind it; but they do mind it, quite as keenly as their seniors feel their disappointments and defeats in after life, and though it may ba true that this severe course of training in the law of life may harden and fit the youthful mind for fighting its fellows in the struggles to come, it is at least not training them to love learning for its own sake, but on the other hand inspiring those feelings of discontent, of envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableBess wtiich are admittedly unamiable even in the adult, and confirming that reign of competition which appears to be so much the bane of happiness in civilisation. The worry and the struggle and the sorrow of life will come to them, all too soon. Let us spare them in their childhood.

Of all things crying for retrenchment there is nothing more deserving than Hansard. Retrenchment there would be laying the axe to the root; and though there would be those to cry out " Woodman spare that tree, | touch not a single bough," the fall of it should be a cause of rejoicing to every right-minded man in the colony. No one can fail to see that it has been the cause of all the loquacity, and that loquacity has been the cause of all the delay, > and that delay has been and always has been the causa of the most valuable subjects for legislation being neglected or slummed. The perpetually recurring Amendment Acts have been owing to Hansard; the annual "slaughter of the innocents" has been owing to Hansard ; and if Hantavd were out of the way the idlers would absent themselves for tennis or the smoking room, the windbags would collapse, and those who really mean business would get on with business unimpeded. A blow was aimed at this upa3 tree of Parliamentary usefulness in limiting the number of the copies issued. Six, it is said, is to be. the number available for each member now; but though this may curtail the cost of the paper consumed in the printing office, it will in no way affect the baleful effects of Hansard. For there is not a member there who has not a little select coterie, it may be six, it may be one, on whom his eye is fixed when he rises to catch the eye of Mr. Speaker. And as long as his mental eye is fixed on that little set, or that single influential constituent, the flow of his eloquence is directed thither; and so long as one solitary copy of Hansard is available to record the words of Parliamentary eloquence so long will the evil influence of Hansard continue unabated. Talk of cutting down the number of members to seventy-four. If they cut them down to thirty-four it would not have half the retrenching value of cutting down Hansard.

A man of many friends was once afflicted with the gout. It is not usually a malady that awakens much sympathy in surrounding circles; but this man's friends were lympathetic, and in their kindliness they suggested to him the various remedies which in tueir several experiences they bad known to be a care for goat. One urged abstinence from food, another abstinence from wine ; ice baths, hot baths, Turkish baths, bleeding, blistering, cauterisation, cathartics, all had their advocates, each one's remedy being more drastic than the others ; till the patient enumerating them all over pathetically replied, "I'd rather have the gout." And if we read over at this hour all the various remedies for the plague of rabbits, I thick there are very few who would not Gay "we had better have the rabbits." To ■ay nothing of weasels, stoats, ferrets and foxes, there are no less than 388 various methods sent in to the Sydney Government in answer to a reward offered for the destruction of rabbits ; and even that does not contain Mr. Chamberlain's. Just to think of thd mental wear and tear involved in thinking over the habits and the proclivities of this übiquitous creature, to have produced 388 distinct methods of destruction, which 388 persons more or leas sane, each surrounded by an admiring circle of friends, believed to be worth the £20,000 offered for the destruction of rabbits. And when we reflect that everyone of these inventors is probably considered by a large number of friends to be as bright and as clever as we consider our own special rabbit exterminator, the Honorable Mr. Ctiamberlio to be, we cannot but be affected at the thought of the sacrifice of human intellect and ingenuity and invective genius that has been laid, like a holocaust, on the altar of bunny. _____

It is natural of coarse that we should stand by oar own inventor. Indeed it is only patriotic that we should, but I am quite sure that among this circle of 388 inventors, when Mr. Chamberlin appears with his inventions Ho. 389 and 390 respectively, he will create s more lively interest than they all. His latest invention is not of course so startling to look at as his former achievement, but it Ib dependent no less on careful observation of the habits of the interesting little anito»l. It consists it appears of a series of traps of an ingenious kind p'aued at intervals in a continuous and otherwise impassable network fence, and the rabbits going to and fro along the fence denirou* of passing through enter the traps, and there they are, Nothing could possibly be simpler. It is a very well-known fact that when fabbits come to a fence, with a perversity Peculiar to the little animal, they are always seized with » consuming desire 40 go through it, feeling apparently that anything that required protection in this way must be worth protecting. This iB the cardinal principle in Mr. Chatabeilin's invention, and on which his pa(Knit rights are based, namely, the irrepres« iible desire which a rabbit has to Bee the Other aide of a fence. But, it is not to be {"opposed that in submitting this fresh discovery to the world the honourable i®ntletnan intends to ignore the merits of his previous invention ; for it is understood that ■W order to stimulate the rabbits to seek Mcape through ti ( « traps, he intends .to arm # large number of buck rabbits with his Patent arjjuur, and that thai® axe to go to

and fro along the fence as a sort of boundary riders or armed patrols. Any man that beats this joint invention deserves the reward. Pollux.