LOCAL GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9220, 24 November 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP.

" Lot me have audience for a word or two." —Shaktjyere. Mr. John* Henry Upton has not been unknown to his fellow-citizens as a man and a brother, but till now he has not attained a national celebrity. He, however, can now say with Byron, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous." He was asked by the Venerable Archdeacon of the diocese to add a few words to the Rev. Mr. Tebbs' paper on " The Christian Observance of the Lord's Day," and, not foreseeing the consequences, he agreed. The Ven. Archdoacon did not foresee the consequences either. Mr. Upton laid down some splendid principles for the observance of Sunday, and then concluded by saying that a good way of spending the Sunday afternoon, aftei having attended service, was to "have dinner, then smoke your pipe, lie flat on your back on the sofa, and go to sleep." And thereupon arises one of the most dreadful howls wo have ever had in Auckland. On the Monday morning Mr. Upton had his Herald handed to him in bed, and thereupon he became Byronic, as above.

I have been trying, and eventually I have succeeded, in finding the reason of the outcry, but at first I was puzzled. 1 have always thought that whatever a man did on a Sunday, no should abstain from any pursuit or pleasure wiiich involved the labour of others. On this ground Mr. Upton was unexceptional. Even taking your dinner does not necessarily involve labour to others, because you can have cold mutton, and it is better. in this warm climate, not to gorge on hot meat. And certainly the next step, smoking your pipe, does not involve the labour of others. Neither does lying on your back, nor sleeping. Smoking is said to be deleterious, but, like drinking toddy, it is nownero spoken against in Scripture. As for sleeping, a man is seldom better employed than when asleep. I might, quote the Bible anywhere, and find that it is one of the precious blessings accorded to the good : " Yea, thou shalt ho down, and thy sleep shall be sweet." Does not Sanciio Panza say " Blessings 011 the man that, invented sleep !" bhakspere, also, is full of it. He says :

Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sere labour's bath, 15 ilm of Hurt minds, greiu Nature's second course, Chief uourishor in life's feast.

No doubt everybody does not care to sleep on a Sunday afternoon. Young folk who go early to bed, and who don't work hard during the week, don't want a snooze. And those other people who do not carp about sleeping, they can be teaching Sundayschool. But to sleep on a Sunday afternoon does not involve the labour of others, which cannot be said of reading a book at the Free Library, or of taking a trip down the harbour. I hope, therefore, that Mr. Upton will not find to-morrow his conscience pricking him to such an extent thai he cannot have his forty winks. Let him and all others who feel so disposed, lie down on their backs (if that is their favourite posture) after having had their after dinner pipe (if they smoke), and sleep the sleep of the just, getting up with a mind happy and at peace with all around them, in time to have a stroll before tea.

Bub still, why the outcry ' Going up Queen-street, I met a friend who is a pillar of one of the churches, who is eminent in all good and religious works, and he said, It was very wrong in Mr. Upton to use the words he did—very wrong, and to speak as he did at the Synod, too, and all those present merely to laugh at what he said ! And him the chairman of the Education Board too, who ought to be looked up to by all the teachers and pupils as an example of how to live And then mv friend added, in a burst of confidence, " Hut upon mv word, it pretty well describes my fashion of spending the Sunday afternoon. Igo to church regularly; I don't need to tell you that; I have my pipe after dinner, and then I sit down in an easy chair to read a religious book My intention is, I say, to read that religious book. Out invariably i:i about five minutes I am fast asleep." I was revolving all this in my mind in my progress up the street, when I met another friend, and he was also inclined to be confidential. "The mischief that Upton lias done," said lie, "is that he lias let out how so many of us spend our Sunday afternoons.""

A third friend had another version. " Upton be bothered !" he said ; " what on earcn makes him go to sleep on a tine Sunday afternoon, when he might be enjoying himself in his garden or taking a quiet strollTo sleep on Sunday afternoon is a downright waste of good opportunities of enjoyment. I don't deny that I sleep on a Sunday ; but, then, I take my snooze in chureh, and so am fresh for anything in the afternoon. I wonder whether the clergy prefer my plan or Mr. Upton's."

Still, Mr. Upton, by his utterances on Sabbath observance, has made a very fair contribution to the category of what Punch has described as "Things Better Left Unsaid." lie has had a bad time of it during the week, and next Sunday is scarcely likely to get on his back on the sofa, and smoke "tlic calumny of peace." We do not know what-Mr. Upton's " lawn-tennis-and-cricket Sunday " would land us in ; but the Hkkald has given a good idea of what is the outcome of the "jovial" German Sunday of my friend Brown, and the more I look at it the less I like it, it a Sauerkraut's idea of a millennium consists in having half the factories and three-fourths of the operaLives at work on Sunday. One newspaper correspondent quotes an Anglican bishop as going in on the Sunday for "a quiet game of billiards," but says he shall be nameless. I should think so ; that bishop has 110 desire to be "spotted" by the cloth. Mr. Upton, by this controversy, has 'lone one good service ; he has enriched the English language by adding another term to its varied vocabulary. Two friends were discussing in Queen-street the other day the question of how they spent the Sunday. Said the one to the other, " Do you Uploiu on Sunday The other tumbled to it.

The Property Tax Department cuts it fine. The other day an Auckland firm in the eleventh hour paid their property tax, which runs into a large sum. In the hurry of the moment of drawing out the cheque they omitted the odd IDs (id. Next morning they received a note requesting payment of the 10s 6d, with inlcri'M added, Is lid, as balance of their property tax. They are men of peace, though tanners, or they would have said, " Put up your props 1"

It is pitiable to see so many children going into the Police Court this week on various charges of larrikinism and juvenile crime. We blame the police, the secular system of education, anything and anybody bub the real culprits, who, by their neglect of parental duty, and lack of exercise of parental discipline, make these things possible. In nor. one case out of ten is it shown in evidence that, the parents have administered any punishment for the misconduct manifested. Some of these parents will neither restrain nor punish their children, nor allow the courts or police to do it. While parents adopt that attitude larrikinism may be expected to be rampant. Since the Rei'nuera orchard robbers were released from gaol, through the hullabaloo made in Parliament, the idea has gone abroad among the city larrikins that orchard-robbing has received a sorb of quasi-legislative sanction. One lad, a fortnight after that incident, feeling satisfied from the maudlin gush in tne correspondence of the papers, and the interpellation in the Assembly that orchard-robbing was a very brave thing—a piece of ooyish spirit and adventure, rather than otherwise got on horseback, equipped with a sack, and cleared out an orchard in an adjacent district without further ado.

will reach the parents of the children who are thus scourging the community, being pests and nuisances to society.

I always thought the champion mean man was the Yankee who buttoned his paper collar on a wart on his neck to sav« a button ; but I heard last week that he had been " licked " by a country settler, in a district not one hundred miles from Auckland. This young man, whose ancestors are supposed to have come over with the Conqueror, was accustomed, when entrusted by his august relatives with letters to post, to lick the stamps off to raise a pint.

The " new departure " decided on by the Postal and Telegraph Department, viz., the closing of all stations throughout the colony at eight o'clock on Saturday evenings, is unique in one respect. It is, probably, the only instance in which a retrenchment policy has brought joy and gladness to the hearts of the employes. The officials and subordinates of the Telegraph Department through the length and breadth of New Zealand will assuredly breathe fervent benisons on the bald benevolent pate of the Minister. On the principal of not "looking a gift-horse in the mouth," they will not stop to inquire if the act emanated from a noble wish to shorten their hours of toil, or from the more frugal and economic motive to reduce the gas and coal bills.

By the way, may I be permitted to call the attention of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" to those nondescript animals, yclept horses, on which the Post Office delivery men urge their weary way each morning to their several destinations? Judging from their sad emaciated aspect, the retrenchment ghoul has been at thoir oat-bins and hay-racks to some purpose. One recalls the quaint melancholy of a Rosinante; another reminds you of the one which Artemus Ward's grandmother mistook for a wooden church ; while a third forcibly reminds you of Mark Twain's Arab steed that wanted, every now and then, to lean up against a post and think. As Government don't furnish the messengers with whip and spur, the violent muscular efforts made to urge on the animals are really most painful. I trust Mr. Redgate will lake the hint; there should bo a keen delight in having our Chief Postmaster in the defendant's box, because, I presume, he would be the target to shoot at. Mkrcutio.