LOCAL GOSSIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8192, 1 March 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOCAL GOSSIP

.*ss_w«« Shataxpere. cpge dnujuaar andlißßCErfopaJteoßT.or their it-- .<3raCß aar ' School their week,,did-the right thing in L#lin/r thab the Rev. J. K. Davi3 must Soaipiis mind whetherrhe will serve the School, a3 an assistant-master, j „ Epiphany ..as a clergyman, bub the I u. nee in which they came to that decision jj washes much food for reflection. It is I ' 'te clear that if no public notice had J J" called to "the grand arrangement," 1 Ihak-so to nS tho Board is concerned, it Would have been allowed to slip through, ' d would have become a permanent-ar-Lement. "The price <rf liberty is etervigilance," and the moral of the recent : ooisode is, that if the people desiro to lift - national educational institutions high velibe dull level of creeds and isms, and keep them there* they must be eternally jgjgilant' -.- _—. ... i ' Now that the. Grammar School author!i ' ; ; /;«. after making some wry faces, have ; ' ; ''' L-TL*l one abuse, in the bud,' it is to bo N ffid that they, as well as the Board of [""■' M[cation, ■'<will'deal with another abuse, 1., *T?, haS 'risen to the magnitude of a -■:.:•:' • blic s« I mean that of oificials P fc j ar cffl" = salaries competing in private i-" : ' : Vf the Grammar School and the ■' ■'£§ hlio schools at their back, with men en-■S^-^-^^-in'-- tuition in private educational •'■"•: t who are, by the way, fully ' pgtent. ' If either body had possessed instead of "-a piece of string," $ey would not have suffered the present •gtate of affairs to. exist for a single week. It fa a wrong to the public, a wrong to the in- ' stitutions in which the teachers serve and to the pupils therein, and a grievous cruel ! Wrong to the citizens engaged in private tuition. To show to what a pass things have come in Government officers engaging In private. busiuess, I saw an educational circular, nob so long ago, of one of our private educational institutions, in which it was announced that Mr. So-and-so (giving his full official designation in the Civil Service) would conduct certain classes there. The attention of the Government authorities, at Wellington, was drawn to the matter, and that Government bfficer's name disappeared from the cirfcular. Why should he bo debarred, and rightly too, while the public school 'teacher, and a master of a Grammar School may go on without let or hindrance. If a 'M;'- l ii subordinate in the Grammar School takes private pupils, why should not the headmaster, Mr. Bourne? Tho immediate power is, " We give him a good salary, Sad expect his full and exclusive services." Jo cap the drollery of the whole situation ■ te V private pupils," a letter was read at the jnecung of the Board of Governors of the Grammar school, to the effect that the assistant - master - cum - Epiphany - incumjbent did not intend, in addition to his ether duties, to i&ake private pupils ! This Was really very kind of him, but the act of self -abnegation" did nob elicit a gush of . gratitude from the members of tho Board. . The Board of Education is especially interested in stopping tho abuse to which I refer,, if only half the gossip circulating is true. Mr. Upton said at the meeting of toe ."Board of Governors of the Grammar " School that "he knew of some masters who were engaged in private tuition, and no doubt they felt the strain." That being so, it is his duty as chairman of the Board of Education to pus an end to the wrong by Which the children of the public schools get, apparently, the refuse services of schoolmasters jaded and exhausted by teaching private pupils at night, and if report be true, even from six to eight in the morning. He has made some excellent reforms in our " leducation system during his tenure of t!;jg; office. ■• Let him increase public obligations by going straight for this educational scandal and remove the blob ib is causing on " the face of our' primary school system. I ';-" : give him but one illustration which is no doubt known to himself. -'-. It is currently i '■ rumoured # that there are teachers who bave an excellent reputation -for getting on %'' private pupils, butwhoso schools have recently •pri'jate pupils, but whoso schools have recently been unfavourably reported on by the in- §§& spectors. A word to the wise is sufficient, ® and the moral is too obvious to require -' - that I should draw it. The enemies of our public school system in any open fair "conflict we need nob fear, but if the system Pis ever pulled down, we will have to thank ll|§tthe men who perpetrate these abuses, and their official : superiors who weakly tolerate them. As showing the ludicroualy halfhearted way in which the Grammar School authorities have r dealt with the matter, they intend to allow the practice to go on, but are going to prohibit the teachers from advertising about private pupils. It will at once occur to any one of common sense that if it is not wrong to engage in such teaching, it cannot be wrong to make that {act known. Besides, by the "underground vailroad" the teachers can always manage to get the publicity desired, so that the , Board's inhibition ju3b leaves matters where ■' they were ,; ■ : / Some head-teacher in a country public {school noticing lately that one of the assistant masters in the Grammar School intended running a church, and that some 3f the head teachers in the common schools, »ith their £400 and £500 a-year salaries, were doing a good thing in " private pupils," thought he had an equal right to •'turnover an honest penny." He bought a newspaper, and is now running it. This x came to' the knowledge of some sharp- '■■) eared members of the Board of Education, and yesterday, at the Board meeting, tho trouble began. The Board thought that the man who ran a church and a school .might manage to serve two masters—God and Mammon—but the school teacher who Tan a newspaper, especially , if it criticised the actions of the Board, was simply beyond redemption. His name is "Walker," and in three months' time "the schoolmaster v will bo abroad very much abroad. ; < A correspondent, "Habet," has done me the honour, in the columns of the Herald, of paying me a little attention over the .': ' Epiphany business. He starts out with saying : — In deference to Public Opinion, of which your Literary Inspector of .'* Nuisances is the self-constituted and irre- : sponsible weekly exponent, the Board of Governors has fipoken, and Mr. Davis must ; make his choice." I thank •'Habet" for * that word "nuisance." I would not have liked to go so far as to term the Epiphany arrangement a nuisance, although it has scarcely got "the odour of _." Sanctity;" but if " Habet" is right in -affixing the term, then, in deference to -. public opinion, the nuisance has been suppressed. I cam quite understand that it would have been a long time before ho would have invoked the services of tho Inspector of Nuisances—in fact is rather irritated at that officer insisting on the back yard being cleaned outbub lot that pass. ; - fßut "Habet" goes on to say, "In the .general treatment of the subject one or two points have arisen, which I take leave to think should not be'so airily disposed of :/. as Mr. Davis has been," and in half a column' ■ of misty, inconsequential " talkoe-talkee," be proceeds to miss the points, and attempts #0 airily dispose of " Mercutio." ' , After pending his communication I •greed with Josh Billings that "If a man fcan't ' strike ile ' in five minutes, he's either :;'; boring in the wrong place, or has got a mighty small gimblet." Tho salient points ... of his letter, so far as I can gather them, are that Santley sings " Quart frcrfkerunt fi-nits ?;' which is very good of him; that . lr. Davis is responsible to the Grammar - School Board and the Bishop ; that "'somethiwj has taken place akin to Mr. Brad- ". ley's sidroit manipulation of tho pedals of ;. the organ at St. Patrick's," bub what that something" is, or what) the organic Change, is a- profound mystery, and lastly, . that we may blow about our national system of education, but not blow on it, " lest peradventure it prove as flimsy up the house that Jack —with a pack of cards." Oh, ft Bay, " Habet," that be blowed for a yarn ! I notice that " Habet," like a speaker at the meeting of the Grammar School Governors, trots out " the clergyman of the Church of England who has long been, (md still is, a headmaster in one of our public schpolif." The inference from this would be that another officer in our public Schools is permitted to do what will, not bo ?■ sanctioned in; the ca rfc 'he. Rev J. K. Davis, and that then ;w. the !■»'!.- ;entleman is a martyr. Ncih'mpc >uM Lu urther ■ .from the truttb, and I: hi gimplj ; rgle of

terms to say that the head teacher referred to is "*a clergyman" at all, unless we are to accept the dogma '"once a clergyman, always a clergyman." To all intents and purposes be is a layman, and is regarded as such. Many years ago, owing tolas people _ nob furnishing him with a salary on which he could live decently and respectably, he gave up the service of the church militant for more lucrative employment in the grand army of our public school system. To call such a man "a clergyman " in our public schools is simply misleading, and tho reasoning about the matter, and the inference attempted to be drawn therefrom, of parsons as pedagogues, would nob deceive a fourth form boy in a public school. Professor Aldis, I understand, greatly to his credit, gives his spare time of a Sunday now and then to speaking to his fellow-men about tho eternal verities', bub if he were to arrange to get £100 a-year from his Little Bethel for such services, I fancy he would find a University professorship too hob and heavy to hold. So, in like manner, no reasonable man will object to Mr. J. K. Davis, as assistant-master of tho Grammar School, consecrating his talents, without fee or reward, of a Sunday to the benefit of his fellow-men, as he may incidentally have opportunity. However, all's well that ends well, and I now scratch " Epiphany and the Grammar School" out of my "little list." Professor Aldis, after his arduous defence of late traders, has evidently been prostrated, for I notice that his "relief " is giving the Professor a spell, and working a shift on " Federation," in order to enable him to come up to time again smiling. The writer says that " one thing that seems certain about this fashionable fad of Federation is, that it would mean the creation of a number of highly paid officers, and looking at it from a New Zealand point of view, thab wo should have bo raise a considerable sum of money, for which it does nob appear that we should receive any return." That may be, bub these remarks are highly applicable to „ other things nearer home. But the writer goes on to say, that " if in Australia they hold that doctrine of the devil, ' the greatest good of the greatest number,' the interests of New Zealand, which, in such an alliance, would represent the minority, would always bo the last to be considered.'? By contrast, I presume, the doctrine of the rule of " a minority of two" is angelic, and is the Mew Evangel. I said last week that. I was inclined to believe that " the Prince of Darkness was a gentleman," and if it bo true, as I now learn for the first time, that his doctrine is "the greatest good of tho greatest number," I shall not despair of that possible reformation of Auld Clootie in which Origen half believed, and of which Burns sang. The latest suggestion of a newspaper correspondent is that the writer on Federation should be placed on tho committee of tho Free Public Library, as she would be " a great stirrer-up" in ib. There is no doubt that her accession to a seat on the committee would cause something like "a moving of the dry bones," for the lady has much in common with Pallas Eudora Von Blurky, She has views on co-education, And the principal needs of the nation, And her glasses were blue, and the number she knew Of the stars in each high constellation. "The Old Man Eloquent," the other evening, in speaking on the Land Tax, referred to the question of Elective Governors, and said "he trusted that the people of JNew Zealand would determine that every one of their fellow-citizens should have every office thrown open to him, and that every mother might, in nursing her child, please herself by thinking " Perhaps here is a possible Governor !'" ' Thab is poetry, nob prose, for Sir George Grey has the wonderful gift, Midas-like, of turning the dust of other men to gold. What are the real facts in the average record of life, idyllic pictures apart. Havn't 1 seen " The Governor"—of the familyscores of times. A bullet-headed urchin with the bumps of combabiveness and destructiveness abnormally developed (whom I wished yet among " the unborn millions"), lying, with a mouth like a torn pocket, across his mother's knee, while with her slipper careering above his flanks she was striking home as the Roman matrons did of yore. That's a prosaic fact. Sir George' 3 picture of . the ." embryo elective Governor" gazing < out from his mother's knee, on his future domain, reminds me of the affecting incident of the poetic father who bent over his first-bom as he lay ; " gooing " ' in the cradle, looking into the Unknowable and the Unknown, and said to Mrs.Gamp, "Hush! Angels are whispering to him !" The "monthly," with laconic brevity, set him right at once—"Lor! Bless yer 'art, sir, it's only the wiud on his little stummick !"- Still, withal, I endorse heartily the eulogy of Dr. Laishley on the " grand old man," and after having listened to the great Pro-Consul's eloquence through four decades, I feel that, take him for all in all, " we shall nob look upon his like again." A correspondent "Q" sends a protest, more in sorrow than in anger, against my treatment of " Single Tax" in last week's issue. " Q," as an intelligent man, will see at a glance that if I gave insertion to three sides of foolscap upon Single Tax, in the crisp columns of " Local Gossip," that there would be a funeral in the Herald establishment. The fact is the public would fail to see the cue. Such a tax upon the patience of my readers.—l do nob feel justified in imposing, and, as Local Gossip, it would bo the ghastliest joke that had ever been perpetrated under that heading. '-," Q" goes on to say that I am nob justified in coming to the inference that " because a Single Taxcr avows his disbelief in the need for further legislative interference he is necessarily lacking in sympathy with the oppressed." I admit that; but " Q" cannot have read even the short extract I have given from " Single Tax's " letter. That correspondent says: "Imust enrolmyself amongst the number who sneer at any legislative protection for working-men, either here or in any other part of the world." If that is the language and tone of a man who has sympathy with the oppressed, I have yet to know tho meaning of . the English tongue, and to study the very first principles of human nature, and of tho workings of the human heart. Since writing the above remarks, "Single Tax" has again rallied up with another communication, under the heading "Freedom nob Protection, Justice not Charity, are what Labour wants." As I believe in the good old Latin motto, " Strike, bub hear," I strain a point to give the material portion of his letter, which is as follows :— I think that the least that you can do after the manner in'which-you hashed up my letter of Saturday last is to afford me a short space for explanation. I shall be as brief as possible. Firstly, I fail to see how you could justly infer from my letter that I had no sympathy for labour ; the title of my letter, viz., " Freedom, not Protection ; Justice, not Charity' are what Labour Wants," would alone preclude such an idea. Secondly, we who sneer at the necessity of legislative protection—governmental pap — for labour, we who deny that labour is a weak, puny baby that needs coddling and looking alter, are not on that account to be looked upon as the enemies of labour, we are rather labour's truest friends. We claim that labour, granted justice and freedom, would be strong enough to look after and protect itself. We claim that labour is no baby; that labour has now come of age, and that it only needs a correct and intelligent knowledge of its rights anil its powers to quickly put to flight the army of monopolists and swindlers who are at present sweating " and oppressing it. Labour, with "one man one vote," and the ballotbox, is now the sovereign power. Labour and laud arc the only factors absolutely essential for the production of wealth. Labour, with its offspring, capital, produces all wealth. How absurd to say that labour, the sovereign power and the great producer of wealth, needs legislative protection ! \ The remainder of the letter is devoted to a rebuttal, from his standpoint,' of my .statement that his first letter on Single Tax was not relevant to the Labour question. In talking about the An ti-Property Tax League, and the secession from ib of Dr. Laishley the other week, I said that the Doctor was too shrewd an observer of men and things nob to see that tho whole business would, end in a delightful fiasco, and that when that time came the Doctor was out of it." The fiasco came last Saturday night, and the bitterest opponents of the League could have wished nothing betteror worse. A correspondent, an opponent of tho tax, writing to me about the fiasco, gets positively ferocious in his utterances. The mildest thing ho says is that " the men who were concerned in yetting up the meeting, owing to their imbecility and incompetence, would wreck anything, and that ' they were not lit to

carry guts to a bear.' " There I differ from him! Dr. Laishley, at Saturday night's meeting, repudiated both a property tax and a, land tax. That's where" the ignorant impatience of taxation" comes in. Various attempts have been made of late by the officer commanding, tho district to raise a guard of honour for sundry distinguished personages ; but the only residuum of a district order was a cocked hat and feathers that and nothing more. At last, in despair, Colonel Shepherd offered 2s Cd per man for a guard of honour for the Earl of Kintore, and by the aid of tho "nimble half-crown" the gallant officer drew out two batteries of. artillery like a gun wad! And yet Napoleon called tho English " a nation of shopkeepers." It was my good or ill-fortune the other Sunday morning, I can scarcely tell which yet, to hear a city parson say he thanked God that he was an Englishman and not a colonial. There are of course colonials and colonials just* as there are Englishmen and Englishmen, bub take the colonials man for man and they need have no hesitancy in pitting themselves against their brethren in the Old World. There is a self assertiveness in the parson's statement which reminds me of the arrogant Cockney who went to Paris. He stood the parley-vooing very well the first day, but on getting up next morning to bake a stroll he heard a cock crow, and with intense satisfaction ho exclaimed, " Thank God there's something English at last!" This clerical Ralph Racksbraw practically informed the faithful that lie might have been a Eoossian, 'A French, or Turk, or l J roossian, • \ Or perhaps an I-tal-i-an, 1 -■ But, in spite of all temptations, To belong to other nations, lie remained an Englishman ! I- venture to say that the congregation to which ho preaches is, in general intelligence, in average education, breast-high with the audionce to which he preached in the Old Country, or any other English congregation. Wo have here no counterpart to Hodge tugging las forelock to tho squire and the curate, and "thanking Providence for the sphere in which it Iris been pleased to place him," and whose grievance against the national school teacher is that "he teaches our Bill to spell taters with a p." In charity I conclude, Homer nods occasionally, and did I nob know tho parson as one of the most genial and loving men I have ever met, I would say that he was " off colour" on Sunday morning, and needed ono of Holman's liver pads. Tho poet evidently was thinking of a regretful Past, in Merriie England, in warbling— When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food, His morals were pure, his digestion was good. Though "only a colonial," I must splinter a lance for colonials. I look with confident hopefulness to the time to come when Young New Zealand shall have as pure and true a feeling of patriotism for the land of their birth as ever possessed the breasts of those British born, and who, when England mayhap, has again become An island, salt and bare, The haunt of seal, and ore, and soa-mows* clang, will reproduce and perpetuate the best qualities of "the conquering race," in this Greater' Britain, beneath the Southern Cross. I must do the parson the justice to say that he has explained that he had " the wobblers" in his mind's eye, and that when ho looked upon such aborted types of Man- ; hood he thanked God that ho was an English- ! man, and not like such colonials. When he becomes colonialised, and may the process come soon, he will bo proud- alike of the colony and colonists. When the Chinese leper was "run in" to the Auckland police station and placed in the station yard, it seems there were only the Chief of Police, the sergeantmajor, and a detective, who were aware of the real stale of affairs. An officer who was nob "in' the swim" was determined to fathom the mystery, as "John" did nob seem to be a lunatic. With a smile childlike and bland, he edged up to the Heathen Chinee, and cheerfully shaking his extended paw, proceeded to "use the pump-handle judiciously." "John" was strictly noncommittal. He did nob know why he was brought there—infact heknew nothing. The j baffled officer retired, but shortly afterwards he learned to his horror thab the Chinaman with whom he '.ad graciously shaken hands was a leper ! It goes without saying that, instead of rubbing hitf hands "with invisible soap and imperceptible water," he made the best time on record to a wellknown Queen-streeb chemist, and demanded, in the name of the Queen, Pears' carbolic anti-disinfectant soap. The gallant sergeant is at this present time of speaking being " done up in lavender." 11l news travels apace. Ono of our respected citizens was slightly indisposed this week, and being a, man of mark in the community, the story of his indisposition soon circulated. The story of "The Three Black Crows " was a fool to it, and by the time the tidings reached a neighbouring province, ib had panned out to this statement, " that the gentleman's father had died suddenly at Auckland at a favourite marine suburb." The sad news, in some way or other, reached the ears of the Auckland police, and an officer was sent over to tho locality indicated to make investigations as to the sudden death, with a view of reporting to the coroner, if there were any necessity to hold an inquest. Scarcely had tho officer landed on tho beach when he mot the "corpse" strolling down the road as " bold as brass." I will nob go further than paying that the officer's language was " frequent," and there isa bill for travelling expenses awaiting somebody. Mercotio. I