OPENING THE ART GALLERY ON SUNDAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8631, 29 July 1891, Page 3

OPENING THE ART GALLERY ON SUNDAYS.

TO THE EDITOR.: , J Sib, Your corresponhent Mr. Cox is rather late in the field with his objections to opening the Art Gallery for a few hours on Sunday afternoons. The subject has been. ventilated in the paper for, years by your humble servant and others, and has been before the City Council for a month or more. Mr. Cox asks if those who voted for it would consent to their own daughter being deprived, etc. I should say many would not mind, seeing that a young lady sitting down in the Art Gallery, and probably reading a book for a couple of hours, can be no more a crime than doing the same thing in her own home ; while the consciousness that the help given her is doing herself or friends materia! good should satisfy the most strict Sabbatarian (who sees no harm in ] employing persons in the Free Library on the Sunday, if well paid). The fact that the present attendant lives at some distance does not affect the question. She is not compelled to accept the other ]: duty. Plenty of poor but respectable women and girls would be only too glad to get the task for a trifling payment. That there has been no real opposition to the proposal is at once a convincing fact that I the concession v was required, and by not i only a section of the working classes,;but of the professional and other classes, hundreds of whom have not yet been able to spend an hour there, and have had to content themselves with a hurried glance around. The comparisons between the Art Gallery and Mount Eden views are not quite .happy. You can go to the latter any time. You can only go to the former on the hours and days fixed upon. The statement of Mr. Cox. that the Council consented to open the Library on Sundays, without increasing the librarian's stipend, is equally unhappy. When the Library was first opened to the public, in' 1881,' an additional allowance of £25 was made to the librarian. It is true the necessities of bad times "and the retrenchment fever have made it necessary, in the opinion of the Council, to since reduce the pay, but this has by no means been singular. If Mr. Cox would visit the Library, on Sunday afternoons and evenings, he would see that it is both necessary and wise to keep open the Library, and encourage our young lads and girls to visit such places in preference to loafing about the streets and: wharves. There is a saying that the old are " always virtuous." Certainly aged people are very apt to forget the days of their youth and its temptations. I know full well I would have given anything in my young days here if I could have had such a place to visit. and read in, and many an extravagance and bad habit would have been saved to me. As Mr, Cox says, it remains to be seen the number who visit on a Sunday, and I shall be very much mistaken if greater numbers than at. present visit the Museum do not throng the Art Gallery. If citizens themselves will guard individually the Sabbath as far as possible they need not' throw that duty on City Council. Ho injustice is to be done, while persons are willing to attend and receive extra pay for doing so.— am, &c.. ' ' Light. ■'