THINGS IN GENERAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13494, 22 May 1907, Page 9

THINGS IN GENERAL.

THE GAMBLING SPIRIT. f fcofrlcE that heroic attempts are being - made to abolish the evil of betting. These - attempts are not confined to New Zealand i 'and the Common wealth of Australia, but ' : all over the civilised world there has begun _.. ; a crusade against what I lately saw deili scribed as "this hideous eankerworm that is eating out the vitals of the community." It may be that a century hence such expres- '; y sions as "laying the odds" and "two to one bar one," will be obsolete, and that people will search in vain in the dictionary for the meaning of " tote." But I'm not betting that way. As one who has a lot .'■: of faith in the stubbornness'. of human nail tare, I'm willing to give a shade of odds .the other way. Man is mostly a pig- ••':.''■ headed animal. If he wants to do a thing • - he'll do it, even if he has to go to gaol for it. And if a man wants to bet just for the sake of being pig-headed, he'll bet. But, apart from that, gambling is inherent in v : human nature. All life is a gamble. Even marriage, we' are told, is a lottery. If 'everybody started out fair and square off the same mark—if all were really born ...equal, as the Constitution of the United .' States says they are, forsooth!— would , he-a different matter. But we know that some are born rich, and that others are ... born poor, and condemned to a life of drudgery from the cradle to the grave. It Vis true that some . who are not born rich are born lucky, which is said to be ; abetter thing. Personally, I'd rather, have ';■■ m hand on the money bags, on the principle that "an acre in Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia." Anyway, you'll find vthat most people who are bom "lucky" 'have started but with a fair proportion of /this world's goods to help them. I'm. not saving that a poor man can't be born lucky, but I don't see how his luck is of any use 3 to him unless it rids him of his poverty. Even though it may be easier for a poor man-to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than a ' rich one, depend upon it the poor man will always be willing to change places with the ■ other fellow and take the chances. And so it comes about that those who "have not" ' adopt many and devious methods of acquiring riches; and this is where gambling >. comes in. But there is ho doubt that the craving to get rich quickly, which seems to . be the chief characteristic of the present age, 6 Vis greatly increasing the gambling spirit and producing results, which, as Shakespeare. ' * says, .inu&b "give us pause." The thing has : : assumed gigantic proportions and is still growing. What the upshot will be ho one 1' can tell, though many fear it. ." "PLAYING THE GAME." .-•' It were easier to eradicate the football ■ germ from the youth of this country than , to kill the' gambling spirit, which is common - to ah countries. And that is saying a good • deal. The hold that football has on us was well illustrated last week by a paragraph in the Herald concerning a certain school misV tress and one Higginson. " I regret to have 'AAv report," wrote the school mistress io the Education Board, " that the boy Higginson challenged my authority before the school in the matter of a football game. Heretofore, j ■ I forbade them to play that game in the interests of education. There was nothing V about it until to-day, when I saw that boy Higginson passing down along the paddock ■ with this great ball, and the little boys with lira. When I-called him to account for :.",playing this game I forbade before, and ■ : V without my consent, he replied impudently! m he would play the ball. ; A committee-;, •mm said he could play, it a .apd,jf I reAsjtf' '' thrcoramUtee- would make me let them play. •Higgmson was defiant. Through obeying him (Higg'rasonh little Storey disobeyed me, and got whipped. 5 When I did allow the boys to play it, they came into school in the afternoon in a filthy state— panting, .' i and in 'perspiration not endurable. They were not able to follow the work, neither; were they cooled down till three o'clock dismissal." And the Education Board had more sense.than to attempt to.put its head through a brick wall, for it carried a resolution, instructing the secretary to write to " Higginson's teacher, emphasising its view that football might be played out of school hours. It was justly recognised that very ;'. serious 'consequences would follow the taboo ; of football, 'which means so much to this country—which is, in fact, one of our chief advertising mediums. Kipling may write about his "flannell'd fools at the wickets," ." 'and his "muddied oafs at the goals," but while we have our Higginsons we will defy him every time and go on playing the ball. . IN SEARCH OF NOTORIETY. There are many ways of seeking ; ;';notoriety,'but one of the strangest and' maddest of them is to rush round the '".world on a bicycle. • "No sooner does a young man buy a bicycle than he wants 'to'do all manner of tricks upon it. He starts by running over somebody's pet terrier -and killing it, and then you will see .him trying to prove that it's possible for an object 2ft wide (himself on his bike) to .pass through a space 15in in width (the : spice between ; a cart and a pass- - 'ing tram)—which, .-by all the- rules of Euclid, was not to be. done, and never' could be done. By and bye, in the -1 process of evolution, he does even mad- ' der things than this, and the maddest of .them all—for this is what it lias come to :; .now— to ride- round the worlQ on his . '.bike. ' A man named Biddle, or Liddle, . orFiddle, arrived at Wellington the other. ;:- day* and informed a newspaper man that he was engaged in touring the world in > 'this novel fashion, " for the sake of notoriety," a process which he expected to take ; : ;:;four. years-. , And here we are talking of ■; going to England in 20 days ! It would be quite evident—even if Biddle, 'or Liddle, | hid -not taken the trouble to tell : us so—that he was not engaged in any important business undertaking, for four -■years is a long time in this world of fever- • ish hurry. Tilings have improved very roach since Jules Verne wrote "Round ; the World in Eighty Days," and the way ...things have been going lately, what with balloons and flying machines and other uncanny devices, it won't surprise me if a-' quarter of a century hence we "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," •as they do in " A Midsummer Night's | -Dream. - . And a week-end visit to the ; Moon and wireless messages from Mars 'Will be quite ordinary thngs. A Galileo ■■■:•,-I s treated with much more respect in these y, nays than he was in our great-grandfathers' •'^y s i arid in the old time before them, 'hough it is not so very long since people Who proposed to do anything out of the ordinary were looked upon as witches not list to live. It is not very long since George | .Stephenson ran his little steam engine, and «yen then there were people who said he Was a madman. If you had suggested the 1 Harnessing of electricity and the sending of ; hii i 1 messages along ether waves a Pwfij 6 i years S°» tlle probabilities are you mu\ u ?.',haye died the death > and if you ;X ; «aant done that it is tolerably certain iSu' have ended your days in the want 1 1SC ' Nowadays, it is the man who ■ b* n-ji? put back the universe— men §S ddle Fiddle—Who are regarded as j,j"jß .something of the madness in them Tent* - Is . Said to be onlv a step removed S, Se " lll l- However, ' see no trace of tan"l™ this "man, top he has already hasn't m L round the world, and says he s orln,;,i , witn an .V exciting adventures lone « v adtk es ? a l )r - s! W »£ even a poor m .tlT' ma ? tould tell tl better story ' ; Bddlf •.♦!•* ' ~ ls - a very, poor sort of a , ""•.-this cyclist! ■ i

OSTRICHES AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS.

A great many unkind things have been said about ostriches, which, if they are rather dense in some tilings, are very useful to man. In the term " man" I include women, for while it is a trite saying that man is born of a, woman, we all know very well that man, that paragon of animals, came first and woman was evolved from a rib out of his side. It is true that the ostrich has a familiar habit of hiding its head in the sand, and fancying that because it can't see anything in that position nothing can see it; but, for. that matter, there are a good many human beings who put their heads in the sand, too. What I wish to point out, however, ; s that ostriches, as a. race, are in some respects far more advanced than we are, though I have only just discovered it. It seems that the male ostrich, when hatching time is on, sits on the eggs in the daytime, and the female bird relieves him at night. Tin's is a fair bargain, a fair distribution of work, and it furnishes another argument for the advanced. woman, who claims that her husband should take a turn at staying at home and minding the baby and washing-up, while she goes out to play golf or to spend an hour or two at the club. Of course, there are those who insist that woman's place is in the home, but, nevertheless, slowly, but surely, woman is advancing towards the ostrich stage. We may quote " The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," but we can't shut our eyes to the fact that half our shop assistants are women, half our typists are women, there are many women doctors, there are some women dentists, and even a few women barbers. The women have evidently come to the conclusion that it's not good for man to be alone' in any department of the world's affairs. And sooner or later, man, like the male variety of ostrich, must be brought to realise that he must take his fair share of the responsibilities of the home, and not leave everything to his better half. •...-. The General.