THINGS IN GENERAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15501, 7 January 1914, Page 10

THINGS IN GENERAL.

SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

rnorosAl, was submitted to the Presbyterian General Assembly at Duuedin, that Parliament be petitioned to copy the Canadian law preventing unnecessary desecration of He Sabbath. " What is the ■• a radian law '" asked several delegates.

I could i' ! '.11 you what it is in a v..rd or two, bin, it is just, the sort of law we want. ' r. pi .>d the mover. It is fortunate the reve end gentleman who sub milted the resolution Hid not attempt to put the ('anadim law into a "word or tw... ' be.aii.se the provincial laws on the subject wiry considerably, and the observance .if Sabbath varies even more. In Montreal y<>n |, R \ P (],„ Continental Sab bath ; in the ,|,. ining province of On ,;,ri ° V"i haxe an almost puritanic Sabhath The ,ev. nth day is the chief holiday of the v.-eel J,, the French quarter of Montreal. The morning is quiet, but in the nfterno. n n-d evening the streets are thronged will, people. It is the great day f"r .afes and picture shows. 1,, Toronto ' o He ~:),,.r hand, all picture shows are <l " w| . an! i; , diversion, beyond taking « all in the ,arks, is allowed. In the West, nlwrvni.-o of the Sabbath varies from town I" I iwn, but, speaking generally, the tendency is to deprecate amusemenU and recreation. One cannot but be struck with the remarkably good attendances in Western churches, especially of . ung men, but I am afraid the reason is not Si satisfactory. There is nothing else for yrung men to do, not even that stand by of young men the world over on Sundays, courtship, for there is a distinct minority of women all over the western provinces. For the same reason the streets are filled other nights of the week with hundreds of young fellows who havo no homo ties and no interests beyond making and spending money. I join with the general assembly in deploring tin, decline in the habit of church-going, but I am afraid ministers are tbeni'.ehcs largely to blame. If the multitude* desert the churches, it is surely because there is some touch of vitality and human sympathy lacking from the services. It may bo possible, by restrictive legislation, to prevent people doing Anything else, and drive them to church out of .sheer ennui, but it would be a far greater triumph for the churches to win out on their merits and draw the crowds away from the attractions of picnicking, golfing, and week-ending. I remember a Canadian clergyman who used to say : " The Gospel is still the greatest drawing power in this world. There is no need for sensationalism in the pulpit, for we have a message which should draw better than any play. If the churches are empty, the fault is ours."

Seats in the Tramcars. The license which permits 11 passengers to rtind in a tramcar provides a daily test of the neglect of manners in this city. The rules of etiquette affirm that gentle men should remain standing until every lady is seated, and almost universally this rule has been interpreted to mean that a gentleman will always surrender his seat to a lady if there is not accommodation for all. Tho men of Auckland are notoriously offenders against this precept, especially in tramcars. Many of tham decline to accept tho frankest hint; on one occasion » woman who despaired of anyone volunteering a seat, asked a man to hold her baby for her, and he coolly responded to the letter of the request, allowing the »"3ian to remain among the straphangers. A few days ago, in an Onehunga car, one man gave up his' seat at least six times, while all the other men in the car watched his courtesy with stolid indifference, Tho manner in which men crush into the cars to the exclusion of women is amp-zing to people accustomed to no more than the ordinary code of manners, and their only solace is that occasionally, amid the crowding at the entrance, one hears a girl warn her com panion to bo careful "not to crush the gentlemen." Probably all this talk about the equality of tho sexes has something to do with it, but it jars one lb see a woman carrying a baby, an old man tottering on his sticks, or even a sturdy young colonial woman standing in a tramcar, while men strong enough to do a heavy day's work monopolise the seats.

A Word tor the MothersThe daily user of the cars sees many straDgo things. One of the most amazing is tho prohibition against the carrying of " pushcarts" on a car. No doubt the regulation was made to exclude the o.'dfashioned perambulator, but it is customarily interpreted to apply to all forms of vehicles for babies. The modern folding push cart can be reduced to the compass of a Webster's Dictionary, and stowed away under a seat so that it is a negligable matter. But it is not admitted to a trajncar. Yet no objection is offered when a heavy portmanteau of four times the bulk is placed on the end of the car. One ii.,:y carry garden tools, a tin of kerosene, parcels limited in size only by the width of tho doors, and oven an abnormal development of adipose tissue, without extra charge. The other day I saw a passenger bring a rolled bamboo verandah screen into a car and lay it along the aisle across tho ends of half a dozen seats, and though people tripped -ver it, the conductor raised no objection. But the suburban mother who trams into the city must either leave her baby at home or carry it about the streets in her arms.

The Charms of Cannibalism. Cannibals eat human flesh for a variety of reasons, but principally because they like it. Such is the conclusion of Major J. H P. Murray, Lieutenant Governor of British New Guinea, who has just published a Look on that territory. " Nothing, it seems to me," he remarks, " is more difficult than to explain to a cannibal why he should give up hum in llesh. lie immediately asks: 'Why mustn't I pat it?' And I have never yet been able to find an answer to that question bo yond the somewhat unsatisfactory one: ' Because you mnsri't.' " Ft is. in my opinion, n mistake to regard cannibalism in Papua as invariably connected with ceremony or ritual; in fome rases it is, but in others it is merely ;i rime of food -certain natives like human flesh, and they do not see why they should not cat it. There are, no doubt, instances in which the idea of food has nothing whatever to do with the practice, as in a case mentioned by Chalmers, where a young man near Port Moresby was taken by a crocodile; only part of the body was saved, and ' his wife, children, father, mother, and friends sat down and ate it, out of affection.' " These canes should not, however, bo regarded as establishing a general rule, for cannibals generally give as their usual reason for eating human flesh the simple fact that they like it. They generally riMcnbw it as fasting like fish, sometimes hs like pig, but moet seem to consider it super or to other flesh; some however, d i -.t i.are for it, i»nd const.*] nently do not tat it. 1 havo already mentioned the J

native of the North-Eastern Division, who told mo that his people had plenty of wallaby and fish, but that their real food was man; and I think that that is the attitude of most cannibals, but, of course, it is a food that is not always easy to get, or the territory long ago would have been depopulated. Ritual and ceremony pent rate the whole of a savage's existence, but ] should bo surprised to disover that there is more of them in con•ectiou with cannibalism than with the oilier incidents of life."

The Maori View, I have given this extract chiefly because the attitude of the Papuans towards human flesh appears to be almost precisely that of the Maoris during the early years of white settlement in New Zealand. The man eating warriors used to complain that pakehas were no good for food they were bitter, very " kawa." In bis hook, " The Maoris of New Zealand," .lames Cowan quotes the following description oi iho storming of apa near Maketu, furnished by Te Araki te Pohu, an Arawa warrior :-" When we returned from pursuing those of the enemy who escaped from the pa, we feasted upon the Ika-a-Whiro (the Fish of Whim, the slain). We cut off the heads of the slain to ho smoked and preserved as trophies of war, and we cooked and ate the bodies. This was, indeed, the warrior's food, the flesh of man. There was no other meat to equal it. In appearance it was like pork when cooked, and it tasted like pork, only sweeter. 1 ate it, and I also drank human blood. That was the custom of us all in those days. This was also a custom of our people: When a man had succeeded in killing a foe whom he particularly hated, ho would drink the blood of the slain man and would cook the body and consume every portion of it. After the battle some of the human flesh was carried back by our slaves to Rotorua, as presents for the people there. A chief in those days liked to have some preserved man-flesh in his pataka, so that in the mornings, when he felt inclined, he could go to the pataka and take out a little basket of meat as a relish for his kumara" To carry the parallel otill further, there is an instance of the " affectionate" cannibalism ascribed to the Port Moresby savages being paralleled by a Maori. Patara te Ngungukai, an Arawa who died some years ago, helped to eat his own father as a mark of respect. The General.