Intelligent Vagrant.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 220, 27 November 1875, Page 13

Intelligent Vagrant.

Quis scit an adjiciant hodierme crastina summas Tempora Di Superi.—Horace.

Colonists complain, and not always with injustice, of the insufferable airs which new arrivers are apt to give themselves. But it is only fair to say that colonists, as a general rule, lose little or no time in driving (nit these objectionable airs. Mr. 'Reginald DeConrcy not long from England, staid, until a few days ago, in a genteel lodging-house in Wellington. Out amusing himself one night, in company with a fellow lodger (a compatriot of Mr. John Sheehan’s, M.H.R.), his fellow lodger, unfortunately got under atmospherical influence, and on Mr. DeConrcy devolved the painful task of taking him home and putting him to bed. This was not accomplished without some noise. In the morning, Mr. DeCourcy’s landlady summoned him to her presence and said, “Sir, I must discharge you. You are the second lodger I have had to discharge lately for the same offence;” and she would listen to no explanation, but then and there “ discharged” DeCourcy, who says that he supposes its all right, yet that this is the first time he heard of a lodger’s being discharged. There is a good deal of wrath commercially about the action of the Victoria Insurance Company in not paying up the amount for which the Paterson was insured with them. The question is one which I am not capable of discussing fairly, owing to my personal strong bias against ever paying anybody anything. But I may state a fact or two in connection with the case, which would be that if the advice of the local agents of the company had been followed, the money would, I think, have been paid, and that the other offices in which the lost steamer was insured, although they might have availed themselves of a similar legal difficulty to that embraced by the Victoria, did not do so, but paid up straightway, although in one case a distinct verbal warning had been given that the Paterson was not to be sent to the Waitara if the insurance were to be considered valid. And after all, perhaps, the offices that paid will not in the end lose by their promptness.

A very common form of speech is that which likens any monetary or mercantile meanness to the customary practice of a Jew. I need not reiterate that which all unprejudiced and thinking men know, that meanness is quite as characteristic a trait of certain Christians as it is of certain Jews. In other and more hackneyed words, “ there is a black sheep in every flock.” And I am aware of a little circumstance which may perhaps tend to the elucidation of this hare truism. A friend of mine, on his way home to tea this week, stopped a.t a shop in the window of which he saw a toy, that he thought would please his strongest olive branch, and asked its price. Being told by a shopwoman three-and-sixpence, he thought the figure too high, but let philo-progenitiveness get a temporary advantage of acquisitiveness, and purchased it. Coming from home to his office the next morning, the shopkeeper ran out, stopped him, and explained that in his (the shopkeeper’s) absence his deputy had made a mistake, and charged eighteen-pence too much for the toy, which the shopkeeper insisted on returning without the discount of “come and have a beer,” which, my friend, in the spirit of that modern civilisation which influences all creeds, instantly offered. The shopkeeper was a Jew. His was but an act of common honesty. All Jews might not be so honest. But, my Christian friends, don’t you think that the same reservation may be made in the case of Christians. Would all Christians have been so honest ?

Why, oh my friend of the Wairarapa Standard will you persist in dragging me into your fight with the New Zealand Times people, with whose quarrel I do not desire t,> he associated. lam sure I never wrote a word about .the Standard until last week, and what I wrote then was merely explanatory of accusations made by that innocuous journal against myself. Yet the Standard comes at me and identifies me with a class of literature I detest. A nasty light way of treating grave subjects, sucli as the treatment the Times has been giving that cerement of literature the Standard. Now, I hope this frank statement will save me from Wairarapa wrangling in the future.

I am justified in presuming that a sph’it of patriotism influences every candidate addressing the Wellington electors. I know I am pretty right, from what an elector told me.

He said, “ Gizzy’s all right me hoy ; he’s going wid us on the ijujucasliion quistion and Misther Bo Shay and .1 auton and Brawd are standin godmothers for him. An what’s more dy e see lie won tbe so badly off. Pathriotism pays. He’ll resign his £BOO a year, an he’ll have his pinsion of £6OO an his Mayor’s screw of £2OO an his honyrayrum of £IOO an his chance of being in a Miuisthry. Oh. be the hokey old Gizzy’s no fool let me tell ye that.” As Mr. Davies makes his German say, “ I tink zo neider.”

_ There are teachers and teachers. Some time ago complaint was made that the educational authorities were agitating for certificated teachers to bo sent from England, while the applications of competent men in this town had been rejected. This seemed a hard case, and doubtless the loal gentlemen of unquestionable merit, had many sympathisers. I happen to know that one of them at least deserved sympathy, but of a kind that no teacher should be desirous of obtaining. Thus, at the Education Board meeting on Thursday, a letter was received from one of these complainants, in which the construction of the sentences was as novel as the spelling was indifferent.

A gentleman who has passed a year in Wellington sends me the following weather report, which he says, if carefully read, will he useful to farmers, sailors, and all to whom weather matters are a consideration : Dirty days hath September, April, June, and November; Ail the rest have thirty-one, Without a single gleam of sun Except February, and here Are twenty-eight, and not one clear : Even when twenty-nine days conn; ’Tis raining all the extra one.

I really do not care to say anything about funerals, because the subject is not naturally of a mirthful character, and besides, the last time I touched upon it in connection with the Rodney I got into hot water. But I cannot avoid saying that buryings are not always done as decently as they might he. I am informed that the body of Peter Classon (who tried to swim ashore from the Herschel, but reached a shore beyond the unknown sea) was taken to the cemetery at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, and left in an open grave until four o’clock in the afternoon, no provision having been made to secure the services of a clergyman; at the latter hour, the Rev. Mr. Dewsbury, who had come to officiate at another funeral, kindly spoke and read the words which are considered necessary to what is known as Christian burial.

Newcomers are not always impressed favorably by the appearance of colonists. In a southern town quite recently, a gentleman of diminutive size, and suffering from what is called, in a horse, being wall-eyed, advertised for a bookkeeper. An immigrant, just landed, applied and said, “ Are you the man that wants a bookkeeper.” The advertiser said he was. “ Heavens,” said the applicant, “ have* I come so many thousand miles to serve a little squinty-eved fellow like this ! I couldn’t do it.” And he went away. It is flattering to be assured by the Wairarapa Standard that I write all the original matter in the Times, although as my countrymen would say, “that same isu’tmuch.” That is exactly what I have been trying for a loug time to persuade the editor, sub-editor, and reporters to let me do; but somehow they will not. They will insist on confining me to this column, for they say that if I were to go outside it, I would only write leaders and tilings fitted for the Wairarapa Standard, and these they would not have at any price. This is insulting alike to me and that dear literary old woman at Greytown. I would not stand it if I were in her place. Nothing but motives of personal interest make me put up with it on my own account.