Intelligent Vagrant.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 246, 5 August 1876, Page 13

Intelligent Vagrant.

Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernse crastina summse Tempora Di Superi.—Horace. Sir George Grey has solemnly and sincerely declared that he is not responsible for having beea. born a Briton. Under all the circumstances I must agree in divesting him of the responsibility, at the same time I admit how serious a responsibility this casts on someone else. The Hon. Mr. Waterhouse holds peculiar views on all questions. Some times his ideas are centuries in advance of those of the present period, not unfrequently they are centuries behind. If any one doubt the truth of this latter statement, let him look at Hansard for this session, No. 11, page 573, and read from the fourth line from the bottom of the first column to the end of Mr. Waterhouse's reported remarks. When one paper takes a paragraph from another without acknowledgment of some kind, it acts unfairly. I was glad to see the Wanganui Chronicle hauled over the coals by one of your spirited evening contemporaries for having done this, Mr. Editor. But the hauling over the coals would have been more effectual but for a little circumstance. Just above I>ke paragraph complaining of the Wanganui Chronicle was another, which had appeared months ago in the Evening Post, had gone the rounds of New Zealand and Australia, and had then been written out with a scissors, and inserted as original by the very gentleman who complained of such practices. That little decision by a committee of the House on a question of a disputed bet between two honorable members, has not terminated so happily as one could wish. The chairman and members of the committee naturally expected some slight reward for their trouble. But what happened ? Why the losing party paid the winner the amount of the bet (£1) in forty sixpenny tickets for Bellamy's ; and when the chairman and members of the committee interrupted them in the harmony that ensued, there were only foiirteen tickets left for their use. There is a pleasing simplicity about the conduct of public worship in up-country churches. A friend of mine travelling_ in the Rangitikei and Manawatu districts, writes me that he attended service at a ehurch in one of the town -

s hips last Sunday. When the time for collec tion came the gentleman who acted as collector took from his pocket a capacious tobacco pouch, and going around with it received therein the offerings of the faithful. With the Roman Emperor, he might subsequently sing of the money non olet. Those who collect the debts due to newspapers occasionally receive curious answers to their applications for payment. One gentleman on being called on to pay lately said, " I can't do it. I intend to be ill and under the doctor's hands for the next three months, so that you see it would be unjust to him to pay anyone, and so deprive him of part of that which is his by anticipation. But I assure you that at the end of the three months, unless I can find another good excuse, I shall begin seriously to .think about paying it. Mr. Woolcock, one of the members for the Grey, is credited with a sensible remark. At a caucus meeting last week, a member was

advocating separation and inveighing against the extravagance of the General Government. Said Mr. Woolcock : " I never knew a Government that was not accused of extravagance, and if you get separation the only advantage I can see is that you will get two Governments and double the extravagance." In the Legislative Council last week the Hon. Colonel Brett informed his fellow members that the staple food of all countries was "fish." Scientific authority informs us that fish is the great brain-forming and sustaining food ; and though I do not endorse Colonel Brett's dictum as to its being the staple article of food in all countries, still I am pretty certain every one will agree with me that Legislative Councillors are evidences that in some countries at least an enormous quantity of it requires to be consumed.