Rounds THE Corners

New Zealand Mail, Issue 771, 10 December 1886, Page 17

Rounds THE Corners

I am inclined to do a little borrowing from contemporaries this week, and can’t do better than reproduce a section of an article published in The Australasian. ,The big weekly is < commenting on the Victorian education report for the year, and, evidently, is similarly impressed with many in Ne\y Zealand by the necessity of increasing school expenditure by the extra twopence ha’penny for the teaching of manners. As an absolute lack of reverence in colonial youth is the rule, they are the more likely t.o, and do, fall into brusque and illmannered style. This will prove a great obstruction to their progress in after life, and is as necessary to be corrected as is bad spelling, bad writing, and bad grammar. Now for The Australasian’s remarks : The most interesting part of the report is that which contains the remarks of the inspectors on the methods of instruction that are adopted by the teachers. To begin with, the inspectors are almost unanimously of opinion that, though the children are well behaved in the main, the discipline of nearly all the schools could be improved. Very little importance seems to be paid to the manners of the boys. “It would be a distinct gain,” writes Mr Shelton, •* if teachers were to give hints on such small matters as how to close a door, how to walk in the room without creating an unnecessary noise.” , Another inspector complains that “the collective lessons in morals and manners receive but little attention;” and others remark that they are given in a slovenly fashion. It may be said that these are matters which ought to be learnt at home, but nothing is more certain than that the teacher, if he has a proper mastery over his boys, should be able to supply all the deficiencies of ths home training. The annoying rudeness frequentlydisplayed by young men at railway stations and public meetings would bo appreciably lessened if they were taught habits of politeness in their early youth. Thera is no necessity for them to acquire the coolness of the caste of Vere do Vere, but they should be taught to behave with respect; towards others instead of with headstrong selfishness. The teacher receives them at an age when the habit is easily formed. It costs little more time to train the young idea than to let it run wild and suffer the childreu to act as the high spirits of a juvenile age prompt.

Wish somebody would invent, and patent,a process for purifying the commercially unclean. For the accumulation of evidence in connection with the prevailing gross commercial impurity is becoming overwhelming. There are oases monstrously shameful, utterly conscienceless, steeped in turpitude the most nauseons. And these are sealed books to the great bulk of the people: But there are some who are obliged to see and recognise, and yet are powerless to bring to book. And the weight of the knowledge of such villainous transactions is crushing, for it excites distrust of all and sundry. The directors of public companies could tell a tale if they liked, and bank managers and others of their kidney. No wonder they get crusty at times, and come to the conclusion that there is no honesty in villainous man. And newspaper fellows are cognisant of a deal of scoundrelism that they dare not give publicity to. Butittends to take away their appetite, and make them ■n ish themselves away over the water, in the sweet by-and-bye, or somewhere else, out of the whirl of tainted politics and rotten commerce. Will no one concoct a panacea for these ills ? If something is not done to exorcise this commercial devil, the sore will run right through society. The cry will be, “Corrupt all, corrupt all,” not one clean. Religion will degenerate into a hypocritical pretext for sinning, and the high court of justice descend to usury and the taking of bribes. And then a cataclysm that will both purge and destroy. There is one brewing in the United States, and at this end the material for one has begun to accumulate.

The want of application is the very 'weak spot in our colonial youth—less the girls than the boys though. The girls seem to more appreciate their opportunities ; they are inclined to revel in the expense of freedom before and around them. The woman’s rights, business is spurring them on. They are looking forward to their complete political emancipation, that has already found a commencement, and they mean to do credit to it. I ant sure I hope they will, and I also wish the boy® would show a little more grit, and make better stands when called on, for their own and other people’s credit. It was the want of application that placed the crack twenty-two of Wellington in such a ridiculous position the other day. They declined to take the rough l with the smooth; wanted it all smooth, and 807*

were nowhere in the rough parts. And I am very much mistaken if the battle for the scholarships, that was fought last week, will not be : found to have resulted in the discomfiture of'the boys again. The girls seemed to be the more proficient. What an enormous lark if the petticoats whip the breeches ! X say, Elise, how about the divided skirt new ? Better make it trousers right out, and have done with it.; -It is coming to thatffast. There promises to lie a melancholy superseding soon.

If it was true, and I have heard it on so many sides that I think there must be something in it, contempt the most lofty was displayed by the Australian eleven for their opponents. It is averred that seven out of the eleven left the balance of four to keep the wickets for them on the second day of the match, and went into the country to see things and enjoy themselves. They evidently had taken the exact measure of their opponents, and the result, it must be admitted, fully justified their action, audacious although it was.

There is a great falling off in the revenue returns, and the position would be exceedingly serious if the cause of that falling off were not due to the involuntary alteration of the incidence of taxation, by the improved habits of the people, and increasing favorable commercial conditions. We don’t drink so much dutiable liquor ; we don’t wear so much imported clothing. We are helping ourselves more and more every year, and therefore are not sending away so much gold and silver. And so the money is apparently available, and to meet deficiencies of revenue it has but to be applied differently, in a fiscal sense, to the heretofore well-worn fiscal channels. As long as the money is in the country we need not be apprehensive. But is not the falling off in the revenue returns partly due to draining the Colony of metal to meet interest, and so leaving the people with less to spend ? No question that the incidence of taxation will have to be altered absolutely next session, but with it must go the most rigid retrenchment, while the utmost encouragement ought to be given to the settlement of the land.

Wonder why the civic dignitaries go in for ornamental-! fence-making in barren places? What is the meaning of that iron and totara affair at the bottom of the battered embankment of the new Glenbervie Terrace cutting ? The raison d’etre of the thing is a profound mystery. Everybody “wants to know, you know,” and no one can provide a satisfactory solution. I defy a satisfactory solution. No one could invent one. It is beyond the reach of human power, is outside human possibilities. Unless, indeed, that the Council admits that jfc wanted to waste money, and thought it would be as well scattered about the site of the new fence as anywhere else. The melancholy part of it lies in the ’reflection of the crying need of other parts of the city for expenditure on those essentials, lighting, draining, and road-repairing, for which, it is averred, funds cannot be afforded. The only purpose that fence can serve, that I can see, is to be a standing reproach to . the Council until the totara rots away and the iron rusts through. A sort of an excuse is advanced that shunts the blame on the cemetery trustees. It is said that the erection of a £250 fence was one of tfoe stipulations in the contract that was made between the trustees and the Council in settlement of the land given by the trustees for the new road. It may be so,, but in that case there are two public bodies who want whipping, the one for insisting on the money being spent, and the other for spending it.

In that ever verdant melodrama “The Qctoroon” there is a fellow among the characters who persists in carrying about a photographic camera, all the while averring that “ the apparatus c-in’t lie.” He was right, for under proper manipulation, if there is one thing on this earth more truthful than another, it is a photographic apparatus. In fact, as has been proved of late by astronomers, the camera and lens reveal to us a lot that we had no idea of before. Something very similar, and equally Surprising, happened a short time since in a neighboring colony. There was an amateur photographer who delighted in pourtraying the human form divine, in all attitudes, and unencumbered by raiment. And the views he had collected of this object were diversified and remarkable. And he decided to go a little further by inducing a number of his cronies to engage in a tug of war, minus their clothes, while he would photograph them when the strain was heaviest, and all the muscles showed out in strong relief. And a nice secluded marine nook, quite out of the way of the “ madding crowd,” was selected as the trysting place, so that privacy might be absolutely assured. And the affair came off. A capital negative was taken, but somehow its development revealed more than was bargained for. The apparatus couldn’t lie, for it disclosed two female faces peering round the corner of an adjacent rock. They were those of the spectators of the show on free tickets.

She had heard of a celebrated French author, by name Enoile Zola, and in the unsophisticatedness of her sweet young nature, she thirsted to drink from his pure perennial spring. And she betook herself to the young man at the circulating library ; the young man who knew all authors and had read all books. A rude awakening from her happy dream was in store for her. She glided to his desk, and with her sweetest smile asked if there were any of Zola’s works in. The look of horror that gradually stole over his face fascinated her. His very hair seemed to creep and essayed to stand on end. “Zola, Emile Zola’s works,’’ lie gasped. “No miss, we are obliged to keep ‘ Ouida,’ and there we draw the line. Zola hasn’t put in an appearance here yet, thank God.” Crushed and terror-stricken at the enormity of the offence she had been betrayed -into, the poor young creature turned and fled. Asmodecs.