ROUND THE CORNERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 889, 15 March 1889, Page 17

ROUND THE CORNERS.

Wonder how most of the funny stories originate ? No sooner do conditions serve than a reconteur is forthcoming. He has a story to tell, but always humorous or sarcastic, the pathetic never obtrudes. I read one in the flaneur column of a southern contemporary, not long since, about a Bishop and an engineer’s boy, a very palpable manufacture ; and but a few days ago, I heard another about the Chief Commissioner of railways—the conditions served you see and along came the yarn. The chief has been travelling lately and is not known by sight yet to all the railway employes, and so it happened, so ’tis said, that he appeared on a railway station platform just as a train was about to start and wanted to put some luggage in a van. “Hi !” cried the porter, “you can’t put that there without a label; must have everything labelled now these blessed commissioners are about. Get it labelled right away, the train is going to start.” “ Where can I get it labelled ?” was the mild response. “Oh, over there at that office, hurry up.’’ The chief did hurry up, and at the office found a couple of officials earnestly discuesing the chances of a certain racing cup about to be run. They did not seem at all in a hurry, but at last produced the required labels and asked what name. “ McEZerrow,” almost apologetically replied the new chief. It is said that the chief’s hurry-up was nothing compared to that of the two officials after the mild explosion. At any rate, the train got away with him and his luggage all right. Daresay he chuckled over it—that is, if it’s all true.

Our new Mayor is aiming at the practical in his administration, and ’tis well he does. He h;»8 becomingly tackled a burning question in his remarks about the excessive expenditure on charitable aid and the irresponsibility of those who conduct the expenditure. Some months ago I commented on what appeared to be the inordinate number of rations issued in a given time to paupers ; the apparent extravagance of the thing was not to be overlooked. And now we have a mass of figures presented by the Mayor which places the question beyond doubt. Either there is glaring extravagance in the administration of charitable relief in Wellington, or else Wellington is the champion pauper centre of the Colony. It has struck rue for s>me time past that the dispensing of relief has been conducted on exceptionally liberal lines and that the recipients wer& abominably numerous. It is possible t©> be too tenderhearted when brought faeq to face with apparent distress, but it is is impossible to be too discriminative in gauging, or attempting to gauge the genuineness or other of eases apply-, ing far relief.. In dispensing relief the muln object to. be kept in view should be the suppression of the necessity for relief, for the more distress is painist' ere d to the taster 5t grows. Hard-headedness in a dispenser of relief is more demanded than soft-heartedness. A dispenser ought to try with aff his might not to recognise the necessity for relieving until it is too palpable to be mistaken. As it is, lam sure there is. a great deal of imposture mixed up with, Wellington charitable relief, while the. latter is unduly fostered. That there is hereditary pauperism in this Colony there ia no doubt, hereditary from the Mother Oountvy, and it is. that chiefly which is troubling m. And. that pauperism is fast developing into is. settled occupation there is too much reason to apprehend- There is another proposition on font to establish another pauperial institution. Don’t do any such thing, say I. Think of thenumber of such institutions in this community of 600,000 people., Reckon from north to- south and the number is appalling. Professional pauperism: is growing and must be checked.

I said a few words the. other week about ton capital speech his Worship made over that nasty dirty water question. The preceding Mayor, Sam Brown, has immortalised himself in civic records by his practical action in connection with the city refuse and the electric lighting. And he by no means closed up all the avenues to immortality. Mr Duthie has entered upon one already in tackling the charitable aid question, and there are two others open to him, viz., the ensuring at all times; and under all conditions (barring catas-

trophes), pure wholesome water to the citizens, and putting the drainage of the city in thorough good order. That special report we published last week about open drains at Newtown was just sickening, and the cause demands immediate obliteration. The Destructor will work wonders, but it can’t dispose of such nuisances as those.

So there is a prejudice against New Zealand wheat, is there ? At least, we are told so by telegram from Sydney, but it did not say on what the prejudice was based. One writer has volunteered an explanation in attributing abnormal dryness to New Zealand wheat, whereas and in truth it’s just the other way about. There is really no room for prejudice against New Zealand wheat. The wheat is good enough but not so dry and firm as the sundried"wheat of semi-tropical Australia, and it is therefore not so profitable to bakers and others, because it will not absorb near so much water, pound for pound, but that it is wholesome and good no one ean gainsay. .At any rate, it is bringing up a lot of athletic young people of both sexes in this Colony. Man for man and woman for woman we can hold cur own with any part of the great Australasia, and can compare, without apprehension, with native-born Englishmen. The wheat is good enough anyhow, and, by the piper, is going to fetch its price during the next twelve months or more. Time we had an innings.

Garden pilfering is in the ascendant just now. Young New Zealand is on the prowl o’ nights to the great detriment and exasperation of the owners of fruit trees. There has been some plundering of late, and in one instanoe two precocious youngsters about five and eight years respectively were caught red-handed in a gentleman’s garden in the broad glare of afternoon. They were handed over to their parents by a policeman to be soundly switched. These, however, were not the two children a disconsolate father was looking for last week. Meeting a citizen in a sort of bye-road, this party asked if he had seen two children about five years and eight years, who had absented themselves from parental board and lodgings. “ Can’t do anything with them, said the father despondingly. “They are beyond my control, but the mother frets about them.” Daresay she does, but what a precious pair of parents. Two children .of five years and eight years, and quite beyond control!. "What, sort of a man and what sort of a woman are thefather and mother? What right had they to enter upon the responsibilities of matrimony if they weren’t prepared to fully control their children, and at all risks. There must be something detrimentally degrading in the home surrounding or the children would not deteriorate so. A very serious screw loose in the parents somewhere. Such parents ought to be made amenable to the law. If they can’t, or won’t, control their children in the best interests of the State, the State must control them.

Somebody wants to know why there are so many alarms of fire, and what is the cause of false alarms and how it is there are so many incipient fires. I know of one cause in the bad habit that obtains of depositing ashes and cinders in wooden boxes close to wooden build ings in small back yards. There is a deal of colonial coal used that maintains incandescence as long a 3 there is a particle of cinder left. Put in a box it will smoulder for a week. And when a bit of a breeze arises something ignites.

Wellington people like music and the taste does them infinite credit. But they don’t like paying for it; at least, I should think not from last Sunday’s record, which tells us that good music, backed by a laudable charitable object, only succeeded in coaxing some £l3 10s out of the pockets of between three and four thousand persons who attended at the Basin Deserve to listen to Gray’s band and contribute a mite in aid of a widow and her children. Say 3500 people at a shade over three farthings per head and we have the money, £l3 10s. This i 3 certainly rather fine cutting. Surely, on such an occasion three-pence per head might be depended upon. At three-pence the demonstration of last Sunday would have produced enough to have really rejoiced the widow’s heart. As it was the affair degenerated into something akin to a cheap musical outirig. iknd folks went home afterwards and took their teas and plumed themselves on their ability to appreciate good music when it was to be bad for nothing. As for the widow, she might go hang.

That Astridge affair was both nasty and humiliating. It disclosed practices which I have, on former occasions, denounced as most criminal to the welfare of our race or any race. Maternal functions are not to be tampered with except at the gravest peril. That .malpractice had been resorted to was evident enough, and it is au open secret that such practices are too, too common, and names are mentioned that would astonish my readers if I only made ’em known. It is for the State to take the matter up, and bring into play every deterrent means that may be legitimately used. Hedge such practices about with (lire penalties, and silly women would shrink from incurring them, anil wicked people would discontinue living by them. . It does seem to me that the police were singularly lukewarm all through the affair. "Why did they not have the woman’s dying deposition taken ? Everything was left to the doctor, •who behaved splendidly. And now it is an open verdict. Wonder if the detectives will succeed in closing it? It is a capital opportunity for them to show they really are of use in a serious pinch, Asjiodeus.