EN PASSANT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 996, 3 April 1891, Page 19

EN PASSANT.

To study a nation, a people, a class, to understand something of their domestic economy, seo them at holiday times. One cannot judge a man’s sociability, his fitness for fusing with his fellow men while he is at work. See him at his leisure when he takes his walks abroad on such a day as Easter Monday. The excited debater, who strums and frets oil the rights of man in the intervals of work, shrinks into (he meek and mild paterfamilias patiently pushing a double-barrelled perambulator over the hills into Kilbirnie. He becomes for the nonce a sensible citizen. He shows himself in his true'colours'. The excitement of open-eyed, listening comrades is gone. Ha is not a rabid socialist—he is a father, a wife-guided husband. He putß on holiday attire, his surroundings are neat, clean, and respectable, and he shows what solid industry can_ do for a man in this Brighter Britain of the South. There is no time like a public holiday for proving the social condition of the people. A glimpse at the crowds in all directions on Monday last showed welldressed, well-fed people, with a fair supply of money in their pockets. Their happy-looking faces betraying no serious care—no hard pinch of bitter poverty. I sat on an elevated spot and watched the merry picnicers thoroughly enjoy themselves. Then I read from an English paper, which a late mail brought me, of how working people exist in the poverty stricken East End of London. It was a story of a “ crowner’s quest.” A haggard-looking man, starving for want of food, despondent because* he could not get work —a bare room in a squalid court. So bare that the only furniture was one old coal sack —not a chair, table, or even a box. The bare black boards and the empty sack. The wife confined of triplets, had two other tiny toddlers crying for bread. The Coroner heard that for the two previous days all the food that family had had was one farthing’s worth of tea, ditto of sugar, one half-penny worth of bread, and plenty of cold water, drank out of an empty salmon tin. The triplets died, starved to death. The jury—working men, mostly dockers—put their hands in their pockets and fished out 4s 9|rd. The Coroner added a few shillings. I read the story, and then gazed at colonial holiday makers. Oh ye gods, what a contrast. From Stewart’s Island to Cape Maria "Van Dieman the wise Mentors of the rising generation are disturbed because a newspaper dared to criticise their work. This is education at the Antipodes. Let us look at the other side of the world. In some schools in the United States, the teachers instead of disposing the humble efforts of the newspaper man to educate the world, they use him for their own ends, and the.study of a good journal is part and parcel of the curriculum. After children are grounded in the “ three ItV” the real foundation of all after education, the next move should be to make them intelligent. Not embalm them after the manner of Egyptian mummies, with dry, pungent spices and muscle withering natron, swathing them in tightly wrapped bandages, but galvanise them into living action full of points on the every-day world about them. So that when they merge into the battle of life, and have to tight their way through crowds, whose wits have been sharpened, by keen touch with men and manners they shall not be found wanting. From the pages of such a paper as the Mail an averdgo boy can be taught more of what he actually requires in after life to earn his living and make him a comprehensive sensible citizen than he could by a majority of the lessons now taught in our schools. From a newspaper he can be taught the geography of to-day. He can exercise his faculty for figures, and know how nations grow discontented and weak by the quotations for foreign loans. The burning words of living men, the eloquence of to-day on the allimportant questions of the present are far more suitable and profitable knowledge than the history of dead and gbne heroes. The development and the future prospects of Central Africa, as shown in the cable news, is far better reading for boys than the stories of Mungo Park and the singing women who ground his corn. A paper like the Mail is an encyclopedia of thought, a condensation of the average man’s library brought up to date. Knowledge of the past is food for leisure time. Knowledge of the present is what is required for building up the firm foundation of a youth’s future career, and to-days’ history is only found in the

columns of a good newspaper like the Mail.

Speaking of newspapers brings me to the illustrated journals of to-day. When Ingram first introduced illustrated blocks into that hitherto dry paper of his, he little dreamed to what extent illustrated newspapers would advance. The Illustrated London News has made a splendid fortune for its owners. Its opponent, The Graphic, pays enormous dividends. That there is money in this class of papers has tempted the appearance of a new weekly called “ Black and White.” A copy of the first issue has been cent me, and judging from a careful study I am inclined to think that it has come to stay. It has Harry Furniss on its staff of artists, and whatever issues from his facile pencil is always sure to be attractive. Throughout the illustrations are charming, a facsimile of a crayon drawing being something in advance of ordinary weekly literature, while the letter-press is fresh, bright, and entertaining. The founder and managing editor is Mr C. N. Williamson. It is run _by a company, of whom the Chairman is Sir J. D. Linton, and the Directors, Mr Justin McCarthy, M.P., Mr Oswald Crawford, and Mr Catnpbell-Praed.

The Countess of Jersey had scarcely been settled in her S3*dney home before she burst out into poetry, and launched out on a cold, cruel world, through the columns of the Sydney Morning, Herald, a “ pome ” on “ One People, One Destiny.” Margaret Elizabeli, Countess of Jersey, has many good points in her poetry testifying to her of being a colonial Governor’s wife. She has made a bold hit for popularity amongst Sydneyites in particular, and Australians iu general by the judicious manner in which she “ butters up ’ or “ softsoaps ” the colonials. In pretty verse, ever so much prettier than prose, she talk of their wrestling with doom and conquering their lots, and how they have won a place and a name. They have battled with ocean and tempest and atorm, with loneliness, hunger and heat, with nature in maßy a perilous form, and never acknowledged defeat. This sort of nice talk causes even tho average strongminded man to hold his head more erect and fancy himself a little king. It is just the kind of sweat talk to convert the .Sydney people to love tho ideal and the beautiful and worship the divinity which clings to the skirt of vice-royalty. Margaret Elizabeth is a woman wise in her generation. It was for something that she roamed a girl through tho romantic beauties of her home at Stoneand drank in legendary lore amidst the ruins of Leicester’s famous castle at Kenilwor’h, or thought of brave deeds of days gone by when- she picnicked at Guys Cliff. As a Warwickshire girl, born in the vicinity of Shakespeare’s home, tinctured with all the romance of that historical neighbourhood, her ideas naturally expand into poetic expressions. Not that she is a heaven-born poetess. Her printed effusion has too much of the jingle of the Rhyming Dictionary to betray the true divine afflatus. Yet no doubt every lady.’s album in New South Wales will contain a cutting of “ One People Una Destiny.”

Speaking of Shakespeare’s home re minds me of the death of a well-known personage connected therewith. Most probably there are many of my readers who on their trip to the Old Country considered it part of their duty to make a pilgrimage to the banks of the famed Avon and inscribe their names in the visitors’ book, kept in the house where the immortal Will was born. If so they will have remembered the chatty and genial lady guide, who told them the history of the house and the legends connected with it. Her name was Miss Annie Chattawoy, a name by the way very suitable, for a better “ ebatterway ” I never heard. From the time she took charge of you in the porch till she bid you farewell her tongue ran at the rate of knots. Not idle chatter mind you, but bright pungent information, something that you listened attentively to and remembered in days long after. What a monotonous life for a woman to lead, was my thought when I read of her death. For upwards of 30 years she has acted the part of describer to hundreds of thousands of' visitors at Shakespeare’s shrine. I remember asking her once for some opinion of hers respecting the crowds who utilised her services. “I like the Americans best,” she said; “they seem to appreciate one’s services so much better than English people do. Certainly they are very curious ; they want to know such a heap of things. They ask me the strangest questions about the house. One nice lady from Kansas, aFter being shown the room in which the poet was bom, wanted to know if I could tell her how his mother managed to feed him, as they had no feeding-bcttles in. those days, for she presumed that liia mother went out visiting or shopping and must have left him at home in bis cradle.” Dear old Chattaway.! What a host of amusing tales she could tell of her many visitors during her past 30 years’ experiences. She had chatted with kings and queens, princes and princesses, and dukes of the royal blood, down to pork dealers from Chicago, miners from Miller’s Flat, squatters from Hawkes Bay, and old identities from the West Coast goldfields.

Viscount C anley, eldest son of the Earl of Onslow, is as ardent a sportsman as hia illustrious father. His brief colonial experience has perhaps made him “ sort of careless like,” for in company with a Mr George Hartopp, of Sevenoaks, he went in pursuit of game. They found game, and tho police found them, and asked them rude questions, such as—— “ Where is your shooting license.” This question was probably answered by Blirugs of the shoulders and negative nods of the head, for neither the scion of the house of Onslow nor his companion possessed that useful and highly necessary adjunct to a sportsman’s outfit with them. There was no help for it, but the noble shooters had to toe tho mark at the Magistrate’s Court at Warminster (Wiltshire), where the presiding Justices of the Peace, Mr Holmes A’Court and Mr G. Ashley Dodd, iuflicted an exemplary fine (£10), the Chairman remarking that “the defendants were in a rank in life in which, instead of breaking the law, they ought to bo setting an example of obedience, and teaching other people to obey.”