MEN AND WOMEN, AND MATTERS ALL AROUND.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1263, 14 May 1896, Page 31

MEN AND WOMEN, AND MATTERS ALL AROUND.

We are blessed, or cursed, just as you look upon it, with the presence in this city of a lot of young men who want to be General Booths, but who, so far, have only made confounded nuisances of themselves.

Those Heaven-aspiring youths get up revival, or praying, clubs after the Salvation Army stylo, and the first thing they do is to organise a band. The "band" usually consists of a bass-drum, cornet and trombone. Armed with these earsplitting and brain-torturing instruments of unharmony, they begin on Sunday mornings about 7.30 o'clock, and continue the infernal racket until noon.

And then, again, they make night hideous with tho same noisy and horrible discord. On wet Sundays they keep in their halls, and in good weather take possession of tho most prominent corners and streets. Why do not the police run them in ? We are a bad-boy-brass-band ridden town.

The latest novelty in the London concert halls is an exhibition of Roentgen shadow pictures with scientific explanations. This is, indeed, popular science.

Last week I had a good word to say about what woman has done for civilisation, and having thus proved my appreciation of, and interest in, them, I may claim permission to offer a word of warning. It is not, in fact, a warning of mine, but a direction of their attention to a subject that is attracting general attention in Europe and America.

The subject is a serious one, and for tho time being I shall bo serious. Well, then, tho British medical and educational world have been startled by the results of tho studies and experiments of one of the most eminont physicians of England, Sir James Crichton Browne, Avho declares that the presont system of higher education of women must inevitably ruin woman's beauty and result in the physical degeneration of tho human race.

Coming from such an authority, this is a decidedly alarming statement, quite enough to call " halt!" until we know all about it. Sir James goes so far as to say tho eil'ects have already defined themselves into a distinct disease which ho terms "anorexia scholastica," meaning tho excited brain troubles which afflict those young women who, as ho expresses it, " road Lucretius for recreation and cannot boil a potato." The general disturbance, ho says, may develop into migraine, epilepsy, insanity or life long debility.

The famous physician goo 3 on to point out the cerebral differences between man and woman, and quotes figures to prove that thero is a great excess of brain weight in favour of tho male, amounting to an average of G'ol ounces between the ages of twenty and thirty. It is no uncommon event, he states, to hear overworked school girls complain of thoir distracted mental condition. Tho aberrations may bo slight and go no further, but now and again they advance into that wild coma which corresponds with apathetic dementia.

Proceeding further, ho says we have cyclones of mania, or anti-cyclones of melancholia, hurricanes of morbid impulses, or tho settled bad weather of moral perversion. Tho frequency of suicides among school girls is referred to, and tho statistical fact stated that during the past twenty years the rate of increaso in suicide has boen much higher among women than among men.

Now, alarming results such as these, and not the old fogyism of old-lashioncd dullards, will put a handicap ;on tho race for higher education ; for man must remember hew much is at stake. Tho beauty of woman in our clumsy civilisation is the ono relief to the weary eye in a world of ugliness and sordidness. This man of scionce tells us that a system has boen inaugurated which will destroy this boauty, and tho question confronts mankind —Shall wo exchange tho beauty of woman for a racial inheritance of nervous degeneration ?

Or shall we not preserve those graces of form which have inspired the art of thu world, and which alone keep us from utter absorption in the sordid struggle for gain ? It has been the beauty of woman that through all tho ages has lifted men out of their baser selves, and transformed them from brutes to noble human beings, worthy of being made in the image and likenoss of God. It is all very well to say that woman owns herself and" may do as she pleases with heiself; but she does not own herself to the extent, of disqualifying herself for her noble and sacred mission. It is, above all things on earth or in heaven, woman's duty to be beautiful —to preserve and cultivate all the graces land charms with which nature has endowed her.

The British House of Lords is just now busying itself in an attempt to muzzle the press. This is true to all the traditions of this antiquated and fossilised body. By the provisions of a Bill which the Lords have passed in second reading a Judge is empowered to order what evidence ho pleases not to be published in the pross.

This would make every Judge, petty or otherwise, a censor and dictator of tho press, it was not for this that the English people struggled and brave men suffered, for liberty of speech and a free press, the crowning glory of British free-

dom. Of course, the Bill will bo thrown out in the House of Commons. Tho Lord Chief Justice, Baron Russell of Killowen, and Lord Glenesk opposed the Bill in the Lords.

There is scarely any need to support with any long argument a statement that we have quite a diversity of weathor in Wellington now and again. The changes are often not only sudden but extreme, and any invention that will warn us of these changes should be well received. Now, here is an idea. Why not use the telephone to give warning of a storm's approach ?

The telephone can really do so hours before the storm or change comes. It is the most sensitive instrument in use, and when properly constructed and adjusted is susceptible of extremely minute sounds Wo know that on account of its sensitiveness it is often used as an electrical testing instrument for locating leaks, &c. And this suggests the use of the telephono as a barometer.

This may be accomplished by placing in tho earth live or six yards from each other two bars of iron, split and separated at the lower ends, so as to incroaso the surface of contact, The earth at the face of these bais should be kept saturated with a solution of chlorhydrato of ammonia, application once a week being sufficient. Connect the two iron bars by wires with the telephono, and thero you have a veritable and reliable weather prophet.

How will it work ? Well, you have, of course, heard tho snapping sounds, like tho sizzling of grease in a frying-pan, in the telephone at times. This sound is always moat pronounced before or during a storm. This is what wo base the wholo thing on. By the aids described theso snapping or chirping sounds will bo heard in the receivers twelve or fifteen hours before a storm. They will gradually increase as the storm comes nearer, and will finally sound like the patter of hail on a metal roof. Previous to changes of temperature there will be a murmur like the distant song of birds. But I have told you enough for the present.

Cardinal Moran told a nice little story on Friday of what they say in Dunedin about Wellington. " They say," observed His Eminence, with a smile, " that Wellington is sitting in the lap of a volcanic range, likely to blow up at any moment, and that your harbour is only a hole in the ground caused by tho sinking of a crater." And yet Dunedin is finding its way to Wellington to do business, and it is welcome.

Wo are a very contradictory people—- " very advanced, you know," theoretically, but very, very backward practically. We have given women the ballot and all that, and yet there is only one law office in Wellington that will employ a young woman, although for much clerical work girls are vastly preferable to men on account of their neatness and freedom from that Mondayish feeling I referred to recently.

Hore is a good practical work for our women's clubs to go into. Let them open up now fields for female employment. The opening of ono such field would bo of vastly moro value to their sex than all tho lectures and discussions on political economy, Parliamentary procedure, tho science of legislation, &c, that they could got through with in a twelvemonth.

Let a delegation wait on tho lawyors and get them to employ young women as clerks, stenographers and typewriters. In many countries where tho right of suffrage is not granted, women are far in advance, in tho business of life, of our New Zealand women. Another proof that while theoretically in the van wo are practically in the rear. And this is a very practical ago, and getting more and moro so every day.

Some day 3 ago the Times told of a nobleman who was a chef in a restaurant. Tho fact is that ho is very far from being alone in the matter of his degraded position. Not to talk of tho forty and moro ex-kings and queou3 and claimants who are vagabonding all over Europe, there are very many scions of ancient houses now winning a livelihood as wage-earners and bearing their lot in a spirit of cheerful philosophy.

Among these 1 may mention (he Marqui.sdo 1J '.uimauoir, who has become a dusty miller and carries griot to a mill near Nantes. Viseomte do St Megrin is a cabdriver. Comto de St. Pol make. 3 out gas bills. Com to d'Antuoch is a gendarme. The Marquis de Poligny is an omnibus conductor. Viseomte do Mouselters is a clerkin a Customhouse, ami so also is Baron d'Aubiuals. lie-sides these, there are numbers of tho old French noVlity who are valets, waiters, and so en, all lino of domestic service.

Do you know 1 often think it is a pity that some of our fossilised public servants do not get strangled by their own red tape. The engineer who was hoisted by his own petard did not deserve his fate half so much.

Even Anarchy cannot get along without capital. The Turrit of Anarchy, a monthly revolutionary journal, announces that if a number of comrades do not come forward and subscribe the small sum of JB-1 monthly the Torch will have to go out, and tho world be left in darkness.

Now this shows the paradoxical position in which Anarchy stands boforo tho world. It does not believe in government or in capital, and yet without both there would be no money to carry on tho affairs of the world even the absurd doctrine of Anarchy could not be disseminated. The

Torch is a false light, and it is much better that it should go orit.

And, by the way, talking of the necessity of money, is it not strange how tho financial question has been a serious one almost from the very beginning ? It began amidst sorrow and trouble, for the very first mention wo find of money anywhere is in as sad a picture as exists in all history. The story is:

Sara was dead, and Abraham was sojourning in a strange land. He asked Ephron for the Cave of Macpelah as a burying place and insisted upon paying for it, "My lord, hearken unto me," said Ephron, " the land is worth 400 shekels of silver ; what is that between thee and me. Bury, therefore, thy dead."

But Abraham, we are told, weighed tho "100 shekels of silver current (money) with the merchant," and Sara was buried. And thus the first recorded use of money is ever the last need of it, for at the entrauco to the Cave of Macpelah we throw th.it burden down and go forth into the darkness unencumbered.

This story always makes me regret that wo have not some Abrahams in this land of long credits, to teach the sound business principle of cash down. And, too, Abraham would scorn to ask for a free newspaper or a " local " for nothing. Abraham, I wish you were hero. Wo could keep you cmployed for many moons in showing good examples.

Mr Gust, ex-editor of tho Pall Mall Gazette, gives it out that ,£500,000 have been guaranteed to establish a new Tory evening paper in London, of which he is to bo editor. Hut 1 doubt the story—in fact, do not believe it at all.

Mr Cust, evidently feeling " great" bocause ho was employed by a millionaire —for some peoplo do borrow " greatness " in that way- has got into the habit of talking flippantly of millions. With such men a large discount must bo made on thoir drafts of mouth.

Here is a nerve-shattering suggestion from Mr Labouchero's Truth. " Apropos of swords, I would suggest to those interested in our national defences that the present is a good opportunity to ascertain what proportion of our swords and bayonets is being ' made in Germany.' We all know the trick that our service swords and bayonets have of crumpling up in a moment of oinergency ; and ono can understand that at a time when international relations have been a little strained, as they have unfortunately been of late, a German manufacturer might fool that he was serving his country, as well as his own pocket, in introducing a littlo extra crumpling power into tho weapons for tho British Army and Navy." Just think, for half an hour, over tho possibilities that this suggestion lifts up before the mind.

Tho Glasgow Royal Hospital for Sick Children has a poor opinion of doctor?. In advertising for a gardener and an assistant house surgeon, it oilers to the gardener a salary of £,lO with free house, while tho medico is to get only jC3O with mere board and washing.

The Fat Contributor