Men and Women and Matters all Around.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 2824, 20 May 1896, Page 2

Men and Women and Matters all Around.

I do not mean to impute that there is any relationship between the beggar who got upon horseback and rodp to the devil and our young clerks and salesmen who mount hired bicycles to float their figures through the streets for the admiration of the fair sex.

But there is a real affinity between what happens in both cases at times. For instance, two young bloods, who grace a certain well-known drapery store, started out last Wednesday on hired machines. They had taken a few lessons around the rocks, and thought they were perfect. Then they ventured down into the city, where they displayed their boy spinster forms in great style.

At the Thorndon Esplanade the catastrophe came. First, one went down with a crash and a smash. The other boy spinster rode, tilt on, to tho rescue, and came to grief over the heap of mingled machine ruins and a crushed body. It was a sorry sight to see the two boy spinsters stealing along the streets in the dusk of eve with the ruins of tho machines on their backs. Damages, £6 to one bike, and AlO to the other. Things do not seem the same to the boy spinsters any more.

With all my heart I give Lady Stout credit for one good poke at her opponents. “With all its outcry against the Chinese,” she said at the Soutnern Cross Society meeting, “the Anti-Chinese League, which had been in existence for more than a year, had as yet not succeeded in growing even a two-penny cabbage.”

That is quite true and to the point. There are, X fear, many among us like the American Sand Lots orator, who, in the midst of a fiery denunciation of tho “ Heathen Chinee,” was interrupted by the question “ Col., who washed your collar — was it not a Heathen Chinee ? " The Colonel had to own up, but explained, “ Ob, that’s all right. Like a sensible man of course I do not allow my political principles to interfere with my comfort or economy.”

I fear it is the same with us. We damn the Chinaman, but buy his cabbages all the same, and will continue to do so as long as he gives them to us a halfpenny cheaper in the hundredweight.

While admiring a very fine book-case filled with handsomely-bound books the other day, I remarked to the mistress of the house, “How well yon keep your books.” “ Yes,” she replied, with pride, “ I take care of my hooks. I carry the key of that book-case myself, and it has not been opened in two years.” There was the careful housewife for you.

Tho world has been so busy with Mr Joseph Chamberlain as a politician that it has overlooked the literary side of Joe’s character. Mr Chamberlain is almost as great a reader aa Mr Gladstone. On his book-shelves may be found such historians aa Macaulay, Froudo, Lecky, Napier, Alison, Freeman, and others.

His collection of light literature is very extensive, showing great catholicity of taste. Several shelves are devoted to Frouoh and Italian literature, while the poetic collection ranges over Chaucer, Spencer, Milton, Byron, Tennyson, and oven Alfred Austin.

I do not think the Czar of Russia cares much ono way or tho other about the immense preparations being made for his coronation, except perhaps that he may feel an uncomfortable dread that the Anarchists may make it tho occasion for an attempt on his life. Judging from the private life of the Czar, I am persuaded that these .£3,750,000 will be wasted on what will be a very idle show to him.

In private circles it is well known that tho present Czar did not want to succeed his father. He loved a beautiful Jewess much better thau he did empire, and had ho been allowed his own way we might have had the story of Ahasuerns and Esther repeated, for he really did want to marry her. He even offered to waive his right to tho throne in favour of his younger brother George.

But George is consumptive, and Nicholas had to give up his dream of a quiet life with the lovely Jewess to uphold the “ divine right of Kings.” Nicholas’ inclinations lean more to beauty’s boudoir than to the camp of Mars. It will be romerqbere4 that when in Japan a native tried to cqt his head open. Tho “ official ” account was thatthe Japanese hate strangers so !

And by the way it is remarkable how weak are these “ divine things"—.the royal rulors of Europe. Emperor William of Germany, credited with being a strict family man, was kept from attending tho fetes in Rome last year because he is a very susceptible man, and Queen Margarite of Italy is a very beautiful woman. Ho has been quite fascinated by Margarite’s pharms, and cpuld hot hide the effects of that fascination even among courtiers, much to the embarrassment of tffe Queen.

And, then, the late King of Holland was a wretched drunkard, ex-King Milan was devoted to wipe and women, and only looked upon Servia as a place to support his evil course, The King of Belgium is so notorious that cabmen in Brussels can point out the house of his mistress, and all Paris knows the name of the Qa.fi Chautant artist who enthralled him.

And then there are Prince Eudolph of Austria, whose mysterious death was tho sensation for weeks, and Prince Baldwin of Belgium, whose funeral followed a week after a man discovered him paying improper addresses to his wife,

These are some of the '* divine ” things on whom millions of the peopled money are spent in coronations and other relics of barbarism and the dark ages. It makes me very tired to think the world has not yet got beyond this. The Fat Contributox,