PUBLIC OFFICIALS OF OTHER DAYS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6704, 30 December 1908, Page 2

PUBLIC OFFICIALS OF OTHER DAYS.

VANISHING PROFESSIONS. "Oyez! Oyez! ! Oyez! ! ! This is to give notice”—but alas! the voice o£ our old friend, the town crier (says a Home exchange), is . lost in the clang of the car-bell or in the shriller sound of "Evening paper/' He was a picturesque sight in his crooked hat and cloak with heavy cape, his bell in his hand. True that oftentimes his voice was not coherent, and that his footsteps were feeble, but ho stood for a simple life. Official local proclamations, intimation of a dance, of the loss ol someone's canine treasure, or of the sale of some excellent merchandise—all came alike to his bell. Here and there in remoter England his office still lingers; but in such of our greater cities, whore they ever existed, there are now but superannuated criors, pensioned into picturesque sinecures. The last of their line, lineal descendants of a race going hack far beyond the first English newspaper, they are worthy of a moment's consideration before we have to change the present participle for the past. Would that’ we had access to a bundle of reminiscences of past criers, long, long before popular education, when our very advertising had to be oral. What r, wonderful world*, where no poster called to our attention the merits of blank’s cocoa or of double-blank's tea ! No printed intimation that the valuable household furniture would bo offered for sale by auction. It was the town crier, who was employed. Little use to paste up copies of Royal proclamations, declaring war, announcing peace, demanding surrender of serfs. If so, the town crier no doubt proclaimed the glorious restoration, the equally glorious revolution, tho death of one Sovereign, the accession of another, this big victory and that minor defeats* and all cheek by jowl with the loss of Mistress Dominoe’e cow, or tho arrival of winter fashions at th© sign of the Grasshopper ! "Five shillings reward. Lost, lost, lost/’ It would be a small enough recompense for tho quaint stories those gallant old criers could tell us were their lost iiersons. to be recovered. Make haste if you desire to see a town crier; they are a vanishing race. Yet a little while; and that great organ, the Press, will have overwhelmed -them for ever. * If modern methods of publicity have ((compelled the disappearance of the crier, they have nothing to do with the extinction of the night watchman. The "Charley" of Peel’s time has-long since ceased to be, but there are still one or two places (more distinguished for rurality than for aught else besides their watchmen) where the night watchman has still to complete his vanishing. "Four o' the clock, and a fine, frosty morning.’’ It is a cheery sound, reminding us of life near us in -watchful and solitary night watches. Have we gained much by their cessation from work? That more modern individual, the knocker-up, is, too, a-vanishing. He it is who, with long pole taps' lightly but persistently at many bedroom windows, summoning ©lumberers to a new day, to new endeavours. The cheap alarum clock turned out by the thousand, and to pattern, is taking his place. THE VANISHED VESTRY CLERK, i The vestry clerk is gone, merged into

the town-clock of many Metropolitan boroughs, but there is another parish official who silently sinks out of our eight—the beadle. Oh, tho pomposity of that gorgeous person, with his staff and bis breeches! His name summons up tho imago of little Oliver Twist and tho honvan of the great man at tho boy's preposterous demand. The breeches aro Jong since vanished, but the office still survives in a very few of those palatial Union-houses to which we are by now accustomed.

It is all one complex evolutionary process. The parish beadle makes way for tho workhouse master, hived in a gorgeous and expensive building at the cost; of tho ratepayers. And if wo examine the master and his home for a momoiiti in the light of present political happenings, we shall see tho possibility of a. newer vanishment. Old-age pensions will doubtless ere long render the workhouse unnecessary, ami our poor and aged will be housed with greater privacy. To assist at a sale hy auctipn of tho “Unions* would be joy indeed: and we shall substitute the ‘appropriate pension official for the workhouse master and the relieving officer. Already* there, is a trend in such a desirable direction caused t by the amalgamation of poor law districts and the shutting up of a few poorhouscs. CHURCH BEADLES. There is another kind of beadle who is silently vanishing from our midst, unwept and unsung. Ho Blonds, or used to stand, outside the main entrance at many of our parish churches. His congregations were of the well-to-do middin classes. Arrayed in silk hat, adorned with a band of gold lace, a frock coat with many brass buttons and some red piping, he grasped an over-, large malacca cane with a heavy brass top, to tbo awa and terror of tbo gamins of tho neighbourhood. On special days ho used to support a button hole of huge proportions, adding mhoh to his self-import-ance. At times ho would condescend to find a seat for the stranger, but bo frowned rather on all but tbo regular attendants. 'To the renters of pews ho was all civility, with much touching of his hat; and lie officiated at weddings with a paternal air. Alas, ho vanishoth from the land. Our own particular church.-bendle, nwc of our boyhood, jirido of our congregation, still remains, but liis line is doomed, and he knows it. Ho is contemptuous of the neighbouring edifices who' content themselves with darkrobed vergers; of those lost places where a mere usher is employed, equally efficient if less gorgeous to view, ‘ho is openly scornful; but he fears them nono the less. They are in process of filching his place and tho places of such ns he. His was the grandeur of tho solid respectability of tho mid-Victorian period. HANGING CUSTOMS. We are losing touch with it; wo have cut ourselves oil from it in tho past docade, and from much of tho horrid convention, which belong to it. We aro no longer ashamed to discuss questions of economy and expense. The re-arrange-ment of .our places of worship, tho excision of the old-fashioned high pows, has made the beadle look too worldly and so ho has almost, vanished. It is a less -romantic society that in which wo live, and in matters of ceremony wo are undoubtedly a plainer, a simpler people. Tho grave decorum of a tail-coated usherer-to-seats fills the place of the erst, while beadle. It will not be long before tho door-keepers at other places vanish likewise, save at Government offices. Already there is settling in a tendency to leave the doors of banks and other institutions to take care of themselves; indeed, in our groat provincial cities tho janitor is almost non-existent. ASSIZES AND THE PICTURESQUE. We have lost a good deal in tho way of the picturesque, however. Consider the old days when the Judges of Assize went circuit. They rode horseback or drove iu state with a dignified retinue. They were met at tho country border by the Sheriff in brilliant uniform, with his marshal and his javelin men. Tho real Judges of Assize have long since disappeared. Hero and there the old ceremonies obtain to a fuller extent than at other places, but shorn of their quaintest and most pleasing feature®. Nowadays tho very prosaic railway station is the moeting-plaeo of the Ring’s representative and the local officer of law and order. Dignity is forsaken. In tho old days great would have been thewrath of the Judges had they not been met; if even a single javelin man wero missing. Whore is now tho javelin man? Ho lurks in the person of.the occasional trumpeter or two who blow a meaningless fanfare to herald tho Judges as they drive to the local hotel, and even this duty in most places devolves upon a couplo of stout-lunged policemen clad in the blue cloth of their tribe!

With stern purpose we are.cutting out all that is quaint and ceremonious from our institutions. "Idle ceremonies." wo scoff. Yet peradventuro wo or our posterity may „awako to the fact that ceremonies frequently have an inner significance; then shall we regret that we have allowed so many institutions, with theix picturesque officials, to vanish.