Daily Circulation, 1500. The Oamaru Mail. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1891.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5084, 21 September 1891, Page 2

Daily Circulation, 1500. The Oamaru Mail. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1891.

"In the spring," says the poefc, "the young man's "fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Whether this statement. can be offered as explanatory of the prevailing tendency to lunacy or not, we leave it to our readers to decide. Certain it is, that regularly at this season of the year, when the tardy winter gives place to the lusty young spring, mankind developes a psychical intensity, which, when carried to excess, leads him into extremes of action tending to disorganise the community. "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet," are the trio of whom Shakspeare, with gentle irony, speaks in the same breath. Many people contend that the three are synonymous. We commit ourselves to no opinion; but if such synonymity exist, it is in kind and not in degree. The lover, like the poor, we have always with us ; the poet, alas ! too often ; but the lunatic is of a somewhat rarer occurrence, and in the present dearth of news he developes into an. actual incident. Lunatics, we repeat, like rhubarb and daffodils, are seasonable, and the three species above mentioned have been brought prominently under our notice. Item —We have received a volume of verse for review which sufficiently establishes its author's claim to the title under consideration. Item—We have had handed to us a love letter found in Thames-street, which even more fully demonstrates the prevalenceof incipient insanity, and which, owing to the employment of " pet" names in both the address and the signature, we are prevented from forwarding to its owner. Item—The local police have, in their charge, a poor unfortunate who attempted to cut his throat at Hampden with a small rusty pocket knife, and whoso anguished entreaty to his guardians this morning was to be told the form of address used in speaking to the Governor, to which was added the statement that the Governor had been closeted with him all night and he had been unable to speak to him through ignorance of the proper form of address. Here are our three instances, and it would be hard to say which is the most pitiable—the poor poet whose turgid verse limps languidly through 50 pages of fine type, the melancholy lover who is smitten with "a sickness full of woes," or the unfortunate whose moody madness finds expression in a pathetic illusion. Whether the blushing spring, or the lady moon, is responsible for these varied phases, we cannot say ; but to the philosopher and the student of humanity we present the three as something more than a coincidence.