PASSER NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9343, 6 February 1892, Page 5 (Supplement)

PASSER NOTES

(From the Otago Witness.) Donedin publicly regales the Governor 01 Saturday night, ana having happily escapee certain shoals and shallows that at firs threatened to wreck it. the dinner bids fai: to be a big success. It is all very right anc proper for the double-distilled extract oi Dunedin gentility to,take possession of hie sacred perw^ and carefully fend him" from contact yt\%\x the coarse clay of us oommon citizen;,,, js^ WQ oa it comes to a public *"Ciner numbers are indispensable, and we ■can't be done without. He would of course be more at home'with personages of bis ■own set, don'tcher-know—dining, for instance,- on Monday at Mr A's, in company with Mesrs B, 0, and D; on Tuesday «t Mr B's in company with Messrs A, 0, and D; and so on through all the combinations and permutations of A, B, 0. and D. But alas* a public dinner is quite another thing! and the esoteric circle of social light and leading must c'en consent for once to his toeing suffered to eat his soup with peopte of the- baser sort -suoh as tnayore, .members of Parliament, news.paper scribes, and in fact anybody who ■can raise a black coat and half a guinea. Indeed I hope to be there myself, and the -Lord willing the editor shall pay for it in next week's Notes. And despite the frowns of the very elect I look forward to a pleasant evening. Humour hath it that Judge Williams J8 to make a speech, and I credit him with a native gift for after-dinner oratory—a genial suggestion of humour that gently promotes tha action oE the gastric juices and lightly lends itself to the intellectual combustion of the postprandial cigar. Then the Governor himself has a reputation that I hope he will live up to. I have a dim remembrance of a very happy effort of his at the time o£ the Exhibition, and/that the airy nothing of. an after-dinner speech should Jive so long-^-and live by virtue of its lightness--is the highest compliment I can pay it. Between the Governor and the judge— not forgetting, of course, his Worship the Mayor, who, in his way, is supreme—we ought to have what the Americans call a real good time, and so mote it be. ■ ■ .. .....: ■••■ ■ .. . ~..

There is no pleasing Mr Pyke, and I fear tne that age with his stealing steps hatb o«gnn to make innovation on his erstwhile genial bonhomraiev For how else -explain the acidity of his letter to the Times the other day t A rehash of an old, old* jest, he querulously cills my veracious chronicle—a yarn, a veritable fossil, a^-ahem—a story however splendide menda®, undl, Civis, am «> be laughed at. with Homeric laughter by all Central Otago for telling it! In tuf innocence and kindliness ofc my heart I' thought to do him a Service, and see how he requites me! Ie was kind I offered, but he'll not heat me. Mr Ballance, as all the world Jcnows, gets Passing Motes by special wire tevery Friday* and considers them in Cabinet every Saturday, And those call-i are still on the edge of a razor, mark you fiat. What then more likely to favourably in press the .•Premier: and his colleagues i han my reminder of wbat Mr Pyke can do and dare ■?or the cause he makes his owu 1 Lip-serv-ing loyalty is cheapwheuLegislatv eCouncil oalta are in tee air. What Mi B^lansC" wants is loyalty supplemented by, ahem— a stomach, so to speak. Now, M,c-¥yke has both,: His loyalty has bejn-^f, p roo f ever Biupe the Government tiok office, bu<; his stomach, though proqjj n e n t enough to us, Danedimtes who see b.i m i n his habit as he lives, may; perchance1; have faded ■fro<n-the memory of Ministers who -dwell away in the North.: Out of sight, out bf mind you Snow; and so thinking, I deemed I was promoting the public good by renricdiog the Cabinet that be possessesrone-and what its potentialities. ; Majb, t I was : wrong. At this delicate juncture the best meant tenders of assistance may bo misplaced, and as f br;inine Mte willhr.ve it, so.; if not, adieu ;'■' ' And tor m^f love I pray you: wrong me not.

Am I a Liberal J Cela dij/end.. In Eng* wt .a ma^' mi £ht be a R«iical, in Eussia a Nihilist, y?.t come to 'New Zealand add hesitate himself even a Liberal. I have all my life supposed myself to be a Liberal of tbe liibe^uisv but since the name has been appropriated by Socialists and other unclean animals; I repudiate ir. What's in a name ? Justice, fairneßß, moderation are good things in themselves, call .them what you will. It hashappenei to the word " Liberal," as to the^raod. old name of gentleman;" to be ■\- ' .Defamed by every charlatan. v / Andsoiled by all ignoble tise. ,V ••■^■^i^d^Jlif'-We^i^'notjjßspotnable.loj; «;; we need 'cot take it: very greatly tc nt-att; we must simply "grin and bear it. Bpme Liberals of the old type find this Philosophy difficult. One of them, for example, writes to me as follows:— : • ' |n Isaac Disraeli's " Curiosities of Litera ftfte" I find the following:—" It is curious to SgOTe-thatas an adjective the word 'liberal^ |®|1 formerly in our language a very opposite ||§sining.to its recent one. It was synonymous liSf 1. 'libertine' or 'licentious.' We have H|/ liberal villain' and 'a most profane and o%erah counsellor,' and .we-find one'declaring, have spoken too liberally.'" In future if ||re.hear a Socialist demagogue applying the |term "^liberal" to himself, we must underpxand _it to be used in the above-quoted sensed ■ - ; : .-.■•..'■_.. ; ; For my own part I don't find much comfort In this. The name "Liberal" is a good name, but the trouble is that it has bsen feloniously appropriated by people whb'have no right to it, and. who delight themselves by dragging it in the. mud. The original owners must just wait for their chance of reclaiming ir,- a chance that is sure to come, —and in the meantime must contrive to get along without it. - ,

A correspondent sends me the folU>wingj— You seem to find pleasure, my dear Civis, in all things remarkable, and therefore I venture to draw your attention to the'case of the-two young ladies who have just won University Junior Scholarships; I find my excuse for referring to the Misses Cruickshank in the fact that ladies, as weU as-men, when they make themselves in any degree famous, become to that extent public property. The ladies- in question are young enough to, forgive me for saying that not so many years ago, somewhere in the seventies, they came, both of them together, as a New Year's gift to a certain household in Otago; and a handsome New Year's gift too! In their very birth the Misses Cruickshank showed that excellence of judgment which, judiciously cultivated, has this year made them duxes of the Girls' !High School and winners of, Junior University Scholarships. As it happens, they chose to be bom, of all the. days in the year, on that day which gave them the best chance for various •cholarships. At. the end of 1885 they each won a Junior Board Scholarship. Now, by a regulation of the Education Board candidates! fur Junior Scholarships must be under 13 on the :31st December of the year in which the competition is. held—that is; any competitor whose 13th birthday falls on the 31st December is too old to compete. Had the Misses Cruickshank therefore been born a day earlier they would have kad to compete a year earlier, and so mostprobably would have been out of the running. Their birthday was equally well timed for carrying off Board Senior Scholarships, which they did from the Palmerston State.School in 1887. At the end of last year,, as you know, they were bracketed as duxes of the Girls' High School; and now they win University Scholarships. How far they will twin their honours at the university remains to be seen. So far you ; will allow that it was a tolerably handsome New Year's gift that came to the Otago household somewhere in the seventies. I understand that henceforth when Palmerston peopi j do swear, it is to be by "Gemini!" This is a remarkable story, an instance of intellectual parallelism that will not eas.il v be paralleled. As my correspondent.reminds n.=, the end is not yet. In sporting parlancu the Cruickshank girls have " made arecord "; we shall now be curious to- see whether they are able to live np to it. But why should they nob? Nature seems to have made each the exact duplicate of the other—doubtless -because pleased with the typo, and a good type it is, evidently; what more natural than thoir regularity of performances ? Barring accidents, why shouldn't they keep it up 7 Logic is logic, and in that conviction I shall continue to look out for the double event of tbe Cruickshank twins as an inevitable fixture of the academic year.

Whilst on the subject of twins—ana I beg to point out that it wasn't I.who introduced it—l may be permitted to note the perplexing event lately reported in the baronial halls of Clancarty. The Countess of that ilk, known before her promotion as Lady Dunlo, and better known before that as Belle Bilton of music hall fame, has outdone all her forme* outdoings by bringing foroh twin sons. They arc her firstborn (as Conntess of Clancarty) and, being twins, are, or ought to be, equally heirs to the title and estates. Here is a pretty kettle of fish 1 How will they deal with it? I suppose that similar calamities in tilled families must have happened before, bui I never heard of one. In earlier times the duplicate heir would no doubt have been : smothered promptly as superfluous and unnecessary, but in the Clancarty case both seem to be still ex- ■ tant. Mother and twins, for anything the cables

tell us ta the contrary, are all alike " doing well." What isto be the end then? I shall be glad if somebody learned in the law will kindly throw a little light on what must seem to the lay intelligence a knotty question. It has just occurred to me, by the way, that Esau and Jaoob were twins, and that Esau had the birthright, though he didn't succeed in keeping it, There it a priority and a posteriority in twinship, therefore, but for the life of me I can't see that there ought to be.

According to an English society paper tall girls are "coming in," the girl of the period amongst the upper ten thousand tending more and more to length, As seen in ball rooms and on tennis lawns, she is often a veritable Amazon Divinely tall, and most divinely fair. The reason is.that ber habits of life, except during the London season, are generally wholesome and good. In the country she is much in the open air; she doesn't drink, and she doesn't smoke. These last are only negative virtues, but it is by them that- she gets the advantage over her brothers and her masculine cousins, who, in comparison with her gigantic proportions, are often a race of pigmies. Yes, it is a melancholy fact that whilst girls are getting taller men are getting shorter. The Jin de siecle yoang' man of London ballrooms is often a puny creature, not up to his sister's shoulder. Premature smoking has stopped his growth. At any rate, that is my expl matron of the fact, if fact it be. Boys smoke, girls don't. Personally I have no prejudices against tobacco—in fact I am a smoker mjself; but I can't believe that smoking is good for growing boys. Growing boy.-*, forsooth I—if they take to smoking thef don't gro«y. And so it comes about that we aie threatened with an era of tall women and short men. In the twentieth century the women's right question will have settled itself quite naturally. Physical force will have gone over to the other Bide of the house, and women will rule in the senate as in the domestic circle by. right of the strongest. Young men who don't like the prospect will {lease signify the same by putting their Dipes out.

Sandymount, 2nd February '92 # Mr Editor,—Dear Sir: Will you kindly miert this forecast and you will oblige me. I wish you to understand that I intend to give you occasional forecasts under the norn deplume of " Scientist."—Yours, &c. ' The editor passes this on to mf, Forecast and all, and I am puzzled to know the reason why. Does he mean to cynically suggest that scientific progtosticatiens are calculated* to lighten the specific gravity of this column —aerate, it, so to speak? " Credat Jiideus Apella, et Vincentius Pyke non ego—lex Jews,: infidels, and Turks believe such a thing, not you or. I, gemle reader. Rather would one incline to, the theory-that he wants the Forecast;,;, to. get.;;v the; widest possible, publicity,, and therefore desires me to lend it the pinions of a Passing Note that it mayfly withal But I cannot accept the, responsibility. I am glad to be al>!e to assure my country friends on,-the "authority of the sage at Sandyjnauntf that this autumn Qu-fche: whole will probably be a toe ani -settled,one,:giving the farmer little cause/to fear, if his 'cropsare safely in. -But I am not prepared to lift the veil and unsettle the public mind by telling them of the evil that is to come. This much onlywill I darkly hint—if next winter there be gales and icebergs in the South Pacific, " rendering it dangerous for vessels to fall m with them"; if, about midwinter we have snow in Otago, wish stormy and blustering weather whsn it blows strongly from the south-west; then " Scientist" haalnot forecast in yam. And he is practical as welt as prophetic, for he concludes with a caution which I prict for the benefit of whom it may concern: Caution: Remove all beds as far as possible from tall and shaky chimneys. Get your crops secured as soon as possible so as riot to betaken J aback m case of bad weather, as there is a possibility of such. The pregnant wisdom of these remarkable injunctions shows what prescience may be attained by a long and rigorous study of the sciences at Saudymoutit, aud heightens our impatience for Forecast No. 2. Civis.