PASSIM ROTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10239, 22 December 1894, Page 2

PASSIM ROTES.

(From the Otago Witness.)

NOTHiKCr but oar insatiablo appetite for holidays saves from extinction the 1S Merry Christmas "of onr forefathers. All the oldworld associations of the season are perishing. The carols, the waits, the holly and mistletoe, Santa Clans, and the " Christmas box" make sonis shov? of lingering, baU ashamed of themselves, but they are bound to go in the end; a New Zealand Christmas will soon be as ignorant of these as of

The yule-clog sparkling keeu with frost, the icicles at the eaves, and the landscape iolded deep in snow. Homo gatherings have liscome home scatterings. Everybody gets out of town who can; the girls are at the seaside, the boy 3 are shooting, fishing, cainpiiig out; everywhere tha schoolmaster is abroad — cheap - tripping to Australia or on a walkiug tour among the lakes and mountains; young New Zealand, released from his salutary control, returns to Nature and runs wild in woods. It is the climate; Cbristmss at midsummer is unthiDkabla; nobody can drink spiced drinks and digest heavy pudding with the therjnometar at 90 in the shade. There remains, nevertheless, the possibility of being merry on the due date notwithstanding the chsnged circumstances, and to be merry at this season rises to the rank of a moral duty. Let «3 renounce politics, forget the baleful existence of Seddon and Co., refuse to remember the proficiency of oar staple products in the art of sinking, dismiss all thought of tradesmen's bills, and begin to be merry! It will help i£ we provide ourselves with the Christmas number of the Witness. For my own pait, es in former years so now, with that spirit of charity proper to the season, I forgive all tho people I have injured, and call upon all and sundry to make for themselves a Merry Christmas and a Happy Stfew Year.

It is impossible to feel any keen interest in Che progress of the Chinese-Japaness war. The very names of the combatants are against it. Somebody ha 3 bsen trying to put this vrar into poetry, with results like the follow-

There were Li Hung Chung Ami Xi Wun Lung And bold Chee Chi Clioo Cham, With Chang Wong Clung, And Sam Moy Sin;,

And iicrce Wall Wee Vv"oo Warn. What's in a name 2 We ought to be superior to prejudices based upon these airy nothings; vre ought to be, but are not. Deeds of flening do by Li Hung Chung and Xi Wun Lung, by Admiral Ting, and Field-marshal Xamagata, are, for us, deeds done in another planet. Ib is wrong to feel thus. The ChineseJapanese war is really a big tning, and a thing of world-wide importance. So far from being in another planet, it is at our own doors. By its means already Japan has forced herself into recognition as one of the Great Powers, and that imports a shift eastWard of the centre of gravity iv international politics that may bring the whole world topsy-turvy. lam not clear that New Zealand can intervene with advantage, that the Beddon Ministry, like King George of Tonga during the Franco-Prussian struggle, should issue a proclamation or neutrality, or anything of that sort. Probably our wisest policy is that of Brer Rabbit —to " lay low." Bat ths phases of those high doings in grotesque Cathay will bear watching.

It is an uncomfortable reflection that had the Woirarapa on her last voyage been in charge of a captain new to the coast she would probably have bsen p.float at this hour. The inference seems to be that the local knowledge of ths .old coaster who has taken his ship to and fro along the same traok, and In and out of the same ports, a hundred and a hundred times, may possibly become a snare to him. It may flatter him into over-confidence, and neglect of ordinary precautions. I myself have had experience of the happy-go-lucky ways of coasting skippsrs, though not of late years—l hasten to say that. I once went put over the Manakau bar —'channel two miles long, i" I am not mistaken—when we bumped on tha bottom in the hollow of every swell. I suppose it was a wrong state of the tide. The skipper remarked upon the incident carelessly at the breakfast table afterwards, "I thought I should survive." In another Weot Coast boat we were groping about in a fog to find a bar entrance, edging always nearer and nearer to the surf. Suddenly, with the elegant exclamation, " I've got yer, ye b h1" the captain spun the v/hsel round and put her through. He had picked up the opening, and all was well. Another time in calm weather we were creeping in through a dense fog towards a harbour that we could not see, when the lookout f or'ard reported that he could '• hear psople talking ashore." A snort of incredulity from the bridge rewarded this information, but a few moments later the unmistakable clatter of a milkpail, seemingly close aboard, warned us that we had nearly run into a dairy. One other fog experience, this time on the ooast of Tasmania, though in a New Zealand boat. We were traveliisg at orainary speed, nothing visible, when the fog curtain lifted and revealed half a dozen rocks as big as baystacksoutside of us; that is, we were between tbeee rocks and the shore. The steamer was ignominiously isacked out, and luckily there was room.

TheEe thing 3 occurred in the bad old flays, before the U.S.S. Company had arisen to bring coast navigation under the restraints of science and system. The coastal skipper's half-formulated doctrine in those days was that his ship conld find her own way from port to port, even as an old horse knows the road to his own stable door. Unconscious reliance on this doctrine is exceptional now, and the Wairarapa's case Beams to have been such an exception. Note the following sentences from the finding of the Court of Inquiry:

The Wairarapa was lost through Captain £I'lntosh and the firsu and second officers not taking the correct point of departure at the Three Kings and not allowing for the current which, they should have fceen aware, was running to the east and south-east. Why accurate bearings were not taken at the Three Kings, aud carefully compared with tha four-point bearing taken off Cape Maria Van Dieman, and the ship's course positively fixed, seams inexplicable; instead of which, there is no doubt the bearing taken oS Cape Maria was incorrect.

They had reached the familiar waters, you Eec; they were in sight of tha familiar headlands ; and bo tho simplest rales of prudent navigation were neglected, or but perfunctorily attended to. Might It not tend to prevent the recurrence of this exceptional recklessness if the U.S.S. Company were to institute a rigorous inspection of logs ? Had the officers of the Wiiirarapa known that their neglect to take bearings at the Three Kings wonld be discovered in Danedin, and would inevitably procure them a wigging, this indispensable point of duty would have received due attention.

It may be interesting to give a forecastle view of the matter, preserving, as incidental marks of genuineness, the writer's two or three oddities of spelling!

i Cfvis, —Your note on the crew ol the Wairat'apa is pretty rough, but you aught to state in another note what you would have done had you been aboard the steamer that night. What might have been done—and what I have seen done under similar curcimstanccs— the man on the look-out from 8 to 10 or from 10 to 12 should have suag oat, " Land ahead !" They knew —as all on board knew — that the vessel was in a dangerous possition to be driven at the rate she was. Aud who could have contradicted the man en the look-out ? No one could see the laud on sucti a night, but I have no doubt it would have brought the skipper to hi 3 bearings. Of course the man that would do this sort of thing is generally daubed a " sea lawyer," and thty don't carry 01 sea lawyers" in tho U.S S.Co.'s boats. If the people who know the most about the usages aboard ship could write note* like you can, the public would get a, lot of information on the subject Jack.

This glimpse into the workings of the forecastle mind is instructive, ell the more so because the writer's suggestion as to " what ocght to bava been done "is absord. There are responsible officers whoce business it is to do the thinking. What has Jack to do with thinking 1 Jack's business is obeying. The notion that Jack is to satisfy his mind isbont the skip's position before he consents to keep a true look-out is perhaps quits consonant with the principles oil Democracy, but when those principles begin to ba applied on board ship landsmen will unanimously stop ashore.

As cprvpos oi the school breaking-up seaBtra, an incident, not inclndsd in the report of tha school concerned, is supplied by a correspondent:—

They were bavin? an English Grammar bason in the upper l!'Ktli JFocra.

"Name," said the master, "any prefix that denotes the geiider of a noun.'' Ova girl answered, "Bull." " Quite so," s»i..t the master; " and now give an example of its use."

Silenc* for a minute on the part of the pupils. At length a girl hazarded, " Bullfinch! "

The master's habitually impassive countenance relaxed for a moment; then he quietly remarked:

" Doubtless the feminine is 'cowfinch.' "

Further questioning on his part elicited the somewhat star: ling statement that the masculine form of " diu-k" is " gander," and that of " jroo-e" is " drake." Small wonder that my faith is shaken, and that henceforth I march with the " People's William " in ;i crusade against " class schools " whose students display euch alarming ignorance. Kelorm ia necessary.

Yes, reform is necessary, but I don't think reform need take the shapa of sending the school en masse to the next poultry show, as this correspondent goes on to recommend. It is the teaching of English that needs reforming. What is the utility of knowing the pre-

fixes that denote the gender or noucs 1 Speaking for myself, I am positive that I do nor, know them. Am I any the le3R able to speak or write my native tongue 1 And what is the good of learning how to put adjectives and adverbs into classes (e.g., adverbs of time, place, sequence, degree, manner, inference, and so on), as the other day I saw required, in a " home exercise " ? Such knowledge IK worthless. Probably there is not a writer or speaker of note who possesses it, or who, if he possessed it, would not find it an encumbrance.

For a primitive community, eating its bread in the sweat of its brow, we have imaginative and descriptive writers galore, some of thorn, it may be, on the way to becoma writers of note. There are, as I count, 32, no le3S, in this Christmas number of the Witness. The existence amongst us of so many embryo poets and novelists is a thing to be proud of. Criticism must be hushed, or proceed by the humanitarian rule:

Be to their faults a little blind, Be to their virtues very kind. Robert Lonis Stevenson, of whose untimely death news has jasfc come from Samoa, has a word of advice to young novelists that 1 will copy out for our Otago beginners, and make them a Christmas present ot it. He says:

The author must know his country-side, whether real or imaginary, like the hand ; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun's rising, the behaviour of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon is ! I have come to grief over the moon in " FrinceOtto." and so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution, which I recommend to other men—l never write now without an almanac.

"With an almanac and the map of the country, and the plan of every house, either actually plotted on paper or already and immediately apprehended iv the mind, a man may hope to avoid same of the grossest possible blunder?. With tha map before him, he will scarce allow the sun to set in the east, as it does in " The Antiquary." "With the almanac at hand, he will scarce allow two horsemen, journeying on the most urgent affair, to employ cix days, from 3 of the Monday morning till late on the Saturday night, upon a journey of, say, 90 or 100 miles, and before the week is out, and still on the same nags, to cover 50 in the one clay, as may be. read at length in the inimitable novel of "Rob Boy." And it is certainly well, though far from necessary, to avoid such " croppers."

This is. R. L. Stevenson, who is not only an author, but an authority. The young maker q£ stories will be helped little by the ability to classify adjectives and adverbs, or to catalogue the prefixes that denote gender in nouns, but it will bs oE great service to have a clear conception of the places, times, and seasons in which his characters are to act their little play. Supplied with an almanac, the plan of a house, and the map of a country-side, I believe I could write a story myself, provided only I had ths imagination. Civis.