PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11197, 20 August 1898, Page 2

PASSING NOTES.

The anti-gambling evangel spreads like the measles. At Wellington Sir Robert Stout is to be president and all the local clergy vice-presidents. Quite^ correct, of course, yet just a trifle comic. Saul among the prophets! Why not? From the Lyceum days downwards it has always been plain that Saul felt a vocation that way. He was an evangelical minister spoiled. Said Coleridge to Lamb, "' Charles, did you ever licav mo preach? " Said Lamb to Coleridge, "I never heard you eta anything else." That fits the present case exactly. Politics beguiled Sir Robert fo' a time, but he never really prospered therein. Destiny and an original bent for theology were too much fnv him; he has now washed his hands oi politics. If politicians were excluded from Paradise—as they ought to be!— St. Peter might still fling wide the gate for Sir Robert, arid silence the cavils of Seddon and Co., envious and rejected, by the unanswerable judgment, " Stout's no politician! " Many a political speech of Sir Robert's have I listened to ; never without recognising the sermonic twang; never without regretting that it had not been granted to him to wag his pow in a poopit. But that may come. Saul is at last among the prophets, and has even passed at a shot to the head of the prophetic college. " Sir Robert Stout president,'the local clergy -vice-presidents."- It now only needs that the Revs. North, Saunders, and Waddell, with- plaudits of the Choir Invisible, should invite the right reverend the president oo occupy theiiApulVits in iiui.

For, after all, it is by preaching U> gamblers, actual and possible, not by ilie leaguing of anti-gamblers, that the vice of gambling is to be. suppressed. Strange that it should be left to the secular press to insist on a principle of ethics so elementary. Strange that on such a subject—the sphere and function of preaching—the reverends and right reverends whose trade is preaching should need to go to school to editors and writers of Passing Notes. And yet perhaps not altogether strange. Preachers never were overwise. How do we know that the Christian religion is supernatural and divine' Chiefly because it survives the efforts of its expositors and apologists.. Anyhow that is the handiest proof known to me. On one point I beg to offer the antigambling leaguers a- tip. Let them organise an attack on the totalisatoi* and enlist the co-operation of the bookmakers. The totalisator is gambling by law established, gambling made easy, the junior clerk and office boy's road to ruin. It is this and a good deal more ; above all it is the 'special*aversion of bookmakers and the ririf. . No,one desirous of abolishing", the. t.otaiisatbr can afford to .neglect its natural enemies whose, profits this demoniacal machine has seriously impaired. I recommend therefore that the Committee of the League be enlarged. This is how it should run . Sir Robert Stout; vice-presidents, the clergy ; honorary associates, the takers of;the odds from the principal racecourses of the colony. At the mere announcement of such a combination $he walls of Jericho would fall flat.

inspired, doubtless by the ravings of last week, a correspondent sends me the following "copy of verses." Always grateful for small mercies, I note that he abstains from calling his effusion poetry, and print it in acknowledgment • — At Gothah-by-the-Sea. We are,', Gentlemen, here; ,' To decide on the notion— I trust I am clear? — That will best curb the ocean. Smith's? Brown's? , Not a word of 'es&l « Quite too absurd o£ 'era— . Call 'emselves expert, And hold up their necks pert ■■■'■■.[ As taxidermed bird In a case —not a word! T tell you I know : i Half a century or so , I've studied this 'beach— Did you think you could teach Tour.Mayor about beaches, Alignment of'roadies, '-.. And so on? Barefoot I've . .:.... Phenoodled about—. . ■ . ~-.-. ' The place can be put, I've Ko shadow of doubt, - ' ... . •>...-' In : .a right .and : tight .state ... , . . Ihiat might .doomsday await,' . Tb.e. shore A.s before, '.-.'■ While never no more •■ . ' ' ■ Shall the ocean -break-bounds, . •■ •■" ■ For, -hem .'-^ten-sixty jpoukds : . , . . For ten-sixty pun', sire, (Nor engineer's.fee out), ..., The Work can be done! • Yes, for'keeping the sea out,- : '■ A nice, big, thick wall, . .-• -... " .;, \Ve shalj Build, that is all. . I'm not a concreter, But what could be neater, ■ ■ Or pre.ttier, or sweeter, Or Grcckly .conipieter? ~--.;•. This, sirs, is tick i-laS.. And the man, all' the man, 'Tis my s—n-; »-i— w! .

■3ay» "Observe--" m Thursday's Daily Times, addressing the editor. Srs, —Can you see any ssnse in Germany and France joining hands with Russia against Great Britain? To me it seems temporary insanity. What good pitrpose can it serve Germany Or France, Germany especially, to increase the might of l?ussia-, her next-door neighbour ? The editor thus buttoß.aoled and catechised preserves an- impassive calm. "My dear fellou-," he seems to sa.y, ." T am not responsible ; don't ask me! " —and passes on the conundrum to his" general public. ' It. is painful that an. observer at the Antipodes, observing two great nations, if not three, lapsing into temporary insanity and-prepar-ing to cut their own throats, should be unable to find anybody who can tell him 'what sense there is in it. It is also painful, and surprising as well, thai the nations in question should be blind to their ..own fatuity, which fatuity is so plain as to be perfectibly observable by an observer at the Antipodes. I am afraid we must lea.ye these blinded European States to ruin themselves' in their own way; there's little hope of their consenting to be advised by us, or I might post them a copy of Thurs'Say's Times," with a mark against "Observer's" letter. A. telegram this week reports " joy in France and Germany " over the diplomatic check which Great -Britain is supplied to have experienced in China.' Tt U so seldom that anything British affords joy to France and Germany that we ought not to grudge them this jubilation. I don't think" much of the diplomatic check, nor do xhe British Ministers, for they have scatterr-d as usual for their autumn holidays as r-'-iough nothing particular were in the wirr! Anyhow Aye have our compensations. "We have India,' ■we have Canada, we have the Cape, Australia, New Zealand. Last, hot not least, we have the good will of our wrtisin Jonathan, which good will not improbably may ripen into something warmer aixii stronger. Let our Continental rivals lav&b while they may; the time may not be distant when John and Jonathan will give them cause to laugb on tLe other side of their mouth..

"To what base uses we may return, Horatio I. . Imperial Caesar, dead, and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep fhe wind away," etc. I suppose it is the fate of mighty streams to be diverted into sluices and canals, to carry barges and supply the wants domestic of whosoever payeth rates. I once admired a glorious view to a fair native who had given me to drink from her small hillside dairy. "If we could live on it," was her reply, and I left pondering. So when our only novelist, the great and glorious eorge's flood is tapped to turn the prohibition turbine, complaint is futile. The better way. is to accept the fact and hold it proof of catholicity: the bibulous may also draw their comfortable text from his profound, and eke the moderate, loved of neither,, and possibly, like the Laodiceans, or Browning's Bust-enmoured Duke, standing in greater . condemnation. Mr Sutherland must be prepared to find the enemy alive to the particular virtues of this particular projectile, and quick to arm themselves therewith. He may, in short like many another sanguine engineer, be hoist with his own petard. Can he recall the visit of Sir Austin to his lawyer? Hearken to these rhapsodic utterances, indicative of the delirious joys of such as for their stomach's sake—. .. " the glowing intestinal congratulations going on within him." ..." Inwardly one of them was full of riot and jubilant uproar; as if the solemn fields of law were suddenly to be invaded and possessed by troops of Bacchanals." Does he remember that delightful chapter in " Emilia in England," upon " the magnanimity that is in beer," with the reflections on the priceless value to mankind of an oinometer, an instrument which should indicate the degrees of influence upon the drinker of his potations? Does he indeed remember the introduction to that very piece

he. quotes, two chapters back, which ends, "" " the Bacchus of auspicious birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier Deities."'? " You shall do the something more," says - Meredith in that same "swinging " manner our epistolary water-drinker loveth. Did Mr Wilson, as he ran his eye down the report of the Old Boys' Dinner, sadly echo "the something more"? He went to the' festive board,.no doubt, prepared if need be to defend his beloved school against the world! Did he foresee, the wandering into rhetorical byways that earned a gentle remonstrance from tilt! now frankly interested party whom he with humorous irony pictured as offering disinterested counsel? Did hs ren\ember that the laughter of his listeners was a.3 fugacious ns the foambells of that Ok! Veuve we 'wot of, while the disinterested counsellor, is always with us? Possibly not, but" whether of set purpose or a "something more" his method of inviting critics to devour each other is very entertaining. . .... A IIi;>-h School must ' It must also have partihave jfeneral aims, striv- cnlar aims, and allow its ing after a general culture jiupils to reflect a general , thiit would meet the culture from a particular' necessities of the whole. derail that concerned their ' ' . bread'and butf.er. The first concern must They must see that the he an-appreciative know- mathematical and seienleds"e otliterature. ■ tificsidc preponderated... 'J'hey must not neglect They must take care not to keep.up such thing's a* to touch anything taught arithmetic,.. spelling, and in the "primary school*, writing.. ".'... . for that would be over- . . lapping. They must not fail to There must be no pies- .. send tip pupils'. Tor the .sure—every pupil mustgo, exacting Competitions and his own pace, examinations. I must get myself invited to the next Old Boys' Symposium. Why "not? lam an old boy, and even an absent old boy now and., then. -•■ . ' Civis. {