THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19255, 20 August 1924, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By Wayfarer. “ Even ho was astonished at the number of people who apologised for Dunedin’s climate, when they had such glorious weather and scenic views which could he excelled by few others in the dominion.” Thus Mr J. W. Shaw, vice-president of tho Dunedin Club in. Auckland, speaking at tho Albany Street School jubilee celebration. lie may well bo astonished. Considering tho delectable experiences of tho last, twelve months, it is almost incredible that any sane Dunedin resident should adopt a strain of Uriah Heapish ’umbleness upon alluding to our incomparably clement climate. Lot, there be an end to _ this poorspirited foible. With tho Exhibition coming along, may Heaven give us a better conceit of ourselves and our amenities!

Something was said last week about gatherings at which the attendance is limited to one sex. On Thursday no fewer than 330 members of (ho Otago Women’s Club sat down to dinner in superb feminine exclusiveness jn the Tudor. Peradventuro tho shade of Elizabeth, the groat Tudor Queen, who had a rare knack of putting mere man in his place, may have been condescendingly present at this august assembly. There was no post-prandial dancing (only bridge and music), but Calverley's finglo comes to mind:

Not with clumsy Jacks and Georges, Unprofanod by clasp of man; Maidens speed those simple orgies, Betsy Jane with Mary Ann. By all accounts the proceedings were highly •essful and if there was any ground for criticism it was trivial. It has boon whispered that the clatter of feminine voices was so loud and continuous that tho band, which was observed to bo playing, was rendered inaudible, and that, the fair diners talked so incessantly as not to allow themselves lime to consume the viands. Not that it was a Barmecides Feast anyhow, but there is talk of hearty suppers being subsequently consumed at home. I refuse to attach any credence to the rumour that there were 350 desperate stampedes for the adjacent pie-stall.

A word about “millenary” and two short pipes—clerical and incongruous pipes. Centenaries. if not as common as blackberries, are frequently cropping up; but authenticated millenaries are rare. In June the historically minded community of Kingslon-on-Tharaes celebrated the millenary of tho coronation of King Athelstan, who was enthroned in the Surrey town a thousand years ago, and of whom (let it be generously assumed) vou all know whatever there is to ho known. There was a historic pageant, in which the parts of the Archbishop of Canterbury and tho Bishop of Winchester of tho period were appropriately played by *'-m present vicar of Kingston and his curate. But the Church Times was constrained to administer a pointed reproof: We regret, however, that the sense of the appropriate did not prevent these two gentlemen from being photographed, during one of the intervals, wearing the ecclesiastical vestments of their parts and smok-

ing short pipes. “Is it wicked?” asked a small child in one of Du Manner's drawings who had been chidden by his mother for some offence. “No, my dear,” was the reply ; “it is worse than wicked, it is vulgar.’

We commend this reply to the Vicar of Kingston. Tlie pipes, it will be observed, were “short.” Perhaps tho solecism would have been less glaring, loss inconsonant with tho standards of clerical seemliness, ii they had been “churchwardens.”

It is twenty-six years since Sir George Grey died, full of years and honour Is the old man eloquent forgotten in this land which ho served and adorned ? An emphatically negative answer would doubtless be given to this query. Apparently, however, he is no longer in secure possession of his Christian name, which has become Edwardised. At Kaiapoi last week tho Governor-General chatted with an old man who remarked that he had seen 12 Governors in New Zealand. “Who was the first?” asked Lord Jellicoe. “Sir Edward Grey,” was the reply. “Surely I’m not Hie thirteenth,” said the Governor-General, but he was reassured. And when at Kaiapoi a dignitary forgot bis lines and called for “three cheers for Lord and Lady Liverpool’’ the humour of the situation was not lost on Lord Liverpool’s successor. It is not quite clear whether it was the veteran or someone else (with pen in hand) who “forgot his lines” in reference to Sir George Grey. As a matter of fact, Lord Jellicoe is the fourteenth, not the twelfth. Governor of New’ Zealand, dating from Sir George Grey’s second accession to the office. Tho names are: Grey. Bowen, Fergusson, Norrnanby, Robinson, Gordon, Jervois, Onslow, Glasgow. Ranfurly, Plunket, Islington. Liverpool. Jellicoe. Tho earlier Governors were Hobson, Fitzroy, Grey, Gore Browne, —making eighteen in all (excluding Administrators).

A story of a ,shrewd wife, conveying a lesson for doleful pessimists:—

Mrs Clifford, tho wife of the late Dr Clifford, appealed, successfully wo presume, to her husband’s sense of humour in order to arouse him from Amo of those hopeless moods which, in his earlier days, were the concomitant of nervous and physical exhaustion. Seeing her come into his room in ouf-of-doora attire, Dr Clifford, who hut a few moments before had announced his impending decease, inquired where she was going. “To tho undertaker!” was his wife’s disconcerting reply, “we may as well he in time, as there seems nothing else to be done.”

Most of us know despondent folk who need the tonic of a suggestion to send for the “undertaker.”

To Professor G. E. Thompson I, as listener and reader, am indebted for much suggestive instruction and wise entertainment, on subjects ranging from French literature to world-polities. (“Sage without hardness, and gay without frivolity,” to use one of Matthew Arnold’s fine phrases.) I am all tho more sorry to have missed the professor’s Sunday “Sport” Address on “World Disorganisation and its Remedy.” |3LE>?ANT AFTERNOON SERVICE. Musical Programme Rendtied by KAIKORAI BAND. KAIKORAI BAND.

Sport Addtose by Professor G. E. THOMPSON on "World Disorganisation and its Remedy.”

Soloist. Collection. Ilia Worship the Mayor (H. L. Tapley, Esq.) will preside.

I am not only sorry but just tho least bit ashamed. Like many of my betters, willing in spirit but weak in flesh, who yet hope to creep humbly into Heaven after the long day’s toil is done, I am too apt to spend tho middle portion of Sunday afternoon in recuperative repose. But I would gladly have forgone rnv Sabbatic snooze for the sake of hearing Professor Thompson’s sporting discourse on his severe and imposing subject. It was just a matter of sheer, stupid forgetfulness. 1 slept like a hedgehog, while “World Disorganisation” was being discussed in terms of—say, League versus Union football. Like the Mayor, I was far away, without his Worship’s dutiful excuse. An irretrievable blunder, it is to be feared. “Kaikorai Band, Kaikorai Band”—l shall (please Providence) hear it again with undiminished zest. I may even, not for tho first time, disenchantingly I’md the “soloist” to be merely a “collection.” But (I feel the tragic truth rankling in the deep heart’s core) never shall I hear that professorial Sunday “sport” address. “Quoth the raven .”

If Mr Edward Wakefield, whose death in his eightieth year has been announced by cable, had passed away forty or even thirty years ago the event would have excited widespread notice in Now’ Zealand. But the passage of time, with long absence from the dominion, had relegated him to tho list of tho ha If-forgotten. In the seventies and eighties of last century ho was a figure of considerable mark, as journalist and public speaker. Hansard has come to be almost a byword, and the art of parliamentary eloquence belongs to tho past; but there were days when a different tale could be told, and the quondom member for Geraldine and Solwyn was not inconspicuous among a company of accomplished rhetoricians, — though perhaps one has to go further back (or (be really palmy days of tho New Zealand Legislature. He had an hereditary interest, so to speak, in public affairs; for be was a nephew’ of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. tho eminent promoter of colonisation, whoso name is writ large in the early history of this country. But his political achievements wore not commensurate with his acknowledged abilities. He was a Cabinet Minister for the insignificant space of six days, just forty years ago, in the interval between tho fall of tho first. StoutVogcl Government, which was In office for only twelve days, and tho formation of the second one, which lasted for three years.