PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20070, 9 April 1927, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

The harvest now la over. The summer days are gone. . • • Chorus In the " Elijah.” We are at the turn of the year, or the next thing to it. There are signs in the heavens and on the earth. The Southern Cross, our blazon in the nightly sky, has climbed well up towards its winter height; the leaves arc yellowing on oak and ash, presently to fly on every wind; loss of light and more of darkness is our portion; cricket is out and football is in,—a token confirming all the rest. Wo face au Otago winter with an even mind. Few of the world’s pleasure resorts can rival us in climate. London, at the head of the list, has seen the Thames frozen again and again—frozen hard, so that a fair could be held on its surface and oxen roasted. Paris can tell a similar story of the Seine. Madrid is indebted to the snowy Sierras for a breeze that wouldn’t put out a candle yet can put out a life,— so the local saying runs. At Vienna, before the war and the prevalence of motor cars, a lady’ would sally out under falling snow to do her shopping; umbrella, no,—furs only. Not every winter in Dunedin do we see snow, except on the distant hill tops, and there is never enough frost to make a slide in the streets;—slides in the streets and boys that are sliding may be seen in every English town. Dean Inge quotes Charles 11, “who never said a foolish thing,” for the observation that “there is hardly.any other country than England where a man can work comfortably in the open air all the year round.” New Zealand is that _ other country. All the' year round in the open air we can both w r ork and play; _ and—as Robert Stout used to tell us long ago, when he was only Robert or even il Bobby Otago we are never so well off as when it is blowing a gale from the sou’-west. Dear “ Givis,”—With the r departure of our royal guests New Zealand is fast getting back into its old stride. Not that their ipreser.ee changed everything. The sun, the moon, Passing Notes, and other institutions went on in their accustomed courses. But so; .e marked changes there wore, notably the restraint of the Labour party. Its grievances and its wrongs were conspicuously silent. A restraint this which cannot bo overpraised. The unemployed too kept themselves well in the background. For anything the Duke saw to the contrary he may well have believed that Mr Scadon was right in describing New Zealand ns God’s own country. But we shall soon be back in the old pro-ducal atmosphere again. Already _ one Labour member in the North is denouncing everything in the countrj, Mr Coates and his Government included, as “rotten.” He fills a column and a-half in the newspaperone prolonged shriek. Others will follow. Let them shriek. It is _ the familiar note of party politics. Whilst the Duke and Duchess were hero that note was hushed. Which means that our political malcontents were .not the men they took themselves to be—disloyalists, antimonarchists, anti-imperialists, anti this and anti that. They were better citizens than they knew. It is the peculiarity of a new country, a pleasing peculiarity, that you can always hark back to the beginning of things. The origin of no town or village is lost in the mists of antiquity. Its founders, some of them, are extant after fifty years, and can tell us all about it. And so, in Otago, the township of Lawrence, that once was Tuakepa, has celebrated its jubilee, and Balclutba in succession to Lawrence. A chief figure at the Baldutha celebration was the Hon. Sir Thomas Mackenzie, G.C.M.G.—the “Clutha Tam” of early days. , Sir Thomas’s career is typical. Whatever wo are now, ■we all began in a small way. Tb c names of Soddon and Massey, honourable names, are on the New Zealand beadroll in permanence. The one connotes a-blue-ehirted miner that came over from Melbourne in the steerage of a M’MeckanBlackwood steamer; the other a peasant boy of Limavaddy, North of Ireland. Hero 1 permit myself some Tennyson lines, apt and fit: Post thou look back on what hath boon, As some divinely gifted man, Whoso life in low estate began And on a eimplo village green; Who breaks his birth’s invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chnneo, And breasts the Mows ot circumstance, And grapples with his evil star; Who makes by force hfs merit known And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty State’s decrees. And shape tho whispers of the throne. . . . That, or something like it, is a Now Zealand career. It is well to live in a new country. Nowhere else eo readily may lawful ambition find scope and verge. The Baldwin Ministry’s expectation of life is still good—five years from tho date of tho last General Election—if only it is not beaten on a division. But how should it bo beaten on a division when tho Conservative phalanx butnumers all tho rest? None the less is the Baldwin Ministry marked for trouble. In tho view of Mr Ramsay MacDonald’s back-benchers it incarnates the seven deadly sins, and more at tho back. Mr Churchill is guilty of a Budget that will not balance. Sir Austen Chamberlain is guilty of China—exactly that! The collective Ministry is guilty of attempted murder—the strangling of Trade Unionism. And in tho opinion of tho back-benchers the collective Ministry should be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Outside Parliament the officials that live on the Unions are breathing out threatening and slaughter; the rank .and file of labour have yet to be heard from. Of course, the rank and file may bo worked up—who knows? And the men to work them up are their own officials, union secretaries, and the like, who live—not by labour, but upon labour. Unhappy rank and file! People that do not believe in the infallibility of the Pope are amazed at the credulity of the people that do. Both alike may be amazed at the credulity exacted in some university class room. Sir Oliver Lodge as an authority in physical science is in the -first rank. He has a theory of ghosts that is not science; but, ghosts apart, I profoundly respect Sir Oliver Lodge in the professorial chair, and would humbly sit at his feet. Oh ves—l can bo bumptious enough on occasion and yet know when and before whom' I ought to humble myself. But consider this utterance of the oracle: Boforo tho year 1897 tho smallest and .lightest thing known was an atom of hydrogen. It was difficult to suppose anything smaller. A very delicate chemical balance may perhaps bo able to weigh the l-1000th part of a grain ; let us suppose that one could lie made that would indicate the millionth of a grain. To supply that minute weight would need forty thousand million million hydrogen atoms' Now a million is a hundred limes fen ■thousand; you might take half a day to count it. Then what about a million times a million, and forty thousand times a million times a million ; and all this to make up the millionth part of a grain ? Sir Oliver Lodge adds that "experts arc agreed that these marvellous measurements are really and accurately and unquestionably made.” Can we believe? I have no disposition to believe in the infallibility of the Pope, but, speaking for myself I should find it easier. Oddities of correspondence: Dear “Givi,,”—Will you kindly let me know the tonnage of the ships Majestic, Leviathan, and Titanic. Why not add—“and Noah’s Ark”? I ronid better shape at ,Sir Thomas Brown's “puzzling questions”—"What song (he Syrens sang, and what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.’’ Next:—Wanted a legal OiiiuiiJlU

“ I have a block of freehold land with milling bush on it, which is sold. They won’t buy the laud. What penalty can I charge if I,hey persist in going through? ” My advice (for which Cs Bd, please) is—consult Otago Witness, Notes and Queries department. Next, a Gaelic poem as long as your arm—l 7 stanzas of 8 lines each—printed by the Oban Times at the request of a resident of “ Gore, New Zealand,” who describes it as “ a lament for my late cousin,— who died about the year 1837.” Would “ Civis ” kindly translate. Fancy! The iob awaits any one who “ has the Gaelic.” “Civis” hasn’t. Next, “An April Fool ” writing from Queenstown asks—“ What started the custom of making fools on the First of April?” I cannot tell him; nor can anybody else. In Scotland the April Fool is sent to “ hunt the gowk ”—the work “ gowk ” meaning a fool and also a cuckoo. In France ho is given pn “ April fish ” “ poissou d’Avril,” the French name, strangely -enough, of the mackerel. The one point on which authorities are agreed is that the origin of April fooling cannot be explained. The next best thing to knowing the answer to a dark question is to know that no one knows. Next and last for this week, four pages foolscap closely written with pencil, an incoherent rhapsody meant for my spiritual good and the health of my immortal soul. From somewhere in the Otago backblocks sadly needing the attention of Presbytery or Synod. The fashions again. According to Paris news in the Daily Times this week, “ asymmetry ” is to be the next surprise. “ Asymmetry ”—what a word 1 Hideous and odious. Moreover the Greek negative or privative “a ” prefixed to “ symmetry ” doesn’t suggest its meaning to everybody. “ Asymmetry ”is want of symmetry. The human figure is symmetrical—two arms, two legs, two eyes, two cars, the one side answering to the other. But hero fashion comes in to correct nature. In a woman’s attire there is to bo no symmetry,—one big ear-ring and a lopsided lint her headdress; a sleeve on one arm, the other arm bare; and so in like manner from head to heel, not forgetting her stockings, On the subject of stockings Lord Dewar, addressing in London an assemblage of ladies, made an acute remark: When a girl has paid 30s for a pair of silk stockings, you cannot blame her for showing 28s worth of them. Blame her? No. The Paris fashion will help her to show the 28s worth to advantage—one log red and the other leg blue, for instance; or a contrast of tints preserved in a rainbow spiral ascending each leg as on a barber’s pole. Happy the day when this fashion reaches New Zealand and motley’s the only wear—our sisters, our cousins and our aunts with no two legs alike. In moral appeal and aesthetically considered, Malvolio in yellow stockings and cross-gartered, the Malvolio of “ Twelfth Night,” will sink to second place. Cms.