THE COMMON ROUND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20595, 19 December 1928, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND.

By Waxeaeeb. The schools—most of them—have, as we say, broken up. Their doors are closed, the playgrounds deserted, save, maybe, for the. janitor’s cat and his friends. The children are home for the holidays. The teachers have their vacation. They will not miss the opportunity, presumably, of holding conferences or summer camps or some dissipation of the kind. They do incline, it has been noticed, to talk shop. So, for that matter, does your average business map. lam out of sympathy, I fear, with these concentrations. “ There is nothing which I dread so much,” says Lamb, “as being left alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man, that does not know me.” Borne of ua have been in that boat. At best our heads have not many mansions; My fellow-feeling as that of a discursive wayfarer goes out to the man whose illdisciplined mind wanders round and about. He is liable to risky abstractions, to play King Alfred in the kitchen, and to be run over. There is no exactitude about his mental processesj ,but a great deal of disorder. He generally plays but a second fiddle in life. But he is very human even if, like poor Stephen Blackpool, unable to make anything better than a muddle of the ways of th® great Bounderbys and of this wonderful’ world. Be has a kinship with young people, though they may embarrass him at close quarters. He is probably a reader of books, of the Pierian spring l .

At these school dismissals and prizegiving ceremonies the speeches ara just very much what they were 50 years ago portly with platitudes and oozy with exhortations, to which the impatient youn-r people pay no heed whatever. Mr Chad” ; band will still be there, with his moraent of inspiration— O rupnlng stream of sparkling joy. To be a soaring human boy. The boys and girls who are to be the future citizens of no mean city, go on building up the Empire, and walking in the ways of Truth, are not troubling about their destiny. Their thoughts are set on higher things—the anticipated , largesse of the time, vanities sweet and i sticky, the coming days at the seaside, the freedom of glorious interminable ! weeks ahead. Open air, and sunshine, and health—this is the best promise of the holiday season, the draught to be drained to the dregs. For the narents the outlook is not so roseate, and they have heed of optimism and fortitude. ’lheir lot it is to plan and provide, and there is no release from it, no time to halt upon nothing, ! which, Mr Belloc says, is better than the I fullness of life. The middle-aged look ! back, it is understood, to see their school i days transfigured in a. sort of golden mist. 1 It is an illusion. They may not have been particularly happy at school. But they like to think thfiy would be glad to have those days again, and to enjoy another approach to those* chances i n life which they missed or misused. What, they would really recapture, but cannot, I s the old care-free zest,, the feeling of immortality in youth. The wan sentiment, be it never so foolish, makes its seasonal wraith ; like intrusion: That I could bask In childhood's sun. dance o’er childhood's rosea, Vast T a l th ln ono P° ua( i one. vast wit In broken noses. • * slay5 lay ,? lr Glles In Dntchet Lane. T^? d T ®? u . Ih 0 milkmaids Hourls,— That I could be a boy again, A happy boy—-at Drury’s,

Wo am fl pntifiht people in the South, slow to anger and of considerable mercy, rui „ we have our sensibilities. Like Othello, wo can be too much wrought upon. And when a wind comes out of the North, that should be “ dark and true and tender,” if Tennyson knew aught about it, and wafts upon us the word stagnant," shall we brook it calmly? Gadzooka and Odsbodikins! I trow not.’ ‘The Stagnant South ’’—a pretty phrase, nicely alliterative; a vile phrase, a villainous concatenation, born of Envy, because we have a Minister or two in the Cabinet. Have they not their mudpools In the North, and Mr Zane Grey with his montrous fishing lino, and makosharks, and other camivone? But “ stagnant ” —a sweet word, redolent of decay, and slime, and scum, and the olfactory offence of torpid tarns that breed low forms of life! Shall ve receive and give nothing in return? Have we then no vocabulary? What of “ the negative north, or “the nescient north,” or the Narcotic North,” or “The Nauseating North,' or merely “The Negligible North? There is choice enough, I am disposed to favour “The Neolithic North.” Small wonder the president of the Otago Expansion League rose in his wrath and called for his boots, like the bold Baron of Sheppey in the Ingoldsby legend, whose kick was r,o tremendous that, to use an expression he had picked up in the Holy Wars, it would “send a man from Jericho to June.” It is to be hoped that, having stormed the Telegraph Office, our doughty champion inscribed bis messages “ Collect.” Stagnant! Slap us, but they shall cat that word!

S Is for Scurrilous, like our fond neighbours, T for their Trumpets, their Timbrels, and Tabors, A la for Auckland, last, lovely, sublime, G for the Green in their eye In that clime; N Is tor North, uplifted and narrow, Ala for Arrogant,—push your own barrow; N for Neurotic—too loud In the mouth, T for the Tears of the Crocodile South.

It is almost too good to bo true, tee joyous conjunction that in a case heard at Reading County Court a few days ago Mr H. C. Dickens, grandson of the novelist, should have the support for the defence of a witness answering to the name of Samuel Weller. Certainly it was worth a cablegram. Let us hope that the bearer of so illustrious a patronymic in real life had a touch in common with the immortal Samivel himself, that he showed ! flash of the old fire in the interests of Mr H. C. Dickens’s client. Mr Weller, Junior, was never more In his element than in the witness box. Recall the passage at arms with Mr Nnpkins, the magistrate, following upon the arrest of the Pickwick party in pursuance of resolute preparations for the conservation of the King’s peace:—

What’s your name, fellow? ” thundered Mr Pupkins. “Tellerreplied Sam. " A very good name for the Newgate Calendar,” said Mr Nupldns. This was a joke; so Jinks, Grummer, Dubbley, and all the specials and Muzzle went into fits of laughter of five minutes’ duration.

“Put down his name, Mr Jinks,” said the magistrate. " Two L’s, old feller,” said Sam. Here an unfortunate special laughed again, whereupon the magistrate threatened to commit him instantly. It is a dangerous thing to laugh at the wrong man in these cases.

“Where do you live?” said the magistrate. Vare-ever I can,” replied Sam. “Put down that, Mr Jinks,” said the magistrate, who was fast rising into a race. “ Score it under,” said Sam. " He is a vagabond, Mr Jinks,” said the magistrate. “He is a vagabond on his own statement: is he not, Mr Jinks? ”

“Certainly, Sir!” “Then I’ll commit him: I'll commit him ns such,” said Mr Napkins. “This is a vrery impartial country for justice,” said Sam. "There ain’t a magistrate goin’ as don’t commit himself twice as often as he commits other people.”

The principal guest at the recent Spectator centenary dinner, Mr Stanley Baldwin, made a point against that excellent journal that in its early days it had never properly appreciated, Dickens. His pev sonal confession, creditable to his head and heart, was; “In literary matters my dividing line is: ‘Do you like Dickens, or do you not?’ If yon don’t 1 am sorry for you, and there’s an end of it.”