PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21360, 13 June 1931, Page 6

PASSING NOTES.

Though years be lean and times out of joint, limited liability companies must yet maintain,, with undiminished regularity, their general meetings, where quorums are established, minutes read, and the time-honoured words recited as to the adoption of annual reports and balance sheets. At a meeting of a longestablished company in tlie city, the chairman of directors has—with some trepidation, no doubt —ventured on a Shakespearian quotation which possessed considerable relevance to present-day financial conditions. Presumably, when high finance is seasoned with the Shakespearian canon, things, in this particular circle at least, are going reasonably well indeed. One is left to conjecture whether the address-in-chief was prepared by the chairman himself, or the way paved by his executive officers. Not content with the appositeness of the line, one shareholder, in that vein of thin facetiousness characteristic of such occasions, sug gested the bathos that next year’s address might be trimmed with a limerick, a palindrome, or other such verbal confection. At a meeting some years ago, where a substantial gift out of reserves was parcelled out to fortunate beneficiaries, a member of thrice approved financial stability, speaking to some motion, remarked.:

He was pleased to see the directors had thought fit to make this slight contribution to their purses: dt would help some of us poor people pay our debts. This elegant drollery was well received ; it had an altogether peculiar suitability and flavour. It depre cated the munificence of the advance, and revealed an innate modesty in the donee coupled with an appreciation of the bird in hand. It evoked the laugh indulged in,by gentlemen-well content with the state of their bank balances, which has a distant relative in the laughter of the law courts—a thing apart. Clear types among schoolboys are most rare, and, therefore, public schools do not supply material for the novelist. The public school novel aims at an impossibility, and is impossible from start to finish. Thus Dr Alington, Head of Eton College, who, of all men, should know. One is not at all clear, however, that we have not here some mere half-truth. If “ Stalky and C 0.,” with which Kipling astounded us some three decades ago, l'-> a travesty of school life and manners, what is to be said of “Tom Brown’s School Days," Dean Farrar’s pleasing novels, or, in more recent times, the charms of “ David Blaize ” ? These have made acceptable reading, and' Benson has gone a step further, and proved the truism that his men are sons of his boys. Furthermore, what novel could do aught but the scantiest justice to that coterie very queer small boys in blue coats who thronged the purlieus of Christ’s Hospital in the days of Lamb and Coleridge? The latter was distinctly an esoteric type, well versed in divinity and the schoolmen, to say nothing of the general run of the classics. The boys themselves are but part of the school microcosm, A good novel could be essayed of a certain school within our town, of a generation or so back, where, it .has been reported, a certain Reverend Doctor would entertain his sixth form, of a Saturday night, to a supper of oysters and small beer. When I attend the agricultural show I invariably find myself alongside the sheep pens. There may be psychological reasons for this, but I leave them in abeyance in favour of the historical. We read in the book of Genesis that Abel was a keeper of sheep. The story of i Gain and Abel is Well known, .the latter falling upon evil times. It is to be gathered that the keepers of sheep in our day are threatened with a like,, fate They are doomed to labour .undetj financial depression. Our pastoral ■ friends are worthy a better destiny, and as a patriarchal class they merit our best esteem. And, judging by the contented expression writ large on the faces of those I saw, it may be they are not so badly off as is 'represented,! As the specific character of Shropshire or Corriedale would, no doubt, find me, guessing, so 1 give way to authority;

King George the Third was one day admiring his splendid. Wiltshire flock, when his equerry drew his attention to a very fine breed of sheep dwelling in Spain. They were called “ merinos,” from a Spanish term meaning “ moving from pasture to pasture.”" His Majesty became interested and instructed a well-known scientist, Sir Joseph Banks,, to negotiate with the King of Spain, with a view to importing a strain to Eng-" land. Banks was with Cook, off Otago Harbour in 1770, He was mainly instrumental in the colonisation of New South Wales, and saw to it that three rams and four ewes were despatched to Botany Bay in 1797. From this importation has come the flocks in the Commonwealth and New Zealand. And thus we have, related in time and space, King George, Spain, England, New Holland, New Zealand and the Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Show in the year of grace 1931. The gift of “ Chequers ” to the nation by Lord Lee of Fareham is seemingly playing the part in the game of politics, to. which it was intended. Dr Curtius and Dr Bruening have, at the invitation of Mr Ramsay MacDonald, . foregathered there for the week-end,'a political parti in the country, according to the bestestablished precedents. Tradition still counts for something. Saturday night dinner, and thb board is set for the ancient game of chequers, rooks, pawns, knights, and bishops, with Mr Bernard Shaw in the role of episcopus. Can Hi Scotsman develop any sequence of moves to discountenance, the phlegm of the Teuton? Chess, says the wise Burton, is a game too troublesome for some men’s brains, too full of anxiety, all out as bad as study; besides, it is a testy, choleric game, and very offensive to him that loseth the mate. William the Conqueror in his younger years, playing at chess with the Prince of France (Dauphine was not annexed to that crown in those days), losing a mate, knocked the chessboard about bis pate, which was a cause afterward "of much enmity between them. One hopes that the gambit played ia England recently will lead to an amicable stalemate. The representatives from the Wilhelmstrasse have a good lead to follow in the late Dr Sthamer, a wholehearted worker for the European concert. The Rev. G. D. Rosenthal hag the courage of his convictions, or at least of his foibles. I have always looked upon a bet on the Derby as a national duty. One hundred and fifty years ago Lord

Derby instituted a series of racing events on the Epsom Downs, the most famous of which has ever since been known the wide world over as “ the Derby,” The historic occasion sees London empty, all the beau monde and lesser lights at Epsom, some 14 miles to the south. Writers, painters, and caricaturists have vied with one another in depicting the crowds, but it has been left to a clergyman to open up a new field of speculation on the subject. Does the reverend gentleman mean that he tries to “ spot the winner, and, in succeeding, what does he do with does he adopt the language of the ring? Do dividends become obla tions in aid of church funds? And then, if a bet on the Derby be a national duty, a necessary corollary would be to have a loose-box and horse, as a sacerdotal side line. Finally, the duty would rest on all to indulge in the sport of kings. There would seem to be something wrong with this correlation

of ideas. Mr Rosenthal might preferably urge that a mild flirtation with this particular “wanity” is all very well in its place, but to go the pace?—that is a different story.

A correspondent, “ Constant Reader, ’ writes asking me to reprehend the tone of a special class of cable that appears in the daily press, all too frequent for his taste. The news that the King, driving from Buckingham Palace, met his uncle, the Duke of Connaught, whose car slowed down, and the consequent exchange of courtesies; the Prime Minister’s return to London by train instead of by air, owing to unfavourable weather conditions- —all this is as gall and wormwood to my friend. But must we not have our gossip? News are generally welcome to all ears, avide audimus aures enim hominum novitate laetantur (as Pliny observes). We long after rumour to hear and listen to it, densum humeris bibit aure vulgus. We are most part too inquisitive and apt to hearken after news, which Caesar, in his Commentaries, observes of the old Gauls, they would be enquiring of every earner and passenger what they had heard or seen abroad quid toto flat In orbe Quid Seres, quid Thraoes, agaut seoreta novercae, Bt puerl, quls amet, etc. As at an ordinary with us, bakehouse and barber’s shop. Mr Alfred Bernhard Nobel, in a spirit maybe of expiatory and vicarious benevolence, set aside an immense fortune under his will to endow certain prizes. One fund purports to aid and reward the excelling literary craftsman, another the idealist and peace promoter, and so on. And Mr Theodore Dreiser, foiled in his expectations as to the one, has rather prejudiced his chance for the other. His temper seems as inflammatory as Mr Nobel’s ballistite or nitroglycerin. The business or art of pugilism is definitely in his line. Mr Dreiser’s cavalier assault on Mr Sinclair Lewis shows literary franchise with a vengeance, and is not the only case in the books. Meredith has related that at one time he acted temporarily as editor of a journal to which Swinburne had forwarded some verse. When for this a cheque of some £lO was appropriated, he was called upon to face an irate poet. Swinburne, with frenzied eye rolling in a manner subversive of that inspiration immortalised by a greater bard than either, demanded if Meredith considered £lO an adequate fee. The substitute editor rejoined in the affirmative, with the added irritant that such emolument was all he himself obtained for a like service. Whereupon the outraged author of “ Tristram of Lyonesse ”' resorted to the cruder and more direct argument of fisticuff. Meredith added as a rider that he would certainly have kicked the fellow downstairs had he not foreseen what a clatter his horrid little posterior would have made as it bounced, under the irresistible momentum, from step to step. Oivxs.