PASSING NOTES.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume II, Issue 54, 24 December 1892, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Good, pious Auckland! Delicately sensitive Auckland ! between the wind and whose nobility hath intervened the slovenly unhandsome behaviour of one Powell! Hag rrdden Auckland, with your Mother Grrundy in propria peraond —-Mrs Mary Steadtnan Aldis with her thumbs down, how art thou to be likened to a whited sepulchre. Not a newspaper —Liberal, Conservative or " Society"—but what creeps to the feet of Mr Justice Oonolly and kisses the hem of .his garment. Ten years'! Certainly—quite right; and the broken old man, verging on the limit of human life is led dazed to meet a hideous fate for life in the colls of a gaol.

# ■ For life! For that is what hia sentence means as surely a*'•'thbtfg'h. the words had been uttered from th« hard lips of a Judge. And we say;it in cruel, merciless and undeserved. The crime, if it is morally a crime, is certainly not in any way akin to murder. The unborn infant feels no pain, indeed, it is not shown in this case fhatifhad passed that mysterious period when it becomes "alive!" Tho Malthusians not so long ago advocated and indeed now advocate —a something far nearer this than this is near homicide. As for the '•'moral" aspect of it judged froro the Aldisian point of view. Pah! a little civet, good apothecary. And we repeat the sentence is unjust, wrong, meroilesa, cruel and -wicked.

It is quite evident that fhe Panama Canal Enquiry, in Paris, 'is the act of the Anti-Eepublican. and that it is intended not so much to -expose misdoing but to upset the existing regime in order that "the upsetters may obtain office and have a real good time. To whom shall we liken them locally ?

The scribe with a great future behind him, who indites letters to himself in the back kitchen is as happy in his geography as in his logic. He locates Tjiwrie's 'find in. 'the Scotia Creek. But then he prospected al! that country years agOr-in h'ujirstt fehildhood'irif act.

** The rag:« for strong men shll continues in Xiondon. Sandow's latent performance is with a 'pair of dumbbell ,Bft long. When he has gone through the usual gyrations with them, they are unscrewed, and a couple of imen step out. Also, Sandow's assistant gets up on a trapeze near the roof,,and drops three sacks of corn on to the athlete's neok, and when thaft useless mass of flesh has caught them successfully, there is a'howl of applause which makes the Trocadero Bhake to its foundations.

V There are in England fibout 14-000 parsons of the Established Church, and of thesrt last year 375 were found guilty of various offences. were in trouble for breadh of promise ; - 18 for cruelty to animals; 17 for elopement (7 of these went off with. ; someone else's wife, and the rest mostly went off with a female undor age and [neglected to marry her"); 12 suicided-; 121 were arrested for drunkenness.; 109 for assault; and the rest were charged with seduction, perjury, obtaining money under false pretences, unpublishahle .crimes, and miscel-., laneo.us offences. . In England the average number of convictions is' 266 out of every 100,000 -population. Therefore, the parsons of the 'Established Church are just about 12 times more criminal and more'beastly, on an averagp, than the rest of 'the community. And--yetpeople warittoknow why clerical influence is on the decline cand peoole don't respect the Church.

At a recent. South Australian racemeeting, ITohn Lord, a well*hnown sport, had three horses running.. ' A party of sportsmen went down te Morphettville course by road, and or the way passed an Advent Gospel-tent ,with a'flap bearing: tho inscription. " The Tiord's Day." This rwas considered '" a dead snip}" Jubii

JLord'f nominations were backed. All three won! . V ■! In Auckland you can now buyrfalse •teeth on time-payment. You give the 'dentist a mortgage on the te«th 'to; secure payment, which is-much .the! 'same as giving a bilUot'-sale over your 'liver, and th«n when the tonthismith tries'to seize'them for non^pavment *you<cl«se your mouth and tell 'him ' thrtftf^h your nose to take them at his own'Hsk. He can't get at them -withont 'an oggraviited assault, and that 'means* damages. V . Thfl "change" trick, an run flt Dubbo, K.B}W. DerenMonkine'fel-; low buys from a chemist wx peti'orth of eucajyptus oil, and planks down 'half-a-sore reign. Is gi»f»n 9s 6d change. -'Ullo! wot's this?" 'Gave ;yer'arf-a-fiuvrin, did I? Thought, it •was sixpence. Lemme look at it." The'h'ilfssovereign is hnnaed to him. " 'Ere, tell yer wot, 'I mipht mistakw 'this for a sixpence. Ere's ftxppnce 'more, sixperrco and nineteen-and-nix is ■a pound; gimme n notn insteHH-of thin I Jere change." Chemiat cpmplius, and ' stranger «xits hurriedly. Th« arith-' metical f^«ts of the case don't strike Tthe chstnist" for at l^ast ten minutes. 'V A .Victorian .politician, sued for p doctor's 1 bill, pleads as>*i eet-off'tha* ho : got the sawbones the billet, of JP. . Which means practically that—^ *** A now society, "The Provident Bounty Association," has just been 'launched in. London. It.insures ttgainst "twins. Thus th« *' Finance'Chroniclp,": a relief it will be to all thW who are tormented with'th** necessity' 6f gifring wedding presents to their | .young friends, when instead of having to waste their money on impossible inkstands and ornaments, they can ?handina 'Provident : Boumy fpolicy twins.'" V The 'Parramatta (PCS.W.) parsons -played the "Comet in Anrfronv^V' all that it was worth. "Who "knows what m*»y h 'pppu within the next-24 'hours?" shrieked o»-.e apostle. as 'ho tiMd his awed rttidi»»npo that Biela w»s already 'lashin* its tail at theertrth's whiskers, an<s that - Comet Brooks was coming up 'behind with the deep, fearful bay of a distant bloodhound. My"! how the collections for the Angel Gabriel did twinkle on the platft! Now tho pious funker is mad. ana" considers he has'been "had" on toast; V I Tennyson's " later poems" h*Te:ju«t j been published One of them, called "The Church-warden and the Curate," is in dialect, <d'la the "Northern. Farmer." An old country church-1 "warden, in'hra early days a Baptist, is 'advising tho new country curate, and after describing how the'Baptists'came whilst he was ill and baptised people in his pond, he says :— ' sticks'like the ivin as lonjc: as I live to the owd-church now, i For th y weehed thee'r sin i' my pond, and I doubts they poisoned the' coo Dunedin win a blue funk. Biitler,, ?gaoled years ago "for arsr»n flf.er 'b-ing aoqm't^a of the mysterious murder of "the 1 Dnwar family, will b«» let 'loo«e -again sonn. He threatened t<> ('be' "even" wHh his^uror* anH o'hera'if he ever cams out, and heV<juite cipahle 1 of keeping hi« word. H« conduced his.own defence—*»nd made a sneech I "from the dock which, 'for acuteness eloquence, has never bee,n approadhed by arty man plearfinq- hie own cause in an Australasian'court. Judgf* (N R.W.): —" A "man could'not b« too ciroumcppcr, When "visiting .i;woman who was l'v,fner apurt from'her'busbund. "However irtnoomitj the ptfr'ies might, 'be. it was a most' 'imprudent tiring to do" KiaSgeritleinen anxious to relieve grass widows' in distress shniild pnmt« this :in thorr ha'ta. They Should also paste >m I'hoir Tiats this further mat'm ; B?fyoa would | "kepp out of troiible, "never «> of anj^kindj at^ur^f tipsfe, |