Passing Notes.

Otago Witness, Issue 1343, 25 August 1877, Page 14

Passing Notes.

Poor Mr Barton! -It soems that the Chief Justice did not invite him to dinner hence his petition to Parliament. His petition is a magnificent specimen of what is usually called a rigmarole, the principal allegation being that, the Chief Justice did not extend the ordinary courtesies of life to him— in other words, he asked the other members of the Bar to dinner, but left Mr B; out' in the cold. Very cruel of Justice Prendergast, no doubt, but hardly, I should think, good grounds for his removal from the Bench, as Mr Barton apparently fancies. How Mr Justice Richmond ha 3 incurred Mr Barton's .displeasure I have net heard, perhaps-'it.is also a dinner question. One can't' help admiring the resolute determination of Mr Barton to make a martyr of himself in spite' of .every,. difficulty. , Hitherto he has only succeeded in making a laughing stock of himself, but- perhaps on this occasion he will be more successful, though I must say the circumstances are not at all propitious. Our .Parliaments are apt 4 to run. into extremes ; a&d this tendency in the present Assembly, is illustrated by the tendency 'to drag ' any newspaper proprietor before,, them who has happened to give offence to any of the members for breach of privilege. It would be a dangerous tendency were it not for the absurdity of it. An obscure paper publishes some remarka upon -the Attorney-General, whom it disapproves of, and th,e proprietor or editor ia consequently summoned to the bar pf the. House to- answer a charge of breach of privilege. . Uf course when he gets .there he says, in an ironical way, he is very sorry ; and the members, who are looking, and feeling -very uncomfortable, tell him to go away, and, not to do it again, for if he does they leave the result to his imagination: The practical effect of this is to disseminate the objectionable article far and wide — an unwise course, to say the least of • it, especially when, as in the present case, people are inclined to think the article in question not so far from the.iarath after aIL Those singular animals the rats have been at their old games again: A recent fire was caused,, it is alleged, by rats eating matches. ' There was a v^ry amusing, article in the, Timaru Herald some little time s ago, palling attention to . this important .partiality for nibbling dangerous substances on the part of these animals. The writer atated there that instances had been known of rats carry.ing matches for a great distance' on purpose to nibble them among combustible substances, and gave an account of one ease in which, the proprietor of an establishment which was barnt, actually saw the rats' scratching the matches among seme sijraw. However, the writer in question .naively remarks that a jury differently, and this student of natural hiatory. got a spell of practical geology. JJiuctj; .reading this article, my belief in the rat theory of the origin of fires has been somewhat shaken. • The Jockeys at Timaru object to be drowned, they don't mind being killed on the ground. Well, lam sure 1 wonder what next. Don't they know perfectly well that the great attraction at a steeplechase is the chance of seeing a. man or two , killed ; and if this can be' done in a singular and out of the way manner, so much the ■better, tfancy the pleasure of seeing a jockey drowned, in, a ditch. — the idea is positively delightful. We certainly are a singular people. If a man steals a , pair of boots, we send him to gaol for three months, with hard labour; if he is so poor as to be' unable to support himself, we also send him to gaol for a, like term, so that what we call a punishment in one case is a charity, in another, which certainly seema a little'incongruous. However, I suppose it is all right ; poverty is evidently a crime, or is considered and punished as, a crime among us, though I must say that a man iB a good dsal better off in a gaol here" than in the majority of pour-houses at . Home, judging from all accounts! One would think that the subscribers to the Athenaeum were a set of wild Indians, and that a periodical free fight

took place over the table on which the illustrated papers are placed. A day or two after the arrival of the mail, if one .goes to read these papers, they are found to bo torn into shreds, and dirty in the extreme. Ido not think I have ever seen an Athenaeum, and I have been in a good many, .of 1 the up-country ones, where the papers were in such a disgraceful state. It is surely possible to read papers without tearing them, as is done here. If not, it would be as well to see if the Committee could not get these papers mounted on cloth like the children's picture books. ' Horse doctoring has arrived at the state ,of an exact science in Victoria evidently. ,A_gentleman there writes to the Australasian to say that a horse of his was taken ill, and imagining ,that he had eaten, too much pollard, he gave him a pint and a half of boiled oil, "that which is .used for mixing paint." . After three hours! exercise he gave him a dose of Spanish fly and. calomel, and an hour subsequently took a gallon of blood from him. ' ■„**- :After that," he says, "I threw him and gave ' him a bottle of linseed oil in hot water,' and injected about ten buckets of soap' and water.' ' I left him in the paddock,' and in the morning I found him dead.'' And then he wdnts to know what could have caused his death ! The Australasian' is not surprised at his death under the] circumstances, ,but I am; A horse who had had such au amount of physicking and care bestowed upon him ought not td have lived. ' " ' t It is not often that St. Kilda complains of want of water, but this winter, instead of paddling about in the streets, and from house to house, the inhabitants of that locality, who - r were- rapidly getting webfooted from their mode, of life, have a difficulty in getting sufficient water for domestic purposes. ' With a rare bene-* volence, a late Mayor has been supplying the unfortunate residents with cordials for trie purpose of making tea, I supppsej. The result of this has been'that a iiitmberj i of the inhabitants have lately been seen lying-in the ditches, looking for water,! and the singular part of it is that the more cordial 'they get the more anxious are they to find water in a ditch. <! The nine Tooley street Tailors have had; a meeting, and determined to have thd Museum closed on Sundays, but, as they! , constitute a remarkably small and insigni-j, ficant' minority of the population, in thej 'language of the poet 3, '" I wish they may! get it." The dreadful effects of Sunday recreation were held up. Be it known] unto you, oh, working man, that' if after being cooped up all the week, you go foe a wa k with your wife and children, you' will never have a bank account in your old age ; that such walking is most ex-i -.pensive,, and that, if. you walk on, tha Ocean Beach on Sundays, and sniff the balmy sea breeze, you will impoverish your health. Further, if you go to Church (and it seems it is impossible tq walk in the afternoon and go to Church* in the , evening), you will be able to build your cottages better, forj from gazing at the roof of the churchj (you ought to be listening to the sermonj j though) you will acquire some knowledge of architecture. So says Dr Stuart. Faugh ! I am sick of hearing such balder-; dash. But as for the Museum, you pay 'for it, but it is by no means for you. ,'ltj is only for rich people, those who have leisure during the week to visic it whilst; you are at work. On Sundays — the only day. when it is possible for you to see, it— | it is to be shut. It is, then, no. longer a means of education ; it is a frivolous 1 amusement which should be discouraged j Mr J. L. Gillies, being one out of some •30 *or 40 Councillors' who' voted citizens 1 ; moneys for its endowment, has, of course^ a' perfect, right to insist upon its ibeinj closed, regardless of what those whosej money was thus spent may wish, regard-j les3 even cf the other Councillors, whq voted the same way. For cool assump-j tion, the position he has taken in the matter is astonishing. 'One would think' he had voted the money out of his own pocket. I thought . these Sabbath-closing people hadgot a lesson over' the opening of the Athenseum,- but it seems noti They are still determined to force' "theii own opinions down other peoples' throats]