Passing Notes.

Otago Witness, Issue 1499, 7 August 1880, Page 17

Passing Notes.

"Honorarium," though rather a long word, requires the addition of a syllable to adjust it to the uses of political life in New Zealand, .It should be written dishonorarium. Amongst the Romans, who invented the term, " honorarium" represented a voluntary gift by which the donor honoured or complimented the recipient. In New Zealand politics, "honorarium" is a word used to describe not what is given, but what is taken,. The administrators of the public finances, in passing the money through their hands, contrive to make £20,000 a year stick to their fingers. As nobody gives it to them, but they simply take it, they call it " honorarium." It is the delicacy of the honorariumists that leads them to veil the transaction under this respectable name. Ancient Pistol's delicacy was exhibited in a similar way. " Steal ! foh ! a fico for the phrase ! convey, the wise it call." I don't say that hon. members steal their "honorarium" They convey it, in a strictly legal way — by a vote of the Legislature, that is, of themselves. But since they vote it themselves to themselves it is not an honorarium. And when they vote too muoh it is a dishoner-arium. Now that is the exact situation at present. The Tallowfats of the Upper House take too much when they take anything, Yet they take £10,000 a year. In the Lower House, after bitter debates and exoited divisions, hon. members have magnanimously docked themselves 10 per cant'— and dock as much from the wages of, railway

porters and Post-office clerks ! I understand that to pay our needy legislators a "salary" would be derogatory to their dignity. Yet " salariura" is a more respectable term than "honorarium" — not to mention dishonor-arium. The salarium was an allowance made to Roman functionaries for their salt — their actual necessities. Patriots ought not to ask more. But the patriotic band in Wellington know a trick worth two of that. They grab for themselves and call it " honorarium." The privilege of working for their salt they confer upon the lower ranks of the civil service.

We have not heard the last of Mr Proctor's "Menacing Comet." If I am not mistaken that spectral which six months ago disappeared on its mysterious journey into space will trouble the world for a good many years to come, and trouble it more and more as people realise the significance of what Mr Proctor has told us. I have myself spoken slightingly of Mr P.'s prediction. I shall hold it a sacred duty to believe that he is mistaken until confuted by the logic of events— why a sacred duty I will explain presently. But it is not. easy to drop out of one's mind the dreadful apparition he has conjured up. The world, it is true, has often been sentenced 1 , to death before now, but never by such a> competent authority, or on such intelligible grounds. The end of all^things has' been chiefly the concern of students of prophecy, and they have made the who!® subject of the secular consummation ridiculous. When, for instance, I hear — as the papers tell me I might have heard the other Sunday night at the Queen's Theatre — a reverend orator discoursing on the correspondence he has detected between. Daniel's "seventy weeks" and certain*, planetary and lunar distances, and then* going on to show how the propheticali number seven has something to do with* modern discoveries in physiology — whear I hear this I know exactly what is coming. I know that this lunatic talk is merely preliminary to an announcement that the end of the world is at hand. That.'of course was the conclusion which the Rev. Mr Elmslie— the lecturer lam speaking of— got out of his mystical data. He " could, not exactly say when" — but "the endi was very near. " Somehow I can't help> noting in connection with this lecture the remark of another Queen's Theatre* preacher, also culled from this week's papers. This gentleman is reported to have informed a public meeting that "h& never had greater pleasure in preaching than when he preached to the insaae peapie in the Asylum." Probably he expounds prophecy to them. Similia similibus! Mr Proctor, however, doesn't profess to expound prophecy, and that is the fact which gives his "Menacing Comet* its truly uncomfortable importance. He speaks as an astronomer, and in that character tells us that if the comet of 1845and 1880 falls into the sun — "as," says Mr P., "in my opinion it most certainly ?oill" — all the higher forms of animal and. vegetable life throughout the solar family of worlds must perish — shrivelled and! consumed by the sudden increase of solar heat. A star in the Northern Crown not long since blazed up in this way for two days, and must have wrapped all its attendant planets in flames. A comet did the mischief, and the comet of February last will do the same for us— possibly within the lifetime of this generation. What will be the effect on mankind if Mr Proctor's belief gains acceptance ? Not wholesome, I fancy. Terror would drive some into religion — if anything can be called religion which results from terror — but the mass would simply resolve to taste life whilst life lasted), Garpe diem ! would be the motto. Society would dissolve in reckless luxuries and frenzied violence. Universal delirium and the dance of death would be the final phase of civilisation, as the poor old world swept into its bath of fire. Hence I won't believe Mr Proctor. I hold it a moral duty not to believe him. If h& can't show us how to prevent the catasthrophe which he foresees, he ought to have left as in ignorance.

Horace Walpole relates somewhere in his " Letters" that, during an alarm in London, occasioned by the prophecy of an earthquake which was to destroy the city, Earthquake Pills and Powders were hawked about the streets, and found a ready sale. Ambitious as the idea of counteracting an earthquake by pills and! powders undoubtedly was, it is commonplace when compared with that of Surviving the End of the World, and starting terrestrial history over again. Yefc that precisely is the problem which humani ingenuity will exercise itself upon in the* future— that is, if Mr Proctor is not dis--credited. Jules Verne will probably work out the idea in his next book. You see, the effect of the comet's downfall upon the sun will be transient. Within a few; days, or even a few hours, says Mr Prootor, the whole dreadful business will have> consummated itself. The sun's heat willl subside to -what it wag before, his sy&tena of worlds will emerge from their shroud of fire, and evolution and history will begin again. Is it not conceivable that some remnant of the human race may contrive to get through those few days or hours unscathed, and transmit to the new terrestrial cycle the arts and sciences of the old ? It is certainly conceivable. One or other of the polar regions, for instance, ought to come through the ordeal without much damage. The sun is invisible for six months together at the poles, and refugees who could contrive toget there might find it just possible toexist within the circle of arctic or anfrr-

arctic darkness whilst all the sunlit world was consuming. It would be more than tropically hot even at the pole, and all the ice and snow would rush down in floods, or exhale in vapour ; but a tough whaling crew or two might survive, and, ■with the assistance of the Esquimaux, repopulate the earth. Then other methods of esoape are conceivable. Imagine the Lyttelton tunnel hermetically sealed at both ends. There would be air enough in it to keep alive a good few families till the tempest of fire raging outside abated. Even a good air-tight cellar might here and there give effectual protection. But trouble would not end with the conflagration. The oceans of the flame-wrapped planet, driven off in steam, would eventually condense and descend again in rain. Imagine" the deluge ! The whole surface of the continents would be swept and scoured into the bed of the ocean. Still, a few lucky individuals, emerging in time from the dens and caves which had sheltered them from the fire, might get on to hill-tops where they would take little harm from the flood. What a world it would be when, at last, they were able ito go forth and possess it ! ill vestige of human habitation gone, all animal and vegetable life destroyed, its very record awept, with the soil itself, into the depths of the ocean, nothing remaining but the bare rocks and the sea ! What would they find to eat ? I leave Jules Verne to get them out of this difficulty. As far as I can see, life would have to begin again from the monad, and man, the' last product of the old evolution, would find ihimself awkwardly placed at the be gining of the new. Still, it is conceivable, I repeat, that he might pull through. If the idea of the comet catastrophe gets hold of the public mind we shall have these matters discussed in a hundred forms, and schemes of insurance — fire and marine — may be devised to cover all risks. Nous verrons.

Mr lundon, M.H.R., ia not one of the literati of the House, and he seems to have a wholesome horror of long words as of things that are apt to explode and do one some mortal damage. In the debate on the Native Land Courts Bill he is reported to have said on Clause 5T that he " wanted the words ' interlocutory order ' Struck out ; that the same word had cost him £1000, and a word that might cost so much money ought not to be retained in the bill." Mr Bryce endeavoured to comfort the distressed honourable gentleman by assuring him that the obnoxious words only meant " interim order," and a word could not of itself be productive of expense. I hope the unhappy man understood " interim " better than interlocutory," but except that the one word was shorter than the other, and so bore about the same relation as a pistol to a blunderbuss, I am afraid Mr Lundon ■would not get much comfort out of interim.' There is a deep moral in tbe assertion of this perplexed lion, gentleman as to the cost of even a single word. Does not many a man know, for instance, by f ' blest experience," what the two phrases "Will you" and the responsive "Yes have added to his expenses ? Such an "interlocutory" proceeding though it may be short and soon over, is fraught with consequences involving larger sums than even Mr Lundon'fl £1000, andsomeiimea with deep regrets that ever they liad been spoken. lam curious to know, however, the peculiar effect of the obnoxious word in the case cited. It makes ,a fellow nervous about Acts of Parliament if single words in them can have this damaging effect on the innocent and confiding .citizens. It might be desirable to get up a Parliamentary "bee" on the principle ,of the spelling bee, only making the correct meaning the point to aim at rather than correct spelling. At least hon. members themselves should know the meaning of the words they put into bills, or pass when putin, and one or two small prices for success in a competition of the kind I have hinted at might stimulate rising men like Mr Lundon to a study of such .meanings. It is true the bills have interpretation clauses, but who is to interpret khe interpretation 1 For instance it is quite a new light to a simple layman like anyself that "interlocutory" means "interim," but I have made a note of it. Could not the dreary intervals employed in " stone walling" be turned to account as convenient opportunities for carrying into effect this brilliant idea ? Let Sir George Grey propound a word, and Mr Hall award the prizes, and when the task is too difficult it would have to be^confeased that "Sir George didn't know; the Premier didn't know ; the Speaker didn't know ; —nobody knows."

I ought to have noticed last week, but «3idn% a heart-broken advertisement •-wfeich appeared in the Witness of the -week before. Here it is : The "young person," otherwise "the ryoung gentleman in question' who incited and published this oracular notia.cation must have been in a very bad way ,indeed. His youthful affections have apparently been trifled with, and his .intellect, never over strong it'ia to be presumed, has given way benqath the <ahock. That at least is the explanation I should giva of his resolution to wear the ■willow in public, and take the world into Ihis confidence. The fickle damsel— some •"Amy shallow-hearted," who "has written several letters wherein she vows /pne particular promise," has exercised a vrwasra's privilege Qi changing her mM,

Nothing surprising in that, surely. Probably she saw somebody she liked better. If the Sufferer takes my advice he will I "go for" the other fellow straight, and ease his wounded feelings by having it out with him. That certainly will be better than moping around the Win ton ' district in the character of a Blighted Being, and advertising in the Witness that he will have the deceitful fair one's vows " regained by law." Some people in the condition of this Sufferer take to drink— which is bad ; some to Original Poetry — which, though bad again, is ! morallyjlessjobjectionable than drinking — and Borne take aa promptly as possible to another gal. That's the surest medicine in these cases, and decidedly the pleasantest. A beneficent Providence has so arranged it that there always is another gal. No jilted lover need hunger for consolation in vain. Some sweet spirit, even in the Winton district, is waiting to hear the prayer of this dejected youth, and is quite prepared to make his life her guardian care. If the Sufferer will listen to my counsels, I would say to him in the words of the immortal poet — Cheer up Sam ! don't let your spirits go down ! Don't think of gliding into the silent tomb, don't send any more incoherent advertisements to the newspapers, don't harbour thoughts of revenge by legal process — go for the other fellow rather — and don't weakly subscribe yourself "Hers" when she has resolved to be Another's. Teach your poor heart to sing— What care I how fair sho he If she be not fair for me 1 And give the business of perfecting the oure into the hands of that other gal. Civis.