PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1812, 13 August 1886, Page 22

PASSING NOTES.

If respect for censtituted authorities should perish in this community, if we all become Anarchists and Nihilists, the fault will lie at the door of the City Council. Dunedin will soon be known as the Colonial Gotham ; too probably, indeed, the wise men of Gotham would have blushed to be thought capable of the follies perpetrated by our City Fathers. For perhaps a year past the Council has been toiling to enlarge the hideous gash, made by its orders in Dowling street. Under the sapient presidency of Barnes, perc etjils, gangs of "unemployed" have dug and bored and blasted month after month to make a road that leads nowhither, leaving the houses on each side of their yawning excavation cut off from cominunioation with the rest of the city aud perched inaccessible on the verge of precipitous cliffs. As an incident of these operations the roofs of sundry of the lieges have been crushed in with stones from blasts, and for injuries done to life and limb the Council has been constrained to pay thousands of pounds in compensation. At last has dawned upon these wiseacres what might have been seen by anybody but a city councillor from the beginning, that the Dowling street cutting is essentially and fundamentally a blunder. Nothing remains to do with the horrible hole they have been digging at such cost but to fill it up again. With a courage which must extort the admiration of even a municipal Nihilist, Barnes ph-e has himself tabled a motion to that effect. Barnes 2 ere is no doubt very penitent ; so are his brother Solons; — in token whereof they have suddenly fallen upon the Corporation servants and cut down their salaries by a round £1000 a year. How else atone for the Dowling street fiasco, or contrive ways and means for similiar " improvements " elsewhere ? The Barnes year will be memorable in the annals of the Southern Gotham. Our mayor was somehow missed in the distributien of birthday honours — could we not, more antiquo, contrive a civic crown for him — say of cabbage leaves ?

The signal success which has attended the Garrison Hall Carnival during the past week clearly indicates the method by which amateur caterers can best attract the amusement-loving public. Most girls judiciously reared can dress themselves and a bazaar stall too at a pinch. They can deftly pin nosegays in the button-holes of as many young donkeys as will submit themselves t« the pleasing operation at sixpence a head ; and as the means are ennobled by the end, and the end is the welfare of their church, the girls are perhaps not so badly employed. Both they and the young donkeys aforesaid might do worse elsewhere. They would, ten chances to one, do much worse at other forms of amateur entertainment. I received a graphic description only the other day of a platform performance that took place not a hundred miles from Dunedin, much less than a hundred years ago. One gentleman amateur down for a lengthy reading from a favourite author, leant, book in hand, against a piano upon the stage, crossed his legs, and murmured confidentially to himself for some five aud twenty minutes. lie was inaudible even to the f rout bench, and was implored to stop by ropeated trampings of feet and ironical applause. But ho murmured on, until interrupted by a perfect thunder of foptbeats, which, being absolutely pachydermatous, he acceptpd as an encore, and apologised at length for not repeating the piece. Following him, says my informant, came a lady reader, who also reclined against the piano and was equally inaudible, and upon her subsidence there arose* yet another reader — a male, acutely melancholy in style and subject. He read Dickens' story of " Poor Little Jo " (pronounced " Jee-ow," with a dismal howl of pathos upen the last word). It is impossible to avoid reflecting how much better these entertainers would have figured at the Garrison Hall in ike garb of Henry VIII, or Watt Tyler, or Titus Oates, or any other historical personage ; their business merely to march, to bow, and to be looked at. Depend upon it, that for amateurs a Carnival's tho thing.

Although in latitudinarian Danedin an evangelical minister lectures from his pulpit on Robbie Burns, and St. Paul raises money for his church by a carnival, and the disciples of Knox transact their devotions to the lilting strains of an organ, there are Christian communities elsewhere, it is refreshing to know, where these things would be anathema. Someone has sent me a copy of the " Apostolic Guide," a large eight-paged paper, published at Covington, Kentucky, and bearing the motto " Ask for the old paths and walk therein." Danedin latitudinarians will sniff at the idea of Apostolic guidance from Kentucky, and will question the claims of the Kentuckians to any special knowledge of the "old paths." Such are the prejudices of the natural man ! Hear what the " Apostolic Guide" has to say on the subject of ministerial fiddiing — a test - question on

■which some of our local divines would give forth but too probably a quavering and uncertain sound. Brother Cawthorn writes to Brother Allen, the editor of the " Apostolic Guide," as follows : —

What do you think of a brother who plays upon the violiu, and teaches it in his school despite the earnest entreaties of his brethren and sisters to desist, but contends that there is nothing wrong in it, but that the violiu has fallen into bad company, and he (a preacher) intends to redeem it, and gets up in the presence of hundreds of people and thumps his fiddle into chord, and joins the band in playing jigs, hornpipes, mazirrkns, polkas, waltzes, quadrilles, &c, with another preacher standing behind a huge instrument, called the bass viol, another brother with a little brass horn, all tooting to the ears of the populace, while the students in Indian costume, on the stage behind, are^walking a Georgia reel ? Will not Brother Allen, as "'a watchman that is not afraid to cry aloud aud spara not,"' impart to the faithful some »postolio guidance on this

painful subject? Thus Bro. Cawthorn, to whom Bro. Allen, in a half-column reply, delivers himself thus: —

Such conduct is all decidedly unbecoming and out of place. There is no inherent wrong in the violin that we can see. But its associations have been bad, and many good people are prejudiced against it. A man who has _no more regard for pure morality and spirituality than seems to he manifest in the above case, has no business in the pulpit ; nor is he fit for a teacher of the children of Christian parents, who wish them trained in the instruction and discipline of the Lord. This is apostolic guidance, aud the " old paths," as understood in Kentucky. There is "no inherent wrong in the violin" — no original sin, so to speak, but it is not a scriptural instrument* David played on the harp, possibly a jewsharp. It is not written that he played on tho violin. David danced before the Ark, but there is a strong presumption that he never walked a Georgia reel. Probably he would not have known how. Is there no prospect of inducing the ministers of our three or four leading churches to subscribe to the Kentucky "Apostolic Guide.''

Another warship — the German vessel " Albatross " — has been carrying the blessed message of civilisation among the Pacific Islanders. The message was enclosed in several hundred neat spherical packages, and sent a3hore with much ceremony and some little noise.. So moved were the islanders at its receipt that many of them — strong men as well as women and children — lay down forthwith, and astonished their relatives by writhing in a most eccentric and curious fashion, while the sand upon which they lay grew gradually moist and ominously red! The gallant commander of the " Albatross " reports that some forty natives in the different villages he visited experienced this peculiar seizure, while the villages themselves were literally overwhelmed by his attentions. This is what we, in these days of enlightenment, call " reading the natives a lesson." Isolated cases of murder occur (it would be strange if they did not) upon the islands which the white man has begun to bless with his presence, and some European power retaliates presently — in the course of some six or twelve mouths, as soon as time can be spared from more important matters — by shelling every native village within reach, and scattering death and desolation indiscriminately among the miserable inhabitants. A barbarian chief knocks John Jones on the head with a club in the name of Mumbo Jumbo, and presently a naval officer is sent to knock the chief on the head with a ten-ton gun in the name of Christ. We nineteenth century Christian nations — let us do ourselves justice — do collect vast sums of money and establish mission stations to carry the gentle doctrines of the Prince of Peace among these benighted people, but we save Christian teaching from becoming utterly monotonous by such occasional interludes as the late cruise of the " Albatross."

The captaiu of the Albatross comes back to Sydney, a local centre of civilisation, and reports his performance without any sense of shame. There is no need for any, for he has simply done his duty. He was sent to " astonish the natives," and he has astonished them. Let them recover from their surpri&e at leisure, rebuild their huts, bind up their wounds, bury their dead, dry up the blood of their wives and sweethearts, and behave themselves better for the future. But a narrative which reaches me this mail, forwarded by a particularly intelligent native who was in the thick of the scrimmage, shows how the matter looks, regarded from the Islanders' point of view. Audi alteram part em. I have had the manuscript translated, and give what is really the gist of it : — '

" It is many moons ago," says my correspondent, " that some white men, very fat, with little round windows over their eyes, landed here and said, ' Gott in Himmel,' because their feet were wet by the surf. We traded with them, and all went well, until one day my cousin Numsoul missed his sweetheart, as did also others of us. We went to the white chiefs, but they kicked Numscul in the stomach and consumed him by lightning. Then they put off to their ship, first striking by lightning five more of our young men, and carrying off twelve others, whom we saw no more. Some moons afterwards came other whites, the same in speech and figure, and our chief said, ' Let us eat them.' We said, •It is good.' But although fat, the strangers were tough and stringy, and our people suffered much for days after the feast. They recovered, and tha feast was forgotten, but a day or two back an immense ship smoking terribly from two places in the «entre, came in sight, and we gathered on the shore to watch it. Pretty soon it smoked at the side too, and thundered, and a large black ball, the size of many cocoanuts, fell near us. The ball smoked too. We said, ' Let it be carried to our chief's hut that he may light his pipe at the smoking hole aud warm himself thereat.' But our chief said, 'No.' The white men did not eat well, he said, and we would have no more to do with them or their belongings. The black ball which had come ashore by accident should be returned to them, and he lifted it and carried it down towards a canoe that was on the beach. Directly after, there was a noise, and wo ran. We came back and saw small pieces of our chief upon the sand and upon some bushes near, but there was no ball. Soon after there was much thunder and many more balls came ashore, and the legs and arms and heads of our people begau to fly from their bodies. Many of our women bled and screamed. Some of our young men screamed too and began to roll about on tho ground and pick up large hawdfuls of dust and sand. Our houses nearly all fell iv and burned like big bon fires. Wo were not pleased, and began to run. This was three days ago, and some of us are running still, but I have stopped to write this." There is a simple pathos about this narrative^ that induces me to accept it as a tolerably accurate and unoxaggerated statement of the facts attending the recent naval demonstration by Germany.

A correspondent at Clinton Eends mo the following :—

Dijak " Civis," — The nerved of a young lady, the sole occupant of tho Waiwera Schoolhouse, was rather' severely tried last Monday week,

about midnight. She heard a machine stop opposite her dwelling with three men in it. On stopping, one of the party said, "Is this the place?" On being answered in the affirmative, two of the three got out and began to strike matches. A lamp was lighted and handed to the one in charge of the trap with instructions not to show the light, but when he saw a certain signal he was to go on to the place agreed upon. The two others then lighted lamps each, and one of them was heard to say, "There is always two or three females about here I would like to catch." Oa hearing this, the young lady referred to began to prepare a defence. All the furniture that could be removed was jammed up against the door, the windows all made fast, the kitchen tongs were laid handy aside, and the preparations made would of proved creditable to an old general, but fortune favours the brave. The would-be female catchers passed on, and no more was heard of them that night, although had they returned before daylight they would still have found the lady on sentry. It was found on the following day that the misterious parties were no others than the manager and ranger of the Ofcago Acclimatisation Society in search of spawning fish, and the females referred to were some large fish that had been seen spawning near the place named.

My correspondent's English is a trifle shaky in places, but his narrative is delightfully thrilling. The nocturnal experiences of the young lady at Waiwera furnish another caution against the practice of jumping too hastily afc conclusions. Of course other young ladies under similarly fearsome conditions might have done worse than merely jump at a conclusion. They might have jumped figuratively out of their skins with terror, or if willing to be caught — as many young ladies alas! are — they might even have jumped literally into the arms of the prowlers. But comparatively few would have bethought themselves of an improvised barricade, and the tongs. Our young lady was plucky and determined, but she was also needlessly startled. So was the gentleman whose portrait we once saw in Punch, descendiug the stairs in his dressing-gown, the two tassels trailing behind him and following him stair by stair with a soft, suspicious sound. " Positive," muttered this elderly alarmist, stopping dead with glaring eyeballs, " that I heard ghostly footsteps tracking me. No. Silence." He proceeded. " Horror ! There they come again"; and he bolted precipitately into his study, locked the door, and wrote straightway to the Times and the Psychical Investigation Society.

On the question of the pronunciation of "isolated" I have the following, dated from Oamaru : —

Deae Old " Cms," — (Since that is the beginning that evidently pleases you), another Laura quotes the following from Trench's " English Past and Present," for your benefit :

"Up to the time of Bolingbroke, the word ' isolated ' did not exist in our language, as the following passage proves — ' The events we are witnesses of in the course of the longest life, appear to us very often original, unprepared, signal, and unrdative ; if I may use such a word for want of a better in English. In French I would say isoles.' " In Skeat's Dictionary I find, that ' isolate ' is suggested by the Italian isolato—& term in architecture, and ijola, an island. Without doubt, then, the word should be called is-olato, and I heard it so pronounced many years ago in one of our cathedrals at Home by a learned canon, who might ' well be considered an authority ' in matters of the kind. Still I prefer to go by usage and say i-solate myself, lest I should be taken to task, as was the student who ppoke to Dr Parr, of Alexandria, andj defended kimself by the authority and example of Dr Bentley. 'Dr Bentley and I,' replied Dr Parr, 'may call it Alexandria; but I think you had better call it Alexandria. — Lauka.'" This is a subject on which I will not argue, nor argument permit, such logomachies being endless. There is Mr Washington Moon, for example, whose book " The Dean's English " — designed to make miserable the life of Dean Alford— was published 20 years ago. The dean has long since gone to his rest, but Mr Moon is at it still, as faithful to the unlovely vocation he has chosen as his celestial namesake to her monthly round. In the last number of Public Opinion Mr Washington Moon was still proving, as he has been proving for the last 20 years ? that no one knows how to write or pronounce the English language but himself. An example to be shunned, — hence the Oamaru "Laura" may believe and teach about the word " isolate " what she troweth without let or hindrance from me. One word only will I interpose — the fact that " isolate " comes from Ital. insolato does not prove that the initial vowel is short. The Ital. isolctto, on Skeats' own showing, is from Lat. insula, and the rule is to compensate for an omitted consonant by lengthening the preceding vowel. "'

There has been'a lively debate in the New South Wales Upper House on the subject of cremation. It must have required some courage to introduce a Cremation Bill into an assembly which represents, as a Sydney paper remarked, the senility of the community, and one venerable senator complained, with much show of reason that he found the subject "horribly suggestive." Another, who took a pessimist view of the prospects of Legislative Councillors in the next world, said that it was " only too probable that they would all be burned by-and-bye ; it was quite enough to have that on their minds, without arranging to be burned in a fiery furnace in this world too." This hon. gentloman's objections to cremation condensed themselves into the question " Why anticipate ?" A third objector ingenuously expressed a desire that ho might " live long enough " to be educated out of his present prejudices. On the other hand, the member who introduced the bill seemed almost prepared such his enthusiasm, to be cremated at once. His speech invested the subject with all the charms of eloquence and poetry :

" In a few short minutes," said the hon. gentlemau, " the shell of humanity was reduced to a small, incorruptible quantity of ashes, so pure, so free from odour or infection, that though the death may have occurred as a consequence of the most loathsome disease, yet they can bo immediately received as a sacred relic by the fond lover, and stored in some consecrated spot, to bo

visited again and again, and may be fondled or kissed without danger or disgust, with that sacred enthusiasm which only devoted affection can give." There is a good deal in this argument. The advantage of possessing a family cemetery ia the form of a'china cabinet is obvious. Cremation may be recommended in the interests of both sentiment and art, a fact which was perceived long ago by the ancient Romans. When the widowed Agrippina, as Tacitus, or Suetonius, or some other classical historian relates, landed at Brindisi from the mail boat of the period, bearing in one hand the urn containing her Germanicus, and leading by the other his orphaned offspring, she appealed to the sensi- 1 bilities of the sorrowing crowd that met her as no ' modern widow in similar circumstances would be able to do, however heavily draped in crapes and sables. It is curious te reflect that the urn figured on modern gravestones is the urn of Roman cremation. Some day, perhaps, the mortuary urn will be put again to its original use. Like the Sydney legislators, I wish that I may " live long enough " to see it.

At a meeting of the Dock Trust held at Port Chalmers on Wednesday, it was resolved — " That steps be at once taken to float a loan, and that an agent be appointed to proceed to England with the object of getting the fullest information on the whole subject, as well as with power to purchase whatever material and plant are necessary for tho dock." Messrs Wales and Barnes strongly opposed the motion, and afterwards entered a written protest against it, on the ground that the income would not be sufficient to pay the interest on the proposed loan.

To correct a current misapprehension, we are asked to state that the Fox Terrier Challenge Cup does not become the absolute property of the winner at last Saturday's show, who only holds it for a year. It will be competed for again at the society's show next August.

At the Port Chalmers Police Court on Wednesday, before Messrs E. G. Alien (mayor) and A . Thomson, J.P., an elderly man named John Duckett was charged on the information of Sergeant Finnegan with criminally assaulting Rosin a Poulson, his stepdaughter, a child of between 10 and 12 years of age, on or about July 17. The charge was heard with closed doors, and the evidence is totally unfit for publication. After hearing the statements of the little girl, Dr Drysdale, Sergeant Finnegan, and Constable Porter, their worships committed the accused for trial.

Among the applicants for relief at the Benevolent Institution trustees' meeting on Wednesday was a young woman who, if her story he true — and there seems little reason to doubt it — wastwo and a-half years ago married toa man who had, and still has, a wife in Auckland. After some time the man she supposed was her husband left her and returned to his first wife, and she managed until lately to earn enough by giving music lessons to support herself and her child. Recently this means of maintenance partially failed, owing to illness, and on Wednesday she appeared to be in a very weak state indeed. One of the trustees asked his fellow trustees, . " Will we not be compounding a felony if we do not acquaint the police with the circumstances of this case ? " Another trustee did not favour the suggestion contained in the query. He replied, " If you see a man committing a burglary, you are not bound to tell the police," also giving as an additional reason for not moving in the matter that the young woman had accepted by way of compromise the sum of £40 from tho man who had deceived her. In reply to a question put, the applicant gave the trustees to understand that she was friendless.

The Tuapeka branch of the Educational Institute adopted the following report of a subcommittee appointed to deal with Dr Macgregor's circular regarding the present syllabus: — "That drawing, geography, and history be class subjects through all the standards iv which it is proposed to teach them — i.e., drawing in all the standards ; geography and grammar in the IV and V Standards ; and history in the V and V 1 —1066 to the present time. That elementary Ecience should be confined to the IV and V Standards. By thus curtailing the work of the I, 11, 111, and IV Standards, more time could be given to the teaching of reading, which is usually spoken of in the inspectors' reports as ' lacking in expression,' &c." It was also agreed that there should be two reading books for the first four standards, so as to carry out the wish of the inspectors in this respect.

Messrs Nimmo and Blair have a few Skerry Blue potatoes for sale.

A pupil teacher is required for the deaf mute institution at Sumner.

The annual general meeting of the Taieri A. and P. Association is to be held on the 2nd prox.

Messrs M'Landrcss. Hepburn, and Co. will sell fruit and forest trees from Mr Cleuve's nursery, luvercargill, on the 14th inst.

Sections in Kirkland Hill will be sold under sheriff's warrant, as per advertisement, on the 4th prox.

Mr F. Pulton has Chesterfield Island guano for sale.

We are reqxiested to draw attention to Mr E. R. Bradshaw'a notification with reterence to the purchase of winter catskins.

Women sympathise with women. Sufferers should consult (personally orby letter) Mrs Louisa Hawkins, Having made female complaints a special study, and from long experience I can givo the best advice free. Dr M'Dade's Steel and Pennyroyal Pills. 3s 6d ; Hawkins' Corrective Pills, Is 6dand 2s 6d} MaternalPowder, Is 6d; Herbal Cough Powder, Diuretic Powder, Composition Powder, Stomach Bitters Powder, Is (id tin. Herbal Ointment, infallable remedy for aoro legs, &c, Is pot. Medicine forwarded on receipt of stamps or P. 0.0. — Note address, Hawkins', Herbal Depot, 140 George street, Duuedin, opposite Carroll's York Hotel. — [Advt.]