PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1895, 16 March 1888, Page 21

PASSING NOTES.

The Emperor of Germany is really dead, ab least that appears to be the impression oO the press agents who send our latest telegrams. The bewildering contradictions in their messages about this event are probably due to the fact that the defunct, before finally becoming such, exhibited an astonishing, not to say an embarrassing, vitality. Yet, even with the help of this clue, it is not possible to read consistency into their telegrams. First we were told that the Emperor, after making his final will and receiving the last rites of the Church, died at 1 o'clock on Thursday morning. A few hours later we learned that he passed away at five minutes past 0 on Thursday evening. In the interval, the Berlin journals that had announced his earlier decease had been : ' seized by the police." Next comes a message stating that after remaining the whole of Thursday night in "a sleep resembling death,'' the Emperor woke up, took leave of his family, and died at half -past 8 on Friday morning. In London, up to midday Friday, "great uncertainty still prevailed as to whether the Emperor was dead or not," but as no new resuscitation has since been reported, and the Germans are making preparations for embalming him, it may be assumed that this decease is final, and that the mighty Kaiser Wilhelm has really been gathered to his fathers. It is related of Charles II that he apologised to his attendants for being such an unconscionable time in dying. Charles, keen-witted to the last, appreciated the situation ; he knew that the final hours of a dying king try sorely the patience of courtiers, who are thinking chiefly of his successor, and waiting eagerly for the moment to worship the rising sun. At the death of Louis XV, the breath was hardly out of tho king's body when the silence of the palace was broken by a sound " terrible, and absolutely like thunder, — the rush of the whole court," says Carlyle, " rushing as in wager across the CEil-de-Boeuf to salute the new sovereign." It must be highly embarrassing to all concerned when a king wakes up 12 hours after he is supposed to be dead. The Kaiser's case, I should think, is absolutely without precedent. What comes nearest to it is the scene in " Henry IV "where the dying king sleeps, or pretends to sleep, and his scapegrace son, supposing him dead, claps the crown on his own head and walks away with it. Father and son subsequently have an unpleasant little discussion over this larceny : —

Prince : I never thought to hear you speak again.

King: Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought. The Crown Prince is not a Prince Hal ; but. all the same, it is as well that he was a hundred leagues from Berlin when the Kaiser was making his tardy aud vacillaticg exit.

All the dolorous conventionalities proper to the occasion will be observed, no doubt, but it is not possible to feel any profound sorrow for the death of aa old man of 91, who must have outlasted all the uses and enjoyments of life. The first thought that occurs to everybody is that the aged Kaiser has died opportunely for the Crown Prince, and especially for the Grown Princess. The Crown Prince— though it would be lese majesty to say it in Berlin — is himself a dying man. Since the tracheotomy it is physically impossible, I suppose, that he can nave uttered a syllable, and in all probability he will never speak again. A fortnight ago he was reported«i extremis. To a man in this case crowns and sceptres can matter little. The Crown Prince's inward, thought, when now at

last, after a]H these years of waiting, he hears himself greeted Kaiser, will be borrowed from one who was a Kaiser before him — Vanitas vanitatum, onmia vanitas 1 Yet it is something that the goal of a legitimate ambition is reached, however late; and although the new Emperor's elevation may be of little consequence to himself personally, he will hardly be indifferent to the consideration that it will make a vast difference to the future of his wife. This aspect of the situation is emphasised by the contributor who furnishes the two notes which follow, and to him I leave it, along with other moralisings suggested by the great event of the week. Apparently I shall get little else into Passing Notes this week than the Kaiser and the Crown Prince.

Another name added to the roll of the mighty dead. The late Kaiser Wilhelm must be considered a great man because of the work he accomplished and the fingermarks he has left upou the map of Europe. As monarchs go he was assuredly a good man too. There was much to be admired in the character of the stern old King, who steadily strove for and attained his own ends yet did not forfeit the affection of his subjects. It appears strange, looking at the universal veneration that surrounded the Kaiser during the later years cf his life, to remember that there were not long before his reign began ticklish times — times of painful friction between sovereign and subjects. From peaceful Berlin Louis Napoleon, if he was watching attentively, might havo learned one or two "wrinkles" likely to be of \isc to him in his own coujj d'etat some years later. In Berlin in MS was to be witnessed a bloody little struggle between populace and military, ending in the corpses of some 100 citizens strewing the pavements quite a la Francais. Then was developed a peculiar and interesting trait in the character of the Prussian royal family. King Frederick William, who was then upon the throne, immediately issued a proclamation stating that his " faithful soldiers had only cleared the courtyard at a walking pace with their weapons sheathed, and that the guns had gone off of themselves without, thanks be to God, causing any injury." Then he indulged in a triumphal, procession while the bodies of his slain subjects were still lying in state in all t,he churches. From this and other indications, such as the pious fervours with which the late Kaiser Wilhelm was wont to announce the slaughter of more French in 70, it is fair to assume that the Hohenzollerns are great men not untinged by a shade of humbug. The late Emperor's career would likely enough not have been so strikingly successful without this characteristic. Let it always be remembered to his honour that having achieved all he desired for the fatherland he looked back with heavy eyes at the bloodstains behind him, and resolutely kept the peace in Europe for many years before his death.

With what big events the near future is now pregnant — what thunderbolts may not be loosened by the passing of breath from the body of one old man — it is impossible to judge at present. The world is waiting yet to see how much of life remains to Frederick 111, who finds an imperial crown carried to him upon his sick bed. For months past there has seemed to be a tragic race to tho grave between father and son, and the father has reached the goal quickest. But in a few weeks or months there may be another cry of "Lt Toi est mort, vivc le roi ! " It is an altogether impressive and melancholy situation — one not often paralleled in history. Possibly the crown of united Germany seems a very worthless bauble indeed just now to the suffering Prince, yet itisnotaltogetherworthless, and we the English onlookers must rejoice that he has lived to wear ifc. It means much in any event to the English Princess who has been his faithful wife these many years past. There is something not a little touching in what the cable tells us of the scene at the death-bed of the aged Emperor. He and his son, we have been led to believe, did not agree very well politically, but the Kaiser died with the name of Fritz upon his lips, and almost his last act was to exhort the young Prince who will reign hereafter to peace. That tbe exhortation was needed there is very little doubt. Bismarck observed recently that Germany would soon be able to put a million troops on either frontier. Of this army Prince William is likely eventually to have the handling, and may find it a dangerous toy. When a young man knows that he can place at pleasure two million soldiers in the field — a million here and a million there — the temptation must sometimes be very strong to do it.

From an Australian paper I learn that an old friend in the person of the Rev. John Alexander Dowie has found it expedient to cease ministrations at the Fifczroy Free Christian Tabernacle and migrate to America, where he hopes doubtless to find a wider and more fertile field for faith-healing operations. In this he is not likely to be disappointed. It will be remembered that while in New Zealand the Key. Dowie's language was nearly as strong as his faith, and colonists, rough and ready as they may be, didn't like the combination. In the States the public may prove less squeamish, or Mr Dowie may be induced to drop the pastor somewhat and set up in a golden chariot rather than a tabernacle. The loyalty ef the Fitzroy flock to their pastor stood some rough tests, but the playful Billingsgate he scattered during his New Zealand progress swamped him at last. Clerical reputation is but a tender flower, easily blighted. P e- tmember Cowper's lines : — " O vshy are yokels made so coarse, Or clergy made so fine ? A blow that scarce would hurt a horse May kill a sound divine." Mr Dowie when over here did not seem to be made particularly fine, but he has had sufficient sensibility to wither slightly before tne chill breath of Australian public opinion, and is trying transplantation. Whatever his fortunes in the great republic, it is to be hoped that the faith healer will refrain from addressing to the American press any of the delicate compliments he was wont to lavish upon colonial papers. It provokes a shudder even to imagine the horrid thoroughness with which Yankee journalists would crunch up the Rev, Dowie upon half that provocation,

The marriage rate is falling in New Zealand, as we note with regret. It is alarming to think with what headlong rapidity ib would descend to zero if there were much feminine correspondence published of the kind read in the Magistrate's Court at Wellington last week. The lady was writing to her husband — the man who had taken her for better or worse, and apparently found that the worse prevailed. I append a few extracts grimly interesting "to those about to marry." "My dearest darling, loving, loving husband." That is the beginning. It sounds promising, does it not ? But the reader quickly discovers that the lady doth protest too much. This is how she proceeds : — " Just a few lines, my own loved one, to let you know that I have bested you again. I have put the set on denr ngain from getting tbe children adopted. Now you must try some other scheme, old boy. My darling loved one, I do like you so— you don't know the love I have for you in my heart, my dear. You can't imagine, my own pretty, pretty one. I am so glad 1 have been able to put the set on your sending them to the Industrial School, and now again 1 have put the " cooker" on you from having them adopted. You must keep tlvsni, you know, my dearest hubby, or else leave the colony altx* gether. You musk and shall provide for them, whether you like it or not. Now, you must try some other way of spiting me about them. If you can't revenge yourself on me, I suppose you think you will show your spite on tie children ; but, thank God, I have put the set <n it all. You should have treated me as a man shouid have treated his wife, and I would never have left you nor the children. You cur, you long-legged wool stealer. My own darling, I hope you will feel relieved when this is read to you, because I know you are so ignorant, somt» one else must read it for you. Just get someone to look at the Post to-night, and see what I have put in about the children. Get them adopted if you dare, my man, without my con« sent, and see if I don't make an example of you. Now just you try it, my beauty. Don't forget to have the paper read to you to-night. Good» bye, three-penny worth of starvation plastered up against a boiler door ! Believe me to remain your loving, loving, loving wite, . lam dying for the want of seeing your ghostly, ugly face. The philosopher who wrote recently, " There are only two places for women, the cradle and the grave," had doubtless been unfortunate in his marital relations, but his sorrows could scarcely have eclipsed those of tbe husband addressed above. The two should compare notes and give the world the benefit of their joint experience. It would prove a stormy experience, no doubt, but we reading it should comfort ourselves by reflecting that, cruel as woman may be, her cruelty is at least equalled by her kindness. Otherwise of a certainty we should have no marriage rate at all. As Artemus Ward remarks: 11 When women ain't skrattin round, mersifuf cyans, how they ken purr 1 " The writer of the epistle quoted could probably purr once

The Queen's desire to compliment the Pope on bis Jubilee has suffered a rebuke which in some quarters will be considered Providential. Her Majesty, it seems, announced to his Holiness that she was about to send him as a present the Mazarin Biblo from the Windsor Library, a gift so precious —being worth about £10,000, as his Holiness remarked in his premature letter of thanks— that the librarian at Windsor felt it his duty to protest. That wouldn't have mattered much, perhaps— the Eoyal promise must be kept coute quo couti ; but luckily Lord Salisbury, stirred up by the zealous librarian, discovered that the Mazarin was national property, and could not be alienated without an Act of Parliament. The Royal wrath may be imagined ; also the vexation of the Holy Father, who, looking out daily for his £10,000 Mazarin, received instead a " gold vase and ewer," wherewith the Queen sought to console him. But the worst remains to tell. The "gold vase and ewer " turned out when examined at Homo to be not gold at all, but mere silver gilt, and his Holiness has thought it his duty to mention the fact to the donor ! Zealous Protestants will see in this diverting comedy of errors a providential snubbing of the Queen for coquetting with the Pope. What really mored her Majesty to such unwonted generosity was not her interest in Popes, but her interest in Jubilees. She has recently had a Jubilee of her own. Moreover, did she not ouitc lately hold at the font one of her grandchildren to be baptised by a Presbyterian minister— Dr Cameron Lees, erstwhile cf Melbourne? The Protestant Succession r'oesn'L appear to be in any immediate danger.

The revolt of man against the ever-growing encroachments of woman can hardly be much longer delayed. There will soon be left lothing distinctively masculine — no profession, no employment, no amusement, no vice which men may boast as exclusively their own— no article of dress, indeed, for is not the "divided skirt" an insidious approxima(ion to trousers ? It is probably with an eye to the divided skirt, or to something worse — (he division without the skirt — that somebody has produced a code of "modified football rules for girls," a copy of which code I have just received. There were just two or three things remaining which, as one fondly supposed, women could not do. It s-'.emed impossible that a woman could play football, ride a bicycle, or climb the rigging of a ship. That dream is over. Here are "modified football rules for girls " already in print ; if girls may tike the field for football, there seems no reason why girls should nofc career through the streets astride of bicycles or man the Calliope. I have looked through the " modified rules" to see where the modification comes in, and am rather surprised to find that they give no hint of modifications in dress. Perhaps that goes without saying. There is much running and kicking—dropk: eking, place-kicking, punt-kicking, all kinds and styles of kicking, — are the girl players to r:in and kick in petticoats ? One hardly sees how that can be ; it remains to await with imputient curiosity the solution of the mystery w h^n the first girls' football team takes- the fi. Id. With what interest we shall watch them rolling over in mud and slush, and butting at eiich other, head down, in a "scrum"! Think of the manly stride they will attain, aiid the magnificent development of their kr.ver limbs ! Bat I forbear to pursue the subject further. We shall see what we shall see. I don't wish to be an alarmist, but coupling these modified football roles foj

girls with Dr Belcher's recent warnings on the subject of scholarships, I am constrained to call upon my fellow men to wake, arise, or be for ever fallen. Civis.

Ifc has been suggested to us that the last words of the Emperor William were far more likely to be Fritz khet (Fritz lives), a gratulatory expression with a true German ring, than Frits heber. Professor A. Reisshetz, an Austrian naturalist, who is at present travelling through the colony, has written to Mr D. H. Hastings, secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, asking him to forward him samples of wool and cereals grown in Otago, as on his return to Austria he intends giving a series of popular and scientific lectures on the colony in the principal towns of Europe. The Dunedin and Tuapeka police districts have been amalgamated, and Inspector Moore, who has been stationed at Lawrence, has been transferred to luvercargill ; Inspector Buckley, who has been in charge of the Southland district, retiring from the service.

The report of the Seacliff Asylum Commission reached tho Government on Wednespay, and is now under consideration of the Cabinet. I learn (telegraphs our correspondent) on authority that it distributes some blame all round, but its tenor io chiefly adverse to the architect.

Wo have received fiom Mr Joseph Braithwaite " Bruek's Guide to the Health Itesorts in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand." The work is published at the Australian Medical Gazette Office, Sydney, and elves in a concise form a description of over 200 health resorts, with the analyses, temperature, and special indications of nearly 100 mineral waters throughout Australasia. There is also some particulars as to climate compiled from official documents. Altogether the work is a valuable one to invalids and others.

Messrs Wilson, Tame, and Co.. Invercargil , will Bell by auction on the 2lsth inst. the Central Hill run, near Lumsden, together with a large number of sections in the lnvercargill Hundred. A reward is offered for the recovery of a bay mare Btrayed from MorvenHill station. Hillhead Farm, Otataia, is for sale or lease by tender. Mr W. Quin will hold a clearing pale on account of Mr G. H. Mackenzie at Kelso oiithe 23rd inst. Tenders are invited for sinking prospeetiug shafts at Waipori. The Otago Agricultural Society's annual ram and ewe fair will be hekl at Tahuna Park, Dunedia, on Thursday, sth April. Tho announcement of the clearing sale of the Hon. Mathew Holmes' horses and sheep, to be held at Awamoa on the 29th inst., will be iound in our advertising columns.

Mr Montagu Pym will sell groceries, provisions, &c. in tho estate of Messrs Patereon and M'Leod on the 21st inst. Messrs Murray, Roberts, and Co. offer the station property of the"late Stephen Adam, of Hampden, to let or lease for a terra of years. Tenders to be in by April 9. Mr Joseph Braithwaite has the recently published guide to the health resorts ot the Australasian colonies on sale.

Messrs Charles Begg and Co, hare of en appointed agents for the Spohr chin-holder for the viol/n.