PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 956, 16 May 1889, Page 21

PASSING NOTES.

" ♦ Economy '—I term it • parsimony,' " writes Sir Kobert Stout to the Wan&tnuf Herald; and again to the Auckland Star— " the Government^ term their policy of cutting down expenses .'economy '—but' I -term it 1 parsimgny.'" Sir' Robert' evidently means us to understahd.that this word "parsimony" carries a weight of opprobrium under \?hich the Government must sink. A Ministry whose "economy" Sir Robert Stout terms "parsimony" is ipso facto, .arraigned, judged, and sentenced. One' lives^and learns 1 , and, for my own part, I am and { alwayj ; have ; been willing to learn political wisdom from the lips of Sir Robert Stout, but tnfe confidence of his in the .destructive powers of thejjword " parsimony '* fairly ' staggers' me. ■ His affection for it i£ that of a! : Nihilist' ; for a dynamite bomb, and he expects it to do th« same sort of execution. Only fling it often enough, he- thinks, and it -must, soorier ov later, blow the Ministry into atoms. Nowj I don'ff care two, pins about the 'fate of the Ministry; they must' die* some' day; and I shall be prepared, at the proper time, to attend their political funeral with reasonable equanimity; but' what I do 1 care about is the reputation of my dear old friend and foe, Sir Robert Stout, for accuracy in the use of polemical English. Let him bear with me then for a moment whilst I offer him a little dissertation on the parliamentary and political history of the word "parsi* mony." But for this I shall want aflothej paragraph.

First, Sir Robert vsrill petmit me to remind him of Edmund Barke's celebrated quotation in the House of Commons— Ma&wm vectigal estparsimonia—" thrift is itself a^ gdctd income," when the Irißh orator blundered in his pronunciation of the. word vebtiffal, The House of Commons is about the last place in the world where, a' false quantity could pass unchallenged, and Burke at once corrected. "I thank the hqn.gentleoian for his correction," he replied, " ai^ce it enables me to repeat a maxim so important" —and then he repeated it, with the jpeiralt in veotigal long, as it ought to be. The author of the maxim was Cicero, and Giperojlin hi» day was thought to know something aboufc statesmanship. Next, let me quote a formal definition of "parsimony", by Senetja (tat Latin I omit, but will deposit it'wlth th« editor, not necessarily for'publication' but as a guarantiee of good faith)) " Pareiniony ifl the science of avoiding euperfiuous -expenses, wthe art'of using' one^indbm'e 1 vfitrkode-

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ration.". ., This 'is Seneca, "and he toot be it" observed, was a practical politician of repute in his own country.' If these authorities be ih.OjUght, too antiquated, let me quote one Nearer our own times. Says Adam Smith in hii" Wealth of Kations ( " :— " Parsimony, and not industry, iathe immediate Cause of the increase pf. capital; industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony ac(Sumulates jrbut, whatever industry might acquire, f parsimony did not save and store up, the apital would never be the greater. -then, my deaf Sir Robert, is one of the greatest virtues a Government r ' can ' possess. The present Government aiodestly call their retrenchment policy . eoohpnly;" but you call it "parsimony." Unwittingly you" are paying them a very ■bondplinient.

At R. J. Creighlon, who is over here just i)w industriously trying to persuade us t,hafc Short' is our friend, not Codlin, has undoubtedly a very' winning way with him. Whether we shall when his blandishments '■ 'are forgotten remain seriously impressed

with the fact that the United States rather snan 1 Canada or England is the true market for us is open to question, but that need not prevent us revelling for the moment in Mr Oreighton's monstrously civil sayings : • ' *While you ship your surplus 13,000 miles to a market, yoa always stand at a disadvantage. I may say that Dunedinis greatly improved since I saw it last," he 'remarked, "and I am greatly pleased to meet so, many old friends." The above is one instance of a business argument deftly wedded to a social compli'ttient. Other pleasant things were said, by Mr Creighton in profusion. He spoke of our general progress} of our well-dressed people,' of otlr trim fences, our. thrifty homsteads, and was, it must be confessed,- as ■ severe- upon Canada as he was gracious towards New Zealand. Canada was an • old and ■ poor country where snowed up families had to subsist upon boiled hay. This lends the additional force of contrast to our old townsman's flattering estimate of New Zealand. Nothing could be more gratifying. If only there were nothing ' behind. But, alack, there is. With ' pain, although not altogether with surprise, we learn after all these complimentary utterances that Mr Oreightoh wants something from us— something, too, in the shape of hard cash. What he desires in return for his expressions of high esteem is a subsidy to the Californian mail Service, which never has done, and never will do a ha'porth of good 1 to New Zealand commercially. So much for disinterestedness in man. This is : the way of the world— of that world which, as Mr Sampson Brass observes, "rotates upon its own axis, has its solar influences, and various games of that sort."

Information becomes more wofully distorted the farther it travels. Our cable news from Europe is often confused, but . seldom so misleading as the message that reached us last week concerning Armenian atrocities. A band of Kurds were alleged to have de- • scended upon a- village and committed outrages so appalling that even the Armenian sense of propriety was affronted. It began to be felt that something must be done, and a revolt against Turkish rule was imminent. That, at least, was what we were led to believe. What, however, does it all amount to when the surface stuff is removed and the bed rock of fact is reached ? Why, simply to this : Instead of a band of Kurds holding a bloody carnival, one solitary Armenian -gentleman has been doing his best, according to his lights, to enforce domestic discipline. A chieftain — one Sourikauri — has boiled his bride. That is the sum and substance of the whole affair. There has been a hitch in the household ; — what, it boots not to inquire ; and Sourikauri has adopted a remedy which sounds strange to European ears, but which was doubtless the most effective and expeditious that suggested itself to his darkened understanding. Marriage is at best a lottery, and ; Sourikauri felt that his had been an unlucky draw. .She was still a bride, but it is never too early for incompatibility of temper to manifest itself. The little rift within the lute became noticeable perhaps immediately after the ceremony; it widened with incredible rapidity; the music became not exactly mute, but terrifically discordant ; recrimination set in with severity, and but why follow such a story through all its painful details ? He boiled Tiu bride. In that pithy sentence we hear the knell of that union over which the joy bells had rung so recently. Poor Sourikauri; his methods are startlingly Draconian, but very possibly he means well. A free hand in the settlement .of marital dispute's is partially conceded even by our English judicial system : — Saya my lord: "You deserve transportation for life. ' * " Ple«ae your lordship," says I, " it was only my wife, Which she'd been and cheeked me up to my face." " Indeed," iay» his lordehip, " that alters the case."

In Armenia as elsewhere wives are evidently very trying at times.

During the period of incubation which ultimately gave to the nineteenth century Sir Julius Vogel's prophecy of what the world's condition will be at the opening of the twenty-first, it was sometimes whispered that our last new novelist had a colloborateur/ There was somebody, it was said, who had sketched out the general scheme of the work, and who had entrusted its actual execution to" the abler hands of Sir Julius. It was never supposed, of course, that the .ex-.statesman was not distinctly the senior partner in the combination, whatever that might be. At most it was an arrangement of a kind not altogether unknown in his previous career— Sir Julius Vogel "with precedence," as it were. But speculations of the kind came to an early termination, the suggestion of a colleague in the back ground haying been indignantly denied by the author himself — unhappily without waiting to know with what reception his book might meet.v It is not impossible that such a colleague — I had almost said accomplice--might be found eminently convenient now. Even .an accessory after the fact would not be without his uses : uses which I would rather not myself indicate, but which can be readily imagined by those who have made a study of Holman Hunt's celebrated masterpiece in the Melbourne Exhibition. When the rumours . of the coming work were first spread, I. myself imagined that there was a collaborateur somewhere. Now that I have

.read it, I can" only; lament £hat~ there was noi.' Lik4 the monk's in the' "Jackdaw oi Rheims," regardless of grammafj I could have exclaimed, "That's him "— " him " of course being "the colleague— at those passages of the book where now I can only mournfully ask, "Is it you, Sir Julius— is it really you 1 "

That once famous play, "Our American Cousin," is not yet so antiquated but that we can all remember the colloquy between Lord Dundreary and his charmer on the subject of the latier's brother. "Do you," begins the peer (in the very extremity of agony for something to say while seated by her side at luncheon), " d — d — do you like cheese 1 M " Not much," is the composed reply of the young lady. "D— d^-doth your brother like cheese ? ", is then asked with every appearance of the most intense interest by the distressed ' nobleman. "Surely, my lord, you should' know that I never had, a brother." "Oh dear, no— no, of course— what I meant, don't you know, wath — if you had a bwother, would he like cheese 1 " . Sir Julius Vogel, as we now know, never had' a colleague (of course it will be understood that; I am referring to him a ! s a novelist only). What I would like to' suggest is,' that if Sir Julius had had a colleague, that colleague' would have been Mr W. S. Gilbert. Moreover, most of the plot (I like to be courteous— why should I not call it a plot?) would have been Mr Gilbert's : though I must hasten to add, that the dialogue and the treatment generally would not under any circumstances have been mistaken for that of the' famous Librettist. The goody-goody Emperor going about surrounded by a perpetual' hen contention of strong-minded females, preaching deplorable platitudes' to them, and finishing by marrying the Undersecretary of State for Home Affairs (after creating her Duchess of New Zealand by cable for succeeding in a »old mining speculation), might hare been the original expounder of the virtues of " the expression 'if you please,' "who was finally annexed by the leading chorus lady. Or again, where he appears as a war tactician, he exactly squares with our notion of what bhe Gilbertian "model of a modern majorgeneral" mighthave been'expected to do under 3imilar circumstances. ,The execrable ras-' 3ality and excellent simultaneous hornpipjng 3f Dick Deadeye furnish the only parallel I know of to the style of villany which will, I find, be the fashion in a.d. 2000; and the transformation of Captain Corcoran is represented after a century of enlightenment' by " a tall man, with features almost indistinguishable from the profuse beard, whiskers, and moustache with which they were covered," who after a due preliminary excursion round the stage "pulled off from his face its hirsute adornments," and turned out to be a preposterous colonel of indefinite status t and impossible habits, who had infested the earlier portion of the book in another but equally exasperating guise. Notwithstanding all these excellent reasons for supposing Mr Gilbert to be implicated, however, we now know' he was not. It therefore only reniains'for us to be profoundly thankful that the awful perfection to which boredom is advancing will not' reach the climax to be found in this book for another 111 years at any rate. I myself have special reason to be thankful that this cdlumn is so entirely separated by my editor from the department of literary criticism that I am not compelled to sjive the very faintest indication of my own opinion of Sir Julius Vogel's masterpiece, toothing, in fact, shall induce me for a moment to do so. The Rev. Mr Mackay, of the Manse, Gore, recently'preached an|" Orange sermon," brimful, no doubt, of the customary Orange amenities towards Roman Catholics. Thereupon' the Rev. Father Newport, P.P., of the same place, being, as the Scotch say, very much " left- to himseF, " took pen, ink, and paper in an unpropitious hour and rushed into print. The Mackay, nothing loth, had his coat off in a twinkling, the local editor made a ring, and under his auspices the two clerical pugilists went at it tooth and nail, metaphorically, of course; — remembering the slowness of my countrymen to see a joke, I hasten to explain that- the priest and the presbyter did hot resort to, physical fisticuffs. All the same they joined battle in ' a theological "mill," bloodthirsty but undecisive, which, for anything known to the contrary, is still in progress. Where are the police? Has' neither the Presbytery nor St. Joseph's anything to say to a public scandal of this nature which disgraces them both ? Is any Presbyterian minister at liberiy to stir up anger, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness by preaching Orangeism ? Is there no church rule requiring Roman Cdtholic priests to hold ' their tongues under provocation, and to show the better part when reviled by reviling, not again ?, It is satisfactory to observe that both .the belligerents at Gore made themselves ridiculous. 'Both dropped into Latin, — Mr Newport as thus : " 0 asiriae ! 0 Mores ! 0 asinae ! O boves / " The rev. gentleman may have some reason satisfactory to himself for apostrophising his opponents as "female donkeys," but he can have none for neglecting the rule about the accusative in exclamations — except perhaps shat he was ignorant of it. Mr Mackay, not to be' behindhand in originality, invented the Latin word indisoriminata. "There is no such word in the language," says Mr Newport. " There is," says the other ; " I got it from the decrees of the Council of Trent." It may be so, but to my eyes the word bears strong traces of a local origin. Latin seems to be spoken at Gore as Chauoer's lady prioress spoke French —

After the achole of Strafcford-atte-Bowe For Frenche of Paris was to her unknowe.

On the subject of University manners and customs — ("manners none, customs nasty ")— I have the following :— Dear Civis,— Your account of the pranks plnyed by the students of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn , fhows that we have still a good deal to be thankful for. These ardent young evangelicals signalised the opening of the session by blowing up + ,he- college buildings with dynamite— that, or something like that, wasn't it? , Contrast the moderation and eelf-reatraint of, our own studious youth. , Deferring to a prejudice which they deplore but feel themselves powerless to remove, they have abandoned the use of the harmless necessary pea— necessary, I

mean, for the due punctuating and emphasising of university ''inadguwW.""- At Middletqwn, Conn., dynamite bombs j l! in Otago, New Zealand, not so much as a ? petty pea i We, the non-academical public, have indeed much to be thankfol for, especially as the University Council set an example of lawlessness .by arming their fences with jagged teeth of corrugated iron, to tbe peril of the wayfarer's clothes and skin. Query: Do the university barbed wire fences us to consider, the students "young bar"' barifins '*?— Yours, lovingly, Phi-Bbta-Kappa. ' Enough had been said about the university inaugural. The only new thing I have heard worth quoting is that the attendance of the ' public fell off this year because the public had been informed thro.ugh one of the papers 1 that there was not to be a row. Then so I much the worse for the public taste I About the barbed wire, remonstrance seems useless. The public must try to bear the nuisance as unconcernedly as the perpetrators . bear the. shame But 'might not the Amenitites do something ? Where, O where are the Amenitites?

The City Council on Wednesday received a rather surprising proposal from a firm of Dunedin solicitors offering to lease the Triangle reserve at a rental of £500 per annum for 50 years and erect thereupon buildings at a cost of £25,000 to serve the purposes of public library, bajths, and market. The matter is to be considered at a special meeting next week. A good deal of snow fell on Wednesday, and though the streets of the city were free from it, the surrounding hills were fairly white with it. South of Dunedin the snowstorm was very heavy. At Invercargill a tremendous fall of hail took place, which laj on the ground to a depth of two inches.

James Sieele, a well-known livery stablekeeper at Riverfcon, was picked up dead in his stable on Wednesday morning. He was subject to apoplectic fits, and it-is surmised that he died while suffering from the effects of one.

At length, after trying unsuccessfully on 16 occasions, a nomination has' been received for the position of Mayor of Riverton. The candidate is a retiring publican.

The following interesting incident is related in an Australian exchange as haying occurred at the Echuca (Victoria) Police Court at the end of April : — " Mr Fennefather (formerly private secretary to Sir W. Jervois), a barrister, was engaged in some important cases, and bad a misunderstanding with the bench, resulting in' Mr Wyatt, P.M , committing him to imprisonment for one hour for contempt. Mr Pennefather refused to apologise, and declared that . Mr Wyatt, through defective hearing, had misunderstood hira~an opinion endorsed by the crowd in court, who expressed sympathy with the barrister." According to the Western Star a number of half-sovereigns are in circulation in Riverton, the edges of which have been manipulated with a file. The banks are refusing to take them except as old gold, their value as that being about 8s 6d. The hurricane which passed over Samoa; on March 18 did great damage at -Nine, Savage Island, 675 houses, 3 churches, 2 schoolhouses, and about 200 cocoanut trees were destroyed.