PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1975, 26 September 1889, Page 21

PASSING NOTES.

Me 0. R. Chapman seeks election a3 mayor and asks everj ratepayer to " seriously ponder over" his claims before" voting for anybody else. " I have been a resident of this city," he says, "for 41 years, having arrived with my parents on the 21st September 1848, after a voyage of upwards of five months from the Dunedin on the other side of the water." The city was founded in that year, and he has remained here ever since. This, he plaintively remarks, is in all probability the only opportunity we shall have of choosing as our chief citizen one possessing these peculiar qualifications, and he modestly continues : " During the Exhibition time it would be looked upon as an honour and a credit to Dunedin to have as its mayor one situated in the position I am in." This would almost lead one to infer that if elected Mr Chapman intends to exhibit himself as " the oldest inhabitant," or something of that kind. Pondering seriously over the autobiographical details, he has given I am conscious of a want— a void, so to speak — and, like Oliver Twist, I ask for more. The tiniest scrap of personal information aboat our public men is greedily devoured, and having whetted our curiosity Mr Chapman would do well to satisfy it. The minds of the citizens are unsettled, and I ask him to seriously ponder whether his claims would not be strengthened by an explicit statement as" to when he was born, and where ; also how much he weighed, and at what age he cut his first tooth. Then again, he alone can settle the much-vexed question whether he was vaccinated before he landed or afterwards, and at what epoch in his development he had the measles. The fact is he has told us either too much or too little. Many of the ratepayers are ladies, and they feel that matters cannot be allowed to rest where they are. Doubtless Mr Chapman with his usual perspicacity will see the necessity of supplying the desired information and so securing I his leturn.

The air is full of strikes and rumours of strikes, and thinking men are wondering what is to be the outcome of it all. One Ed ward Bellamy writes a book called " Looking Backwards " to tell us how he thinks it is all going to end, and a very remarkable book it is. He is a Socialist, and pictures society under a regime of State socialism. By ways and means that I am not going to explain, a young Bostonian of 1889 |finds himself alive and well, and not a day older, in the Boston of the year of grace 2000 ; and the book recounts in very good English what he sees and hears. Trade and money and wages and strikes and lawyers and poverty and wealth are all unknown, and yet everybody is busy and content and well to do. The scheme is worked out with much ingenuity, and the difficulties are very skilfully met. There is no dynamite or petroleum. Far otherwise. From 1889 onwards, monopolies and syndicates grew steadily greater and greater, and strikes grew with them, until in the end the Nation became the nirvana of both labour and capital, by becoming " the one capitalist, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the profits and economies of which all the citizens share." In this way the problem of labour and capital solve themselves. The book is full of quaint paradoxes from the point of view of 1889, but they cease to be paradoxes as jou read, and altogether the picture is so pretty that I am half tempted to turn socialist on the spot. Mr Waddell ought to preach a sermon on it.

By the irony of fate poor Mr Hislop is treading the wine press alone at Oamaru, while Mr Fergus — not having the fear of- an order paper before his eyes — is basking in the sunshine of the recess, and sucking the sweets of office at Wellington. I don't suppose Mr Hislop resigned his seat for the mere pleasure of contesting it again; nor is there much in the theory that he did so to relieve the Ministry from a difficulty. It is said that as the Cabinet has ratified his action in the Ward-Christie affair they could not with decency accept his resignation, so to help them out of the dilemma he left the House. But after all the present Government have done and suffered I scarcely think that any such petty scruple would prove a stumbling block in the straight path of dnty. No; the real cause is nob hard to find. Rightly or wrongly, a politician in trouble about his soul invariably fceeks absolution at the hustings. Its efficacy even in extreme cases is undoubted, teste Mr H. S. Fish. In Mr Hislop's case.,it was an illogical thing to do, but nevertheless something had to be done, and there was absolutely nothing else that could be done. One sympathises with him in his refusal to sit still under a vote of censure. Sensitiveness to shame is too precious a quality in our public men to be lightly esteemed, and the electors of Oamaru will doubtless show what they think of it by sending Mr Hislop back o Wellington. .

Professor Black says that it wasn't for going to Sydney that the Council censured him. Then what was it for? Was ifc for coming back again? It is only a -year or thereabouts since Professor Black committed his "offence" (so he styles it himself) and received his " censure," — but how soon we forget ! The nature of that offence

and the causes of that censure have already fallen dim. They are ancient history, and matter of controversy. "I did not go to Sydney without asking and obtaining the permission of the Council at a special meeting called for the purpose." Thus the Professor in a letter to the Times, contradicting a statement of mine, and contradicting flatly, also, the remarks of several University councillors at their meeting on September 6, e.g. :—

The Chancellor: I feel that I was perhaps the means of getting Dr Black into the difficulty. I told him that I was sure there would be no serious objection so long as he g~bt permission

Dr Burns: You spoke as an individual.

The Chancellor : Yes ; but doubtless he was encouraged by what I said to accept the invitation. Certainly I assured him that I was only speaking as an individual.

Mr Stanford did not think that the chancellor had in any way got Dr Black into the difficulty. Supposing Dr Black had come to the University Council at the time he accepted the invitation, there would have been no trouble. Dr Black says he did go to the Council, and got its permission. How are we to reconcile these things 1 Further, Dr Black goes on to say, " Even after obtaining the Council's leave to go I hesitated for 24 hours whether or not to avail myself of the permission." This hesitation he leaves us to infer was due to a fear that the Council in consenting designed to play him some scurvy trick. Finally, he went to Sydney, and the thing he feared befell him. The Council launched its " censure," and up to the present moment is keeping the Professor under what Dr Stuart facetiously calls " salutary discipline," in which salutary discipline the students assist by pelting him with chalk. Such, according, to Dr Black, are " the troubles and perils of a professor's life in this university," and he is expected to endure them "in suffering silence." Well, the thing can't last in this form, that is certain. Something or somebody will have to give way.

A correspondent sends me the following:—

I have made a discovery ! The Rev. Rutherford Waddell is a bit of a wag in his way. Prove it ? 0, easily ! Often as I have studied the works of our poet Thomas Bracken, as all patriotic New ZGalanders should, I never till last week read through the introduction to his " Lays of the Land of the Maori and the Moa." I am sorry now, for my neglect has cheated me these years out of one of the funniest bits of literary left hand compliment it has ever been my lot to read. I have been simmering ever since I die set eyes on it ! Mr Waddell remarks of this bard that he is an illustration of Robert Browning's lines :—: — Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke ; Soil so quick— receptive— not one feather-seed, Not one flower-dust tell, but straight its fall awoke, Vitalising virtue : song would eong succeed, Sudden as spontaneous— prove a poet-soul ! Yes, truly ! Our poet " drops into poetry " with rather too much ease, Mr Introducer. But where are Browning's lines quoted from ? From the epilogue to his " Dramatic Idylls " (second series), and they are only half the poet's thought. He sets forth this as the mistaken popular idea of a poet — a facile rhymester — in contrast with which he says of the true poet :

Indeed ? Itock 'b the subsoil rather, 6urface hard and bare : Sun and dew their mildness, etoim and frost their rage, Vainly both expend— few flowers waken there ;

Quiet in its cleft broods what the after age Knows and names a pine— a nation's heritage. And Thomas Bracken is an illustration of the former theory ! Is it not too funny ? OMr Waddell, Mr Waddell ! I don't see that it is so very funny. Perhaps Mr Waddall discriminates; perhaps he intends to class Mr Bracken as a rhymester and not a poet, and has ingeniously hinted his opinion by quoting this mutilated passage from Browning. On this view I invite Mr Bracken to " have it out " with his patron in the columns of the newspapers. One thing is plain : if Bracken has not a grievance, Browning has. We are misled into reading the lines quoted as Browning's definition of a poet. Similarly mutilated, St. Paul may be made an anthority for loose living : does he not somewhere write, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die " ?

The intemperance of the advocates of Temperance is an old story. Not that they are all alike. There are sober minded people who don't erect teetotalism into a religion ; on the other hand there are cranks, and it is the cranks chiefly who force themselves on the notice of the public. Two odd illustrations come to hand this week. A member of one of the Presbyterian congregations in the suburbs has hsd " a revelation " to the effect, says a correspondent, " that the devil has entered into all the members of the church who are in favour of fermented wine at the Communion, and the congregation is now split up on this question into what are termed ' old lights ' and 1 new lights.' " Not to rely too exclusively on their " revelation " the " new light " party have "conferred with flesh and blood" in the person— marvellous to relate— of the Jewish Rabbi I In reply to a deputation who waited upon him, this eminent authority stated — not without a spice of humour, I faney — that the true Biblical wine was made by steeping muscatel raisins in water. It has now been settled, says my correspondent, that on Communion Sundays the two parties shall occupy different sides of the church. On one side will sit the " new lights " sipping the syrup of muscatels and praying for the regeneration of the " old lights" imbibing '49 port on the other, whilst the spirit of Christian charity and brotherly love hovers over both alike. A charming picture, is it not 1 What does Dr Stuart say to it ?

The other odd example of teetotal zeal I will leave to be described by the victim of it: Dear Civis, — If ever your advice or assistance was necessary, it is in my case. lam one of the proscribed tribe, being a publican, and am consequently excluded from the sympathy of a large portion of the community. Being a weakminded and effeminate creature (as publicans generally are) I feel this ostracism. However, this is not here nor there. What I want to consult you about is the uncharitable and unchristian conduct; of my landlady— the:wife of a retired publican — in spend in ft most of her time in my neighbourhood striving to induce my customers to become T.Ts. Now, this hotel ia her main support. Her husband made bis money in it, and yet she comes and strives to

show the demoralising effects of drink. Now, Mr Civis, I ask you (as our fairest and best critic) if such conduct is honourable and just. The writer goes on to state that his landlady is accompanied and assisted in her philanthropic efforts by another female apostle of temperance, and that this one also — marvellous to tell — is a publican's wife I The two together, he says, are down here almost every day converting my customers. In these distressing ana unprecedented circumstances he has applied for a reduction of rent, and has not been able to get it. I have the names of all the parties, and believe the story ,to be quite correct. We have heard before now of an ecclesiastical body deriving income from the rents of public houses, and the other day we saw the rival of the tram company brought to the Police Court for running his omnibuses on the tram company's rails— examples, the one of inconsistency and the other of impudence, that are hard to beat. The case described in this letter, however, beats them both.

Here is a genius wasted I Eead the following extract from a letter addressed to the Kumara Times — it is long, but you will be repaid : —

Perhaps of all the actions into which the evil passions of humanity are led, there is none more base than that of writing an anonymous letter. It is a moral assassination committed by a masked murderer — a lie without an author ; the mean-spirited act oi the disreputable coward in whose heart gall has replaced the wholesome blood ; and whose malice, jealousy, and revenge vent themselyes in slander. I would as soon trust my purse with a thief, my friendship with the hangman, or take a serpent in my hand, as hold intercourse of love, .friendship, or interest with the despicable writer of an anonymous letter. And of all the anonymous effusions ever I read (Junius' excepted) I considered none worth reading, much less worthy a reply ; and to enter into a logomachy is not my- present theme with some miserable miscarriage — some cringing, crawling, fawning creature of the most sublimated depravity — some lusus nature who hides from public gaze his abnormal shape behind the curtain of anonymity, and, while lurking there in his rancorous pollution, disembogues the malignant effervescings of his perverted heart by launching his filthy calumnies and unfounded accusations against people whose characters are unimpeachable ; and some of whom by virtue of their offices dare not reply, even did they consider the edifying epistle worthy of it. What is it all about 1 the astonished reader asks — whence and why this terrific "derangement of epitaphs " ? What is the subject in dispute ? It is all about a sludge channel — no less ! — the direction of a sludge channel and the position of a grating 1 Such are the momentous questions which, on the Kumara, have power to stir mankind to these Homeric rages. The writer signs himself " Patrick J. Chambers, ex-Policeman," and the drift of his observations, when boiled down, is that his politics on the sludge channel and grating question are different from those of some other correspondent. Endeavouring to make this plain he apostrophises the other correspondent as "You thundering, mendacious f ulminator ! You poisonous reptile I " Subsequently he refers to him as " this pediculous insect," and describes his " cerebral faculties" as " one addled mass of irremedial congestion." Why are such flowers of rhetoric as these doomed to waste their sweetness on the desert air of the Kumara ? Let us hope that ere long some way will be found of translating the ex-policeman to another and a, worthier sphere. Imagine the figure he would cut in Parliament 1

At tho Tiraaru Police Court on Tuesday a man named W. Powell, a cabinetmaker, was sentenced to 28 days' hard labour for stealing firewood from a neighbouring baker. He had been long suspected and often watched, and had even been warned, when he replied that the police were not smart enough to catch hire. Sergeant Livingstone, however, caught him ia the act at 4 30 a m. on Tuesday,

The nomination of candidates for the seat rendered vacant by the resignation of Mr Hislop took place on Monday. Mr Hislop was proposed by Mr John Mainland and seconded by Mr John Jack. Mr David Dunn was proposed by Mr John M'Dowell and seconded by Mr James Ferris. The show of hands was in favour of Mr Hislop. The poll takes place on Monday, the 30th.

A sad accident occurred to a son of Mrs M'Ororie — Andrew — on Friday morning. While ha was riding in the empty boxes down the incline, the boxes began to gain speed on the horse, and ha jumped out to try to stop them, but they left the rails and a wheel of the first box went over his thigh, and as there was considerable pressure by the others from behind, the little fellow's thigh was broken in two places. Dr Will was soon in attendance and set the leg. The patient was sent to the

Dunedin Hospital ou Saturday, and is doing as well as can be expected,

The operations of the Wyndham Dairy Factory Company last season were most successful. Mr W. Carpenter (chairman of directors) at the annual meeting said that although water carriage was cheapest, it was found advantageous to send by rail to Fort Chalmers as its arrival could be depended on. The overdraft of £4000 had been reduced to £1000. The quantity of milk received was 283,929ga1, for which £3643 9s 9d was paid, or at ths rate of 3d per gallon to the 31st March and 3£d to the end of the season. The quantity of cheese made- was 280,3091b, or 36201b less than the gallons of milk. Considering that other factories allow lO^lb- to the gallon the results were gratifying, especially as the extra |lb per gallon meant five tons of cheese in excess of the gallons of milk received. It was decided to pay another |d per gallon on all milk received at the factory from January 1, 1889, or equal to 3Jd per gallon ever the whole year's working, and also to pay a divideud of 9d per share, or equal to 7J per cent, on all shares with 10s paid up. Messrs W. J. Winter and Rankin were elected directors.