PASSING-NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1906, 21 August 1890, Page 23

PASSING- NOTES.

After patting tbe knife to our throat, Mr Millar and his friends expect as to thank them for letting us off with only a fright. The moderation of Millar,, the magnanimity of Millar, in not slitting onr weasand as a fortnight ago he was threatening to do, is' being ohorused in certain newspapers day by day. I can't join in these pagans. It seems to me that Mr Millar's moderation and magnanimity would have been more olearly displayed in forbearing threatening than in merely staying performance. It will always be open to us to believe that he would have performed had he dared. Thank you for nothing, Mr Millar I The benefits you have conferred upon us are of a character so exclusively negative that " thank you for nothing" measures our obligation exactly. Then, again, some of the newspapers are dilating on the wickedness of Whitcombe and Tombs, and on this subject are inviting us to hear reason. But for my part lam not in a condition to hear reason. A man who is just recovering breath after a nerveflhaking scare requires time to pull himself together and — in this case — to conquer his indignation and wrath at being subjected to suoh an experience. In any case, were the enormities of Whitcombe and Tombs sevenfold greater than they are said to be, I should refuse to see in them justification for Mr Millar in putting a knife to the throat of the whole universal community. My present feeling is one of entire agreement with the farmers of Balclutha and Oamaru who have passed resolutions expressing sympathy with and Tombs. Perhaps I shall think 'differently by and bye. At present, along with the great multitude of my fellow citizens, I am suffering a recovery from a bad scare. And a bad scare is demoralising. At this stage, by way of helping us to recover oar nerves, Sir Bobert Stout has oontributeda comic element, and very welcome; it is. Nothing like a good laugh for relaxing tension and putting everybody right again after a scare. Sir Robert Stout desires, as a rule, to be taken as a serious politician, but in his letter on the boycott he shines out as a humourist of the first water. I have heard the legal and political opinions expressed in that letter characterised as "rubbish," also as " rot," and even .as d rot," but that is to misunderstand:. them altogether. - Sir Robert is gimply faroing, with the amiable' intention of putting, us. all in good humour. Why, should not tbe railway > servants be allowed, he asks, to say who shall and who shall not use the railways 1 Why should not the U. S. 3. Oo.'s men |decide who shall and who shall, not ship cargo in the steamers? A very admirable reduotio ad abturdtm. Accepting Sir Robert's bumoroushint we may, for ourselves, push the argument ad abswdissimum, as no doubt he means us to do. Why . should not the postman who delivers my letters decide who 'shall and who shall not have the honour of corresponding with me 7 Why should not the Witness printers be permitted to say whether they will or will not set up my Notes, according as they like or dislike the opinions expressed in them ? Why should not the stokers at the City Gasworks deoide who shall and who shall not be permitted to burn the gas they make, and,, if a misguided Corporation supplies it to Whitcombe and Tombs, why should they not . leave the whole city in darkness ? In short, ( tbe delightful possibilities opened up by Sir Robert's suggestions extend in a series posi« '. tively endless. One other occurs to me— a particularly charming one. If men not to the liking of the labour party should be elected to Parliament, how could they get to Welling- ; tori?, Neither railways nor steamers would carry them; of necessity they must either ! swim or fly. This solves in the happiest way the problem of the next elections. Sir . Robert Stout has often been accused of lack- ! ing humour, bat evidently this is a mistake. On this subject a correspondent supplies . me with the following : We breathe again. The Ides have come and gone and still we live. Thanks to the magnanimity of Mr J. A. Millar, our trains and steamers are still running, trade, such as it is, has not been strangled, and Passing Notes still circulate through the length and breadth of the land. In fine, the oolony is saved, and onr saviours are none other than Mr Millar and his merry men of the Maritime Council. It was that odious firm of Whitcombe and Tombs all the time that were plotting against our peace,, and we are indebted to Mr Millar's manifesto for unmasking their stupendous villainy. Not only have they "defied theunion," though that were bad enough, but 11 they have deliberately made up their minds to bring about a general labour complication" (Angl.oe, a general strike) " regardless of the resulting disasters and consequent waste of time and money." And again : — "They are content to disorganise trade in the hope that they may benefit in some degree amid the general trouble." The iniquity of a universal strike and the selfishness of those who deliberately scheme to bring it about, could not be better put. Coming, too, as it does from the Maritime Council, the denunciation has treble force. And to think that Whitcombe and Tombs have been the real plotters all the time! Why, do you know, I always thought it was. Well, well, if they \sere depraved enough to scheme for a strike, they would be cunning enough to foist the odium on to somebody else, and this accounts for the false impressions that have been abroad. Tbe punishment that Mr Millar metes oat to them is just. After solemnly and categorically recounting their

sins he proceeds "to deal with them on simple but effective lines." They will be compelled to stand out in miserable relief as the only firm in 'the colony who refuse to recognise the rights of labour and true principles of unionism. In other words, Mr Millar will in future leave them severely alone. It remains to be Been whether they can survive it. The Hansard proofs of Mr- Hutchison's famous speech have been referred to a committee, but at the time of this present writing no report has yet been made. What the Government hope to gain by it I don't understand. It was a carefully prepared philippic, full of the most frightfully specifio charges against Ministers. The charges were instantly challenged by the Premier, who demanded an early proof in order to refute them. Under these circumstances, and with the spoken speech still ringing in the ears of all who heard it, to tamper with the proofs would be worse than a crime : it would be a blunder. Mr Hutchison's enemies say many hard things against him, bat nobody has ventured to call him a fool. No ; the spirit of prophecy again descends upon me, and I boldly foretell that what the Government have found and referred to a committee for investigation and report, is nothing more or less than a mare's nest. But it was not for this that I began the note. In the course of the debate it was admitted on all sides that hon. gentlemen invariably correct the proofs of their speeches, and very amusing instances were given of what may happen to the man who doesn't. " Sir," said Mr Verrall, "in one of my State Bank speeches the Hansard reporter made me quote ' poor old ' Rogers instead of ' Thorold' Rogers. I didn't think very much of that, but when a little later I found myself saying that I had recently escaped from a saw mill" — just at this point the House was pleased to consider itself immensely tickled, roars of laughter drowned the rest of his remarks, and posterity must be left to conjecture what it was that he escaped from. All we know is that it wasn't from a sawmill. Speaking selfishly, and as one who for his sins is compelled to read Hansard, I often pine for an edition unexpurgated and unrevised. Fancy the ■ pleasurable excitement of tearing one's way through the tangled and unpruned luxuriance of, say, Mr John Kerr's rhetoric 1 But, of course, this cannot be expected ; nor, indeed, would it be fair to either speaker or reporter. Each of them has sins of his own, and you couldn't distinguiih. Many hon. gentlemen, if we may judge them by what they were on the hustings, are so peculiarly idiomatic that no reporter can possibly follow them, so he catches the sense (if any) and supplies the words. More often than not, indeed, he supplies both. Then the reporter himself, whatever he may assert to the contrary, is only mortal after all. The perils that lie between the platform and' the printing press are manifold, as every speaker knows. By a curious fatality, too, just where a fall would be most disastrous, there if anywhere you may expect • one. The orator will travel over acres of commonplace without a stumble, but let him once rise well off the ground on the wings of quotation or metaphor, and it is just then and there that either printer or reporter will • pot' him and bring him down. Thus a great statesman once rounded off a brilliant peroration with the lines: Better SO years of Europe than a cyole of Oathay ; • ' which the ingenious but prosaic reporter converted into . Better 50 ours in Europe than a circus in Bombay. Another orator, in the course of an impassioned appeal, quoted : Lo, the pale martyr in his sheet of fire ! It appeared next day in cold type as— Lo, tho pale martyr with, his shirt on fire ! And the town rang with it for a week. With such .possibilities as these before them we cannot wonder that members claim the right to revise their proofs; Ecclesiastical discontent seems epidemic just now. Something in the air— germs or microbes, no doubt — must be set down as the cause of it. Persons attacked suffer from a sort of itch (yrwigo vrritans), producing restlessness, tenderness to the touch, inflammatory temper, and general " cussedness." 11l at ease himself, the patient permits nobody to be at ease in his vicinity, and consistently makes himself as disagreeable as, he can. These are the symptoms. For example of them read the discussions in the Dunedin Presbytery on the proposal to emasculate the Westminster Confession. Did you ever make the experiment of tying up a dozen or so of cats in one sack 1 Probably you never did ; consequently, you can have no adequate idea of the proceedings of a Presbytery when the integrity and sanctity of the venerable Confession is in question. The nature of the prevailing epidemic is also illustrated in the row raging during the last week or two amongst the Dunedin Episcopalians,—a row started by the letter of " A Layman " proposing to abolish bishops. This is nearly as bad as proposing to abolish the Westminster Confession. It is to be noted that the Dunedin bishop is temporarily absent in Australia. Perhaps this fact explains in part the extraordinary temerity of the "Layman" who wishes to abolish him. When the Bishop comes back and begins to lay about him with that " bit of a shtick"— the iron-shod pastoral staff with which his flock presented him not long ago— it may be that " Layman " will be glad to hide his diminished head Be that as it may, the signs of the times are disquieting. Presbyterians are questioning what they ought to believe and Episcopalians doubting whom they ought to obey. The revolutionary ferment is evidently infecting the Church as well as the State. A victim of the book-fiend, subscribing himself with due accuracy, " Another Eminent Ass," appeals to me "as a sympathising friend because," he says, "of your own painful experience under similar circumstances." Yes, I have suffered, it is true, but I had rather not be reminded of the fact. However, as this new victim's note is Revenge ! I am willing to listen to him. He writes from Wainiate, South Canterbury, a region of

ratio simplicity in whioh the ravages of the fiend seem to have been peculiarly deplorable. The book in this instance was "An Illustrated Work, purporting to be Stanley's recent explorations in Africa. In the innocence of our hearts (don't smile) we subscribed. A few weeks later, Stanley's only real and authentic work, 'In Darkest Africa,' is announced, and we feel we have been ' had.' " Just so. History repeats itself. What happened at Waimate had previously happened at the Peninsula, likewise at Invercargill, and in other abodes of innocence that I need not stop to particularise. Bat, cays the Waimate victim, the question is, how to get even. "We are desirous of obtaining your best suggestions as to the most suitable manner in which to express our sentiments about the book fiend on the occasion of his being accorded a public reception " — that is, I suppose, when he returns to deliver the "Illustrated Work" and collect the price thereof. Well, all I can say is— Gentlemen, no violence I Don't put him under the pump ; don't souse him in the nearest horsepond; don't play upon him with the garden hose. Respect his feelings ; remember thai; he too is a man and a brother ; think of the trials and perils of his vocation, and how certain it is that for a book agent above all other men "Jordan am a hard road to trabble " — as the poet saith. Pay him the Jreward of his iniquity with good grace and thank Heaven that you are rid of a knave. Albany street' School, Monday. Dear Civis,— Bchoolboy blunders are apparently in demand. Here are a few — not elaborate concoctions of the adult miud, but the genuine article : — 1. Question : Why was Richard I called the lion-hearted ? Answer : Because once he had a fight with a savage lion, and when the lion came at him ha got a lot of silk and wound it round his arm and stack his hand down his throught and pulled out its brains. 2. Who was John Knox ? He was a crul minded villian who tried to blow up the king and parliment with dinamite. He was an irish man. 3. Oral question : Who wrote the Psalms ? Answers : (a) Shakspere ; (b) Robert Burns ; (c) Dr Stuart. 4. Phrase, " A Daniel come to judgment." Who was Daniel ? Answer : A wise man we read of in the Bible. Question : How did he show his wisdom ? Answers : (a) He read Pharaoh's dream ; (b) he led the Jews out of Egypt; (c) he 'killed Goliath with a small stbne ; {d) he went into the lions' den. 5 Question : Why did Mary Queen of Soots lay olaim to the English throne, and deny Elizabeth's right to it ? Answer : Because her grandfather was married to Elizabeth's aunt, and a man has more right to it than a woman. 6. " Then pledgad we the wine cup, and fondly we swore: From our homes and our weeping friends never to part." ' Question : Meaning of " pledged we the wine oup." Answer : (a) Took it to the pawnshop ; (b) swore to leave off drinking. 7. " The minstreljjboy to the war has gone." Question: What is meant by "a minstrel boy ?" Answer : A little blackboy. That, I daresay, is enough for the "present, but there are not a few more " in th« box."— PEDAGOOtTB. No need apparently to import examples of schoolboy blunders from the old country, as our newspapers have been in the habit of doing. The colonial schoolboy can blunder with all requisite ingenuity, and bis workmanship compares to its advantage with the best specimens from elsewhere. I supplement "Pedagogue's" list by an example which has reached me from another source. A Dunedin teacher, questioning a class after a history lesson on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, elicited the astounding information that the Governor-general of India, impeached by Burke, was Mr Harris Hastings, secretary of the Dunedin Exhibition. OIYIS. In the House of Representatives yesterday the Minister for Education annouuced that Sir F. Whitaker would commence au action for libel against Mr Hutchison in connection with the charges he had reoentlygmade, and at the same time laid before the House a memorandum from the Colonial Treasurer, explaining fully the manner in which the public accounts had been dealt with. In the eveuing the Employers' Liability Bill and the measure to amend the Shipping [and Seamen's Act, both introduced at the request of the Maritime Council, were amended in committee and reported. The Sheep Bill was then taken up, but was not disposed of, as members desired to have a fuller House to discuss it. A large search party assembled at Woodville on Monday to make search for the body of Walton. The bush and river were thoroughly searched, and the only traces found were a parcel of photographs and a letter whioh belonged to the missing man. A letter had , previously been found on the Gorge bridge, and on Saturday a bank deposit receipt waß found in the river below the lower bridge. The matter is still a mystery ; but it is now believed that the body is in the river, and that Wilton was thrown from his horse into the river from the Gorge bridge. The invention of Mr A. M'Kay, Government Geologist, applying the magnifying power of the telescope to photographio cameras was before the Philoflophisal Society at Wellington at its meeting held on the night of the 13bh. Mr M'Kay explained the process, and detailed the experiments he had made, the effect of which was to enable pictures to be taken with great distinctness of objects several miles distant. Sir J. Hector, Mr Travera, aod others spoke highly of the invention as likely to revolutionise photography and prove of great value iv astronomical research. A patent has been applied for.