FEATS OF CLEVER YOUNGSTERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2055, 13 July 1893, Page 41

FEATS OF CLEVER YOUNGSTERS.

Shearers Old and New. The legend of the "knocking down" of cheques is still current, but the actual thing is becoming rarer and rarer. Those who paint the shearer as a woebegone "swagsman" or "sundowner," crawling up to the .shed with hie " mate" after thedispersal of the " Julyfog" (the dead season when no shearing is done), mortgaging his future earnings to the station Btore-keeper, workiDg madly through his-daily quota of sheep, and then, swollen to twice ihis original size, uproariously departing to the nearest township, where at Mb favourite " pub " he "knocks down" the squatfcorial cheque and requests to be kept drunk so long as it lasts— those who paint this picture, and add the pendant of his being set adrift a week or a fortnight later by the rascally boss, the very same woebegone swagsman and sundowner of a few weeks ago, purvey an antiquated article. On. a changi tout cela. The situation has become socially more intense. The shearer of to-day is a man who arrives on a horse leading another, and with his bank book in his pocket. His visits to the township are with a view of entering his cheque to his account, or of forwarding it by post-office order to his " old woman" at the homestead hundreds of miles away. He is a member of a union with offices at the central bush townships, and his political views are of the most decisive and "advanced" order. At the different "sheds" at which he works each year, in his more or less regular nomadic cycle, his letters and newspapers areawaitinghim. Frequently he is a party to an arrangement whereby all the papers that could possibly interest him and his friends are mutually subscribed for. Many sheds are better provided with " current literature" than town "Mechanics' Institutes" and "Schools of Art" which are subsidised by Government. The political discussion among the men when they have " knocked off " work is perpetual, and its intelligence is yet more astonishing than its earnestness. "You Bee," it is usually said in explanation, " we've generally nothing much to do in the bush but read and think— and we reads and thinks a lot." Gambling, it appears, has taken the place of drink as the scourge of the bush. The following gives an idea of the speculations in suburban land which led to the disastrous land booms: No sooner does a township show any signs of " going ahead " than speculators of all sorts and pecuniary dimensions "grab" all the available land in or about it. Then they sit down, and wait till they can realise 100, 200, 300, 500, or 1000 per cent, profits, as the oaße. may ba. It falls on to the luckless shoulders of the inhabitants to work up the value of the lands to the point at which these absentee speculators care to see or offer building leases. Towns are thus thrown back 10, 20, or 30years in their development, and generations of toilers are plundered of the result of their toil. Convinced of the superiority of colonial politics, Mr Adams says: I complain of the Conservatism of England that .it is provincial in] sentiment, and of its Liberalism that it is the merest mechanism. So far from finding in the conscious ideal which the best politicians of England set before them something greater, broader, and deeper than that of the best politicians of Australia, South Africa, Canada, I find the reverse. He winds up with eloquently deploring the chance of the solidarity of mankind missed by England through allowing the disruption of the American colonies 100 years ago. "Is she," he asks, "going to miss the chanca again ?" and he answers in the affirmative, unless the Colonial Office is brought into touch with colonial ideas, and its Downing street traditions are completely abolished. There must be no more phlegmatic Derbys throwing cold water on M'llwraith's aspirations. Mr Adams has written some most striking poetry; and it would be strange if suoha subject; did not give evidence of it. We oannot quote here his encomia on bush children and bush women, but we must find space for his.description of the Australian night r The sun has dropped suddenly behind the horizon line, and the stealthy evening glides up swiftly into the bronze* that follows on the brilliant jewelled gold and red of the afterglow. The stars come out, marahling their array more and more thickly. The unutterable wierdness of the Australian scrub after dark falls upon you in Hs full force. - The strange sounds of the nocturnal desert, the inexplicable breathings and rustlings, the pursuits and captures of the unknown spirits of earth and air, the fantastio figures of crouching, attentive animals—here is all the sacred horror of the old Hebrew prophets! And of Australia: With low, brown cliffs and flats, the land stretches out to east and wbb* as far as the eye can see. On great patches of it a denss smoke lies heavily, here rising into huge horns blown backward by the.incoming sea breeze, there scattered and whirled into wreaths and lost in a grey and permeating mist. No sign of verdure, as we mean by verdure in England, only everywhere low, closelypacked, sombre, and bristly underwoods, the everlasting gum tree scrub. No creeks, rivers, or inlets. ■ . With these I will take leave of a book that has brought my whole life in Australia up before me with "Witch of Endor" verisimilitude. — Douglas Sladen, in the Literary World.

Five-years-old Mozart, if all be true that is related of him, was a remarkable example of precocity. At that age he composed a piece of music so difficult that-his father, a professional musician, could not readily play it. "Oh," said five-years-old, when his parent remarked upon the difficulties presented, " it must be practised until it is learned. It goes this way." Sitting down to an instrument, thß precocious youngster proceeded to give his father a lesson. Shortly afterwards, , a vio'.inist being required for the performance oE some chamber music, young Mozart begged permission to take the part. " You I" cried his father, " how can yon 1 You have never learned the violin." "It needs no study for that," returned the boy, who attended the performance and played second violin without a hitch. Samuel Wesley also was a prodigy. In his eighth year he composed a march for one of the regiments of Guards. This work has recently been published with several other juvenile production?. There is a mezzotint engraving extant, in which he is represented as a pretty little boy standing at a pianoforte. Near him lies a book, inscribed, "Job: an Oratorio, by Samuel Wesley." Of aeven-years-old. Schubert, his master,

Michael Halzer, said that he had never had euoh a pupil, for " whenever I wish to explain something new to him, I find that he knows it already, so that I often stare at him in eilent astonishment." At 11, Franz Schubert was composing Bongs, string quartets, and pieces for the piano. But many of the great composers and instrumentalists were juvenile prodigies. Two-yeats-old Vieuxtempa's favourite amusement was scraping the strings of a tiny fiddle with a bow. Atfourhe commenced his musical studies in earnest, and so delighted a wealthy amateur that the gentleman placed him under Lecloux. At eight he was assisting his master in a concert tour through Belgium. Mme. Norman-Ne" ruda at eight was playing concerted puces with her brother and sister in the principal cities of Germany. , s , Eight-years-old Tello d'Apery.'an American boy residing in New York, used often to say that when he was older he would do something for the ragged urchins he saw in the streets. In his twelfth year he started •■The Sunny Hour," a monthly paper published" by a boy for boys and girls." Tello is now about 16. " The Stmny Hoar " has a circulation of 20,000 copies; and perhaps more celebrated writers and artists contribute to it than £o any other publication in the •world. Dubofs Menant, the French artist, sends quarterly a full-page illustration; Sully Piudhomme, tbe French poet, gives „ two or three poems yearly. Among many other famous contributors' are Sir Edwin Arnold, Pierre Loti, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, and Mme. Oedran, of th 9 Nouvelle Kevue. Her Majesty Queen Victoria is a subscriber, and so are most of the monarchs of Europe. The youthful editor is the head of the Barefoot Mission, 59 West Twentyfourth street. "Thank you, madam, the ffgony has abated," said four-years-old Macaulay, when Lady Waldegrave inquired if he felt better after a footman had spilled some hot coffee on his bare legs. When his mother told him that he must study without tho help of bread and butter, he replied : " Yes, mamma, industry shall be my bread and attention my butter." I

Before he was eight he had written a " Compendium of Universal History : being an account of the leading events from tho Creation down to the present century " ; also a "Deft nee of Christianity, for the use of Indian Missionaries." He knew Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel "and " Marmion "• by heart ; and he had cammenced a poem in cix canto?,' "The Battte of Cheviot," which he dropped to begin " Olaus the Great, or tbe Conquest of Mona." An amazing boy. But Macaulay by no means stands alone in literary precocity. Hartley when quite a little fellow wished to write a book on the " Nature v of Man." Bacon when a boy commenced a work on philosophy. Milton at 12 wrote epic poems; at 15 be composed his poem ,on the Gunpowder Plot, with other productions- in verse that have led an eminent critic to say of him, " Milton's writings show him to have been a man from his childhood." Byron at 12 wrote a poem which he describes as " tbe ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker." At 15 he wrote many of tbe poems published under the title of " Hours of Idleness."