PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, 14 December 1893, Page 27

PASSING NOTES.

After the storm and stress of the elections there has fallen a great calm, Needless to say I speak politically, and not meteorologically. The weather of late has been simply unspeakable, and I am constrained to introduce a parenthesis for the express purpose of publicly expostulating with Mr Paulin. Better things were expected of him. We gave him a telephone and set him up in other ways besides, but the only return we get is rain tempered by sleet and wind. Let kirn mend his ways lest we cut off his telephone and call in Captain El win. To return to my text: Politics for the moment are dead, and nobody mourns their loss — excepr, perhaps, newspaper editors and newljelected M.H.B.=, neither of whom -count, Able editors are straitened for lack of matter and new members are pinirjg to see themselves in print again. Bafc wiih the long - suffering public (whereof lam one) it is otherwise. Christmas is impending, and we wanta brief breathing space before facicg the responsibilities o£ that festive season. Aristotle defined man as a political animal, but granting its truth, his capacity for politics is not illimitable, and we have learned by sad experience that it is possible to have a surfeit even of Mr Seddon and the licensing question. The prohibitionists don't agree with me, but that's not unusual. They want a summer session, and I— in the language of the melancholy and demented Daiie — Ugh 1 my gorge rises E^t. Not that they are liktly to gat it, bufcTne very suggestion oi! such a thiog is au offence.

The London Times cynically observes that Admiral Avellan must have needed one or two cargo boats to carry home the presents

showered on him and his men by their hysterical entertainers at Toulon. The list, says that journal, is ,as long and as wearisome as the catalogm of Homer's ships. Longer, certainly, but not so tedious ; and I am not quite sure about the need of cargo boats. Casks of wine, consignments of champagne, "vast quantities of mineral waters," and t» ifles of that sort the fleet would readily find room for, an the Russian sailor be the man I take him for. And the same remark applies to " several hundred cases of blacking " — intended, probably, as a delicate expression of the readiness of France to black Russia's boots. If so, the moral significance of the gift might be lost on men who, unless belied, never come in contact with a boot except when an officer kicks them. But not so the blacking itself. The Muscovite palate is not critical. It is said that during the Crimean war the street lamps in London couldn't be kept alight, owing to the appetite of the Russian prisoners for train oil. They used to climb the posts o' nights and drink it. There's no accounting for tastes, but it seems reasonable to suppose that with people to whom train oil is one of the necessaries of life, blacking would be looked on as a luxury, and be relished accordingly.

Very curious — and very French — are some of these Toulon tokens of regard. Thus with nico discrimination the women of France were to offer " 2138 commemorative brace ets for the wives, daughters, and sweethearts of the Russian seamen, together with scarfp : ns for the officers, crosses for the chaplains, and diamond ornameuts for the ladies of the admiral's family." Then there were numberless mementoes of Lorraine — to say nothing of " hundreds of yellow champagne glasses " embellished with such inscriptions as " Pins <penser que dire," which I may fairly paraphrase : Mum's the word — let us dissemble, and Germany tremble. Very ridiculous all these antic 3 , and we sober-minded AngloSaxons smile at them, as well we may. Bat there's a something pathetic about them too. F r 20 years and more France has stood isolated and humiliated in the face of all Europe, and now the wild hope of Russian help has simply made her mad. Before she recovers her senses the wily Czar will no doubt have floated a big loan on the Paris market at a good fat premium. For French patriotism acts on the French purse, and Russian bonds will go to a premium, not because they are woroh it, but because Russia is a friend of France. Which is perhaps only another way of saying tha 1 ; for the moment France is mad.

Mr A. O. Begg is amongat U3 again after a period of globe-trotting— pleasant and wholesome, let us hope, — in the course of which he investigated on the spot the prohibition system of Maine and other privileged places in America. Mr Begg's investigation may or may not have been thorough, but there i 3 no reason to doubt that it was sympathetic. " Dour and din," is A. C. B , like the lady in " Sic a wife as Willie had "; to be prohibiting something or other—Sunday trams on the Roslyn line or the drinking of a glass of beer — exactly suits his native bent. In Maine, where one-half the population is occupied in prohibitirg the other half from doing what most of us here do with a clear conscience every day, Mr Begg must have felt himself peculiarly at home. To illustrate the happy state of things in Maine, Mr Begg related an incident that occurred during his visit. The city marshal, having received information that " a sgal keg and 2gal jar, both full of poor whisky," existed on certain premises within his jurisdiction, went with two officers to capture it, " bub the whisky was not there, having been hastily sent across the border by a fast horse." It may be worth noting that the informer reported the whisky as " poor." He had sampled it, then, and we are at liberty to infer that if he had found it of better quality he might have held his tongue. In the vaults under the Town Hall Mr Bagg was shown "som3 curious devices" employed by tbe prohibited to defeat the prohibitors : He noticed some coils of indiarubber tubing, and he was told that it had communicated from a cask of beer, which had been hid under the ground, to a dark cellar, into which people went to obtain a drink of the beer. A truly delightful state of things for a community of British lineage accustomed to boast that "Britons never shall be slaves 1 "

Petty tyranny and espionage are the chief characteristics of social life in the prohibition districts of America, on Mr Begg's own showing. To this agrees the testimony of a more competent witness — a special commissioner " without bias or foregone conclusions " sent from Great Britain last year for the purpose of finding out the truth about American prohibition, whose report is summarised in the Weekly Scotsman of October 14, now on tie Athenaeum table. Here is an extract; is is rather long, bus w:ll repay reading to the cad :

There is a great body of evidence to show that prohibition has encouraged drinking in the home and family and in railway carriages ; that it tends to deterio-ate the drink and lower and debase the surroundings of drinking, besides teaching all manner of hypocrisy and dishonesty. A whole vocabulary of names has sprung up to denominate the places where drink is surreptitiously obtaiued. AoioDg them are "joints," "dives," "kitchen barrooms," " speak-easies," " blind pigs," " bliad tigers," and " holes-in-fche-wall," ot which last the peculiarity is that seller and buyer do not see one another. The law has stimulated the invention of "pocket-peddlers" and "bootleggers," in which liquor may be most secretly and portably carried. For purposes of sale liquor has been concealed in receptacles made to resemble books, especially Bibles. Alcoholic drinks are dispensed by the chemists as "bay rum," "essence of peppermint," "spirits of camphor," "anodyne liniment," "sweet cider," "crab-apple cider," "hop tonic," "hoptea,"or " essence of Jamaica ginger," this last being considerably more intoxicating than whisky ; while whisky ifcselE masquerades as "cold tea," or "white ink." Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, has been one of the latest witnesses of the application and failure of prohibition in a busy tow n community. The saloons were closed and a roaring "jug"' trade at once sprang up. Atlanta reverted to a licensing system ; the law is no longer in conflict with the public sense of what is right and reasonable, and the town is at once freer and more sober than under prohibition.

So also in two other States, Massachusetts and Rhode Island,— both tried prohioition, and both abandoned it again, as causing more demoralisation than it cured. Bub these facts won't weigh with Mr A. C.Begg or anybody of his kidney. They will get our necks under the yoke ere long, no doubt ; and I am looking forward to the time when I shall have to suck my dinner beer through an indiarubber tube from a keg buried under the house.

"Amongst the Garo nation, a people dwelling on a range of hills between the Brahmapootra and the Soorma valleys, tbe women are supreme; They woo the men ; they control the affairs of the home and the nation ; property descends through them, and in everything they are dominant ; but — note the sequel— they are the very ugliest women on the face of the earth." This awful example is adduced by Sir J. Crichton Browne, a very competent authority, as an argument against the emancipation of women, but it comes rather late for ns. Duly emphasised at an earlier stage it might have had some effect. Is there any conceivable boon that a woman would purchase at the cost of her personal appearance? Certainlj there is none conceivable to me, and I think I know the recesses of the feminine bosom as well as most of my sex. If the women of New Zealand were offered the privileges of the Gora women with tbe compensatory distinction annexed of becoming tha ugliest women on the face of the earth, the proposal and its proposers would be whelmed beneath a torrent of universal feminine indignation. Quite right, too; for.asDr J. O Browne goe3 on to observe, woman's personal charms are her greatest power. What is the priviUga of voting to put somebody into Parliament or keep him out compared with the power to twisb a man round her little finger, make him fetch and carry like a spaniel, and constrain him to beg on his marrow bones for permission to endow her with all his worldly goods ? Not the oldest of old maids would hesitate for a moment as to the reply. But, as I have said, this wisdom comes too late for us. All that is possible now is to wait and see whether time justifies or refutes Dr Browne's gloomy prognostications.

The editor hands to me an extract from a private letter addressed to a Dunedin pressman from a brother scribe at the other end of the island :—: —

You don't believe in brainwaves ? — neither do I ; but this is what happened on Monday morn* ing at our breakfast:— l : "Do you know, I believe Mr X. will send me his photo ! " Mrs P.: "What put that in your head ?" I: "I dreamt last night we were shaking hands." Mrs P.: "Stuff, Jack!" I: "Fact." Mrs P. : " Really ? " I : " Really ! More than that, I saw his face, and I'll describe him." Did so. Monday eveuing's mail brought photo — and, whafc was stranger, carried the perfectly true description 1 had given of you ! Aud I had never seen your photo before, nor yet had you described to me. How do you account for this ? Of course for some weeks prior 1 had been ardently wishing to know what manner of man you were. I could swear to the correctness of the foregoing. Suppressing onh/ the name, as of course your true instincts would naturally suggest, you are afc perfect liberby to use the foregoing psychological fact or phenomenon lot the Witness in any shape or form you choose. This is the kind of problem that puts tbe wise man and the fool on precisely the same level of helplessness — always supposing, of course, that the fool is not a theosophist, or a spiritist, but only some other kind of fool. To theosophisbs and spiritists " spooks " aro the commonest phenomena of human life ; brainwaves and prophetic dreams are as familiar as the daily newspaper. My misfortune is to bo amongst the unprivileged. I have never feen a "spook," for all my trying, and I have gone with due submission of mind to places where " spooks " were said to be visible ; in dreams and visions of the night my most startling experiences have never gone beyond a respectable nightmare. It may be that the writer of the above letter evolved, after much reading of his friend's correspondence, a mental picture of the writer -as the German evolved the fundamental idea of the camel— out of his moral consciousness. If he is the sort of man that is capable of this he is rather a dangerous person for newspaper people to have to do with. Take my own case, for example. What could be more painful to my personal modesty than the suspicion that there are readers of this column who, by diligent perusal of its beauties, become able to call up a mental picture of the writer ? I should have to run the country. CIViS.

The Government have decided to send a reply to the Midland Railway Company in conformity with the resolutions passed by the House last session. The Taieri Advocate says that the mineral springs afc North Taien appear to be improving with age. The first spring is much clearer than it was, and the water from one of the springs is now as clear as crystal, while its mineral pro perties appear to be gaining in strength. We are informed that the spriDgs are visited almost daily by sufferers from various complaints, and we know that many persons can testify to the benefit they have derived from a course of treatment (costing nothing) afc the springs. There are several cases of scarlet fever afc Milton. The small birds and "fly" are playing havoc with the turnip crop, and in some places socoud sowing is already necessary. — Tapanui Courier. The Taieri Advocate says : — " The crops in the district are looking in splendid condition. There is every reason to believe that a good season will result, and that the yields will be high. There has been rather too much rain, but on the whole general satisfaction is expressed at the present prospects." The Hawke's Bay Herald states that the damage by the floods in the Meance district 13 nob so great as wag at first thought to be the case. Mr A. M'Hardy, of Longlands, lost; nearly £1200 in crops alone by the floods. His loss in stock ouly amounted to about 40 or 50 sheep. On some portions of LoDglands the water was lying 10ft deep, last Saturday owing to the old river bed below Riverslea, and also the various creeks, being blocked up by debris and v.illovss A few weeks ago Mr Stead was appealing to the world to collect half h, do2.n i\ ally firstclass druukaids, aud leud them to him to experiment upon with a patent reinpdy. Of course (-ajs the Sfc, Janus's GUzsttt) Mr Stead

got his interesting sufferers, and very bad cases they were, he says. One patient drove up in a cab "thinking that it was full of snakes," enother "had almost to be parboiled before he was clean enough " to be remedied, and others were sodden with gin, drenched with whisky, and given at odd times to morphia and other fascinating and deleterious " extras. 1 ' All this was, from the experimenter's point of view, highly satisfactory ; if he could cure them he could obviously cure anything in the shockingexample line. Well, Mr Stead tells us that these unfortunate and degraded creatures are quite cured now. They were shut up for a month in Ihe "furnished house of a professional gentleman near the British Museum," and the " craving for drink, so far as can be seen from the close observation of the cases under treatment, is "" — teste Stead — " absolutely dead."