PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2102, 7 June 1894, Page 28

PASSING NOTES.

Only now when Vincent Pyke has gone over to the majority are we made to understand how distinguished a citizen we had amongst us. His record, published to-day reads as a surprise even to old Victorians who supposed they knew it tolerably well Is there anybody else hereabout whose scroll of fame for 40 yeaTS— 's4 to "94— is as crowded, as various, and yet withal and nevertheless as creditable ? If such a man there is I profess I can't at tbe moment think of his name. Vincent Pjke, now that his day's work is done, and the public voice is judging i1",i 1 ", may seem to need mere than some others of ok, Pharisees that we be, the appeal ad misericordiain — Be to his virtues very kind ; Be to his faults a little blind. And yet, all the same, be was a man Young New Zealand may think itself lucky to have Been and known; there are not many like him left. Living relics of the political life of Victoria in the glorious fifties are not now to be met with every day, in New Zealand at any rate. It stirs the blood in an old Victorian's hearc and it makes his pulses fly — as the poet saith — merely to read again the once familiar names with which that of our Vincent Pyke was then mated on not unequal terms — Stawell, O'Shannassy, Ireland, Molesworth, Aspinall, ChildeM, Charles M'Mahon, Andrew Clarke, Pecer Lalor, and W. C. Haines (whom a Dunedin newspaper defames by spelling him Harris — "W. C. Harris, Colonial Secretary " ;— eheu fugacesl). There is a charm in these Victorian names of the fifties which some of us will remain till our life's span is run. And it brings back a breath of that B >hemian time to be reminded, even in poor V. P-'s mortuary recird, of the days when Sandhurst was Bendigo and Fryer'e Creek, when Castlemaine was Forest Creek and Mount Alexander, when Talbot was Back Creek, and Maryborough was Simson's. Ttien was the golden prime ; then was all the world youDg, and everywhere about you lay Tom Tidolrfr's ground. Something of the Victorian Bohemia Vincent Pyko brought away with bim to these austcrer latitudes ; that something abode with bim, and ie was counted to him for unrighteousness. Well, speaking for nijßelf, I shall be the last to judge him. Peace be with his genial spirit! . So the secret of Mr Seddon's seemingly almleßS visit to Dunedin is out at last I The Otago Central was a blind ; the ambulance certificates a pretext. The wily Dick was flying at higher game, and, according to the Daily Times' special, he has brought it down. Sir Patrick Buckley is to retire, and his successor will be — whom think ye 7 A Dunedin member of the Upper House, an able lawyer, and an astute politician — one who Will add so considerably to the influence of the Government in the Council as to make tbe threatened swamping process unnecessary, ensure the carrying of all the Government measures, and bring to the councils of the Cabinet the strongee 1 -, most capable, and uao&t experienced lawyer-politician in " the other place." Now, I do the Hon. J^hn MacGregor no wrong when I say this oan'c refer to iiira An able lawyer no doubt he is, but his political spurs he La 3 yet to win. A«d eliminating him, our new Attorney-general stands confessed in the person of the Hon. Downie Stewart, to whom — as also to the for Innate country which secures him — I hasten to tender my congratulation?. Able lawyer, astute politician, adding to the influence of the Government in the Council, ensurirg the passing of all their bills — why, if he had catalogued these high qualifications himself he could not have put them more precisely. And the Premier never spent three days to better purpose than in securing so potent an ally. By what arguments of State he overcame Mr Stewart's well-known reluctance to accept office, we may never know. Nor is it necessary. The great fact remains that, magna&imrusly forgetting the wrongs be suffered j>ibt prior to his call to the Oounci', he is now prepared to join the Cabinet of the. very party that

[ then denounced him. Were such a spirit of self-sacrifice more common in New Zealand politics, New Zealand politics would be far other than they are. Mr H. S. Fish is supposed to be politically dead, but for a corpse he displays suspicious symptoms oE vitality, and if I had the contract to write his epitaph I should deem it prudent to wait awhile. It is, of course, distressing to contemplate, but peradventure the cup of his iniquity is not yet full, and he is reserved to still trouble the Treasury bench and vex the souls of the Hansard staff before the deep damnation of bis final takirg off. And if so, nobody will be less surprised than myself. At the present time he is employed in snubbing Mr Shelton, clubbing Mr Cohen, and so forth. But this is merely to keep his hand in. He is waiting his opportunity, and everything cdmes to him who wait 8. He has broken with the publicans, whose star is waning, and spoken soft things to the women, whose star is rising. He patronises evangelical meeting?, and has been seen listening pensively to the strains of the Salvation Army band. As mayor he has won golden opiEions from all sorts of people. The ratepayers applaud him for saving the rates and -refusing to truckle to the Labour pirty. Tben cames his timely motion to relievo the cxistiog distress by speeding a substantial sum on immediate works ar.d hastening the building of the new gaol. Whence a two-fold gain. He wins the working man and completely captizes poor C )ur.c:llor Cohen, who has been toilfully paddli' g about on the sluggish waters of tbe " living wage." If these things don't portend votes at the next election write me down a false prophet. There are 88 licensed houses in Dunedin, and we may safely assume that 88 publicans were collected in the flesh at the Police Court last Monday. Add to them the brewers, hangers-on, and lawjerp, and you fully account for the crush, as also for the atmosphere. If only the d 1 conld have cast a net, what a comprehensive haul he would have gotten I The community could have well spared the lawyers, whilst the prohibitionists would no doubt have been willing to sacrifice the committee — aye, and Mr A. S. Adams himself— for the sake of exterminating "the trade" at one fell swoop. S? speculates a correspondent, who, however, overlooks the fact that Satan ia probably the fees'; judge of his own interests. Speaking as one who was there, he says (does my correspondent, not the d 1) that, as the temperature rose, the seething mass of humanity gave out alcoholic fumes, until the court reeked like a wioe and spirit vault, and more than sne member of tbe committee began to display symptoms of incipient inebriety. I dan'c bel'.eve this for a moment, but it suggests a possible danger, and gives a further reason for securing a larger and better ventilated hall. Teetotalers are peculiarly susceptible to the influence of alcohol, and every precaution should be taken to prevent their being exposed to it, particularly when sitting as metnbeis of a licensing committee. From disembodied fumes there is no escape, and consider the scandal if some prominent prohibitionist were publicly overtaken on the bench 1 As, according to this week's telegrams, the seoret and mysterious marking of mango trees in India is still going on, it would be well if the papers gave us such information on the subject as was in the possession of the English press before tbe mail left. A Lahore correspondent of the Scotsman writes that during the night of March 15 every mango tree in the Benar and North-West Provinces was marked with a dab of mud containing a few cowhairs. Not only were tbe village trees bo marked, but also those in private compounds, and the property of all races, castes, and creeds. AJahomedan natives, when questioned, say they know nothing about it, but think it some Hindoo signal. Old Indians who remember the secret distribution of chapatties that preceded the Mutiny are natura : )y having an uncomfortable quarter of an hour over tbis mystery. Our local authority on Indian matters, Colonel Monis, who was "all through the M at i nv i" writes to tb.9 Dally Times that there is " nothing in ir." We are entitled to hope as mucb, and will try to believe it, though the marking in one night of so many trees — " millions," says the Lahore correspondent — is clear evidence that thera exists a secret organisation, widespread and powerful, and we may naturally suspect such an organisation of meaning mhcaief. Subterranean India is a world apart; a real "old Indian" like Colonel Morris is probably quite well aware that he knows next to nothing about it, and that this plastering oE mango trees with mud and cowbairs is to bim and all other military pundits as impenetrable a mystsry as the mutilating of the Hermae was to tbe Athenians of the time of Alcibiades, or as, until recently, the whereabouts of Mr Jonathan Roberts has been to Mr Justice Wi liams. It is a pity that any one of Mr Alex. Wilson's charming literary papers should be entombed, so far as the public is conctr> ed, in the pages ol t',e Q^&go University Review. In the last number of that meritorious but ljttle-known publication 1 fiad a lecture delivered to the studtnts by Mr Wilson on "The Georgian Novflists."' This is just tbe kind of theme th-it tffords freest play to his gr ceful hunvur. By way of iff -ring a brick as fpecitnen oi" the house I extracr. a pass-ge gently eatiruing competitive examinations. In the last century, taid the lecturer, " if you had luck, you could picx up a sinecure— a secretaryship of State, a judgebhip, or a bishopric— on the easiest coLCeivable terms, for love, or money, or some simple little feat of scholarship, But we are changing all that ; and the world iB getting into that uncomfortable state when an honest fellow can get nothing worth having unless he is competent ; or if, perhapp, he gets into a place where he may earn a fair share of the public money by bringing to the public service a fair share of his own inertia, there are inquiries in Parliament, and somebody asks for a return." Nowadays everything worth having is priza of war and go?s to the strongest. Then follows a passage on bishops, a passage which may not be without its bearings on the episcopal vacancies in WeUingJ; o and Sacs QanrQb,

I daresay, now, some of you young fellows here — even some of you young women, who can tell ? — have it in your minds to be bishops, in which ambition, no doubt, you will one day succeed, if you will only hold your elbows properly square and make a good fight for it. But you will have to do this. You cannot, like worthy Tom Tusher, in tho time of the Pretender, walk into a bishopric with your hands in the pockets; for by the time you are ripe enough for the lawn, you may rely upon it, the whole thing will be settled by competitive examination. And even when you have achieved your bishopric, you will find that you cannot go to sleep if you mean to hold it — your engagement being terminable, as, of course, it will bs, at the end of three or five years. If, therefore, I have the honour to address the right reverend prelate who is one day to occupy the episcopal throne ef Manapouri, let mo warn him that he will sit on no cushion of rose leaves ; for unless he can show a better yearly output of visitations, confirmations, and ordinations than his right rev. brother the Bishop of Wanaka, he will have to reckon with his Standing Committee, who will arrange the respective successes of the two sees in parallel columns, and publish tbe interesting comparison in the Otago Daily Times. Now, in the last century, when that charming lady, Madame de Bernstein, mended her cracked reputation by marrying her first husband, bishoprics were to b j had and held on easier terms. The ability to edit a Greek play, after a sort, or the readme*? to marry some noble person's derelict friend, or a fair aptitude for the licking of spittle, might look with certainty for preferment in the army, navy, or the Church — though I am Tory enough to think that the soldier.', sailors, and churchmen appointed under tho old-fashioned uncompetitive system were somehow, on the whote, an able and even noble body of men. So they were — on the whole— and a very strange fact ie is. We samehow dju'c get a belter product from our lecturing and "swotting," and ploughing and plucking than our easy-going acceptors in "the age of beer and skittles" got from nepotism, favouritism, privilege, and patronage. The Greek-play-editing bishops were not seldom good bishop?. Dean ilonteigne, or Mountain, of Westminster, who obtained the S-e of Lincoln by a smart but graceless thing said to the King in rep'y to a request for advice about the filling up of the vacancy : "If jour Maje3ty has but faith, which I well believe you have, you will say to this Mountain, 'Be tbou removed and be thou cast into the See,' and it shall be done"— tbis unblushing offlce-seeker (and he was tbe type of manj) seem 9to have made not at all a bad Bishop of Lincolo, judging from the fact that he was afterwards Bishop of London and Archbishop of York. The reason we hear no longer of Greek-play-editifig bishops is probably because bishops no longer are able to edit a Greek play. Of parsons generally— colonial parsons — my private opinion ia that we might say of them justly what Porson unjustly said of the Germans : The Germans in Greek Are sadly to seek : Not five in five score, But ninety-five more, — All, save only Hermann, And Hermann's a German. IE there exists an exceptional " Hermann " amongst colonial ecclesiastics I should be glad to know his prose name. Oiyis.

A very remarkable and in some respects amusing ogcurrence took place at the Supreme Court yesterday evening, whfoh resulted in a prisoner named Blue being temporarily released from custody. Blue, who was undergoing a sentence of some months' imprisonment for larceny, was charged with two other young men with the crime of burglary. The jury re? turned a verdict of ff Not guUty," and his Honor directed that the accused be discharged, the directions necessarily having reference to the matter before the court. It happened, how? eyer, that the warder for the moment forgot that Blue was still a prisoner undergoing sentence, and in a second Blue had mixed with the crowd, and was out in the street despite tbe efforts of the gaol officials to reach hjm, Information was at once given to the police, and ia about an hour's time Blue was again safely lodged iv gaol. He had made no attempt to escape, but contented himself with getting a drink, and had juit finished his tea when the constable appeared on the Eceno and am sbed him. The Premier, in a private telegram expressive of bis regret at the death of the Hon. Vincent Pyke, has authorised the recipient to procure a wi path to be plaped on the grave of the deceased gentleman, whose remains will be interred to-day, as an emblem of respect from the members of the Ministry. At yesterday's meeting of tbe Roxburgh Amalgamated Mining and Sluicing Company, of which Mr Pyke was the founder, a resolution of regret at the loss sustained in the death of the hon. gentleman was passed. We understand that the collectors for the Stuart memorial fund are meeting with a satisfactory response in the city. The committee have sent out circulars and lists to the Presbyterian cjergymep, aiayors of boroughs, and head teachers throughout the province, and it is hoped that they will co-operate with each other in the movement. The Caversham Licensing Gommittee yesterdny granted renewals of public ins' licenses fcp five hotels in the distrct, and a renewal of a bottle license. They also adjourned consideration of applications for tbe renewal of licenses to tho Caversh^m, Edmbur«fci Castle, and Com? mercial Hotels— all on the Main Sfluljh road. It was rf-poited at the meeting of tbe Land Board j esttrday that a rich seam of lignite had b=en discovered on one of the sections jn the Ponifchttka property. At th» Supreme Court yesterday William Marr, who «a^ charged wijbh burglary and asssul-, vas acquitted, and the three young men who w* re charged with burglary at the Universal IJotel were also found not guilty. Tbero are btill several pises fco be dealt wibb, and <he sessions cannot ck)3e before Friday evening. Shortly a r ter 9 pm, on Tuesday, while a female passenger with her child was in the act of stepping from the George street pier to the gaugWAy of the Tainui, she by some means misled h»r footing and, with her child, fell overboard, Her screams attracted the attention of Messrs A- Bauchop and Wilson, who slid down the piles of the wharf and got hold of both the woman and child, when they were got on board apparently very little the worse for their immersion. The adjourned meeting of tho Upper Junction School Committee was held on Monday evening last, all tbe members being present. The Chairman (Mr Green) reported, with reference to the concert to be held on the 20 bh inst,. that he had Been Messrs Bert Hanlou, J, &.nd. J, Swa.n, ana other members of the. Ohio

Minstrel Company, who had kindly promised their services. It was agreed to have a dance after the concert. The tender of Mrs Woods for cleaning the school for 12 months was accepted. On the motion of Mr P. Sinclair, seconded by Mr Bennett, the clerk was instructed to apply to the Education Board for assistance towards erecting a dividing fence between the playground and the master's new residence. It was resolved to hold the ordinary meetings of the committee on the fourth Friday of the month. The question of the date of the midwinter holidays was left to the chairman. Mr W. Fraser, M.H.R. for Wakatipu, has offered to look after the interests of the Tuapeka constituency until such time as a new member has been elected. The express train from the south last evening was about an hour late in arriving. It was one of the heaviest ordinary passenger trains which has yet reached the Dunedin station, comprising 52 carriages and about 1000 passengers. Miss Maudo M'Kenzie Turner, of this city, has been unanimously appointed as mistretß of the Edendale School, Southland. The co-operative workmen on the Otago Central railway intended to entertain Mr j Fraser, engineer and inspector on the line, at j a social prior to his departure for Wellington, I bub time did not permit of this being done. Yesterday, as the men were coming into town by train, they stepped out of the train in front ■ of Mr Fraser's house, and at the call of Miss Jackson, gave three hearty cheers in honour of Mr Fraser, whose departure is greatly regretted. The Minister for Lands has effered to place 10 of the Oamatu unemployed on the bush farms at Catlins. They would receive 30s to 35s per acre for fell<ng bush, and would be allowed to take up 50 or 100 acres on lease at a rental of 4- per cent, on what it will cost to put the land iv grass.