PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2252, 29 April 1897, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Tiroes.) "What good Greece hopes to accomplish by j getting herself knocked on the head by [ Turkey i» not clear. Parhaps before we con- , demn her impatience we ought to have bad ' experience of her provocations. Io Europe all that is now Turkish was once Greek, aa -well as most of what is Turkish in Asia^ There is not a square league between Stani- ( boul and Athena without its memories of , Turkish spoliation and Turkish cruelty ; practised at Greek expense. If at laBt : Greece has let herself go. reckleEß of the • odds against her, we, for whom the udspeakable Turk exists only as a political ; expression, may at least let her have any . benefit there may be in our prayers. May ; ■he go in and win 1 Aud yet, win lam : afraid she cannot. One would suppose that i the Greeks themselves must understand that , they cannot win. But when a war boom haß , once established itself people do not calculate , chances, and perhaps this is one of the rare j cases in which 'tis bstter to have boomed and • bust than never to have boomed at all. If | Greece is to be liviDg Greece onca more it ' will be at the cost of national strivings and J *uff erings ; through much tribulation must t she enter in. If history would but repeat j itself I— the right sort of history. At Marathon, not far from Athens, 11,000 j Greeks defeated ju3t ten times their number ; of invading Persians— the Turks of the ; period,— and ultimately the Persians were j sent back the way they came. Kemembering : this, one understands astacza of Byron : The mountains look on Marathon And Marathon looks on the sea ; And muaing there an hour alone I dreamt that Greece might still be free. But when "history repeats itself," as we say, I have noticed that the repetition is generally eomething unpleasant.

"Tell me, child, who is your ghostly enemy 1 " asked the Sunday school teacher. "Please, mm, the archdeacon," was the xe p\j • — an archdeacon being, I suppose, the particular kind o£ cleric -who happened to have " cure of souls," as our churchy friends say, over that Sunday School. This story might have been Invented by the Rsv. F. W. Isitt; anyhow, Mr Isitt would approve of it and hold' the answer correot. He told the Prohibitionist Convention that the enemies of prohibition— by which, of course, we are to understand the 'enemies of the human race— we a quartet, the editorß, the bishops, the clergy, and the devil. It must be allowed that this looks a dangerous combination. The editors, the bishops, the clerey, and the devil, you »ay, Mr Isitt I— in other words, there are arrayed against you the intelligenca of the country and its religion, plus the powers infernal. Then all I can cay is that it is a gloomy lookout. X you got the better of

ihe editorß, there are the bi3hop3 and their t 1 myrmidons ; escaping from the bishops, you } I fall into the hands of the devil. Thou art i 'in a parlous state, shepherd I particularly so i as yon no doubt- include under the heading < " clergy " Str. Paul, whose loo&e views on the i usefulness of wine iv stomach disorders can 1 Irs little appiove themselves to a prohibi- 5 ' tionist convention as the transaction* of . , Paul's master at the wedding feast. By the ] ' way, I notice that the auartet of enemies I ! which Mr lsitt called " editors, bishops, j < • c'ergy, and the devil, Sir Robert Stoat (who : I does ' not appear .to believe ia any devil) would call editors, bishop?, clergy, and the « Saddon Government; whence it seems to ; ! foliow inevitably that the Ssddon Govern- j i ment is all the same as Beelzebub. On that j point, perhaps, I might be able to agree with j them. 1 ' ':

A correspondent remind 3me that I have not yet offered my congratulations to the r 1 firsb lady an New Zealand who has been i 1 admitted to the bar. I hasten to repair the ' omission with the hope that Miss Benjamin will have heaps o£ auriferous clients with a fondness for litigation, and that the stuff gown will ia due process of time turn to one . 4!f silk. It is earnestly to be hoped that the , fair practitioner will not take for her motto ' deed?, not words, or, in other words, that ' she will not confiae herself to office ffdrk, but will set a worthy example to her sex by appearing in conn, and testing the power of a J female, and necessarily persuasive, tongue j upon somewhat hardened magistrates and ! juries. Portia will thus step straight from , die pages of the dramatist and from the •; stage to real life in our very midst. I think j I remember that when some difficulty was j raised about the admission of Miss Benjamin I ie was stated that, she was quite determined ' to overcome all obstacles — and ( Wben woman says she will 6ho will, depend . oi'(, , v . ; And when she says she won't she won t, ana , there's an end on'b. So Miss Benjamin has duly arrived at her ; coveted destination. Now that she has at- i tamed the privilege of wearing wig and • gown, it only remains for us to hope that i briefs will come thick as autumnal leaves j that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa, and j that since she has become a member of that j joyful company whose motto is " Lat Us •. Prey " her predatory raidß may be mitigated j by feminine compassion, and her pleadings , mindful of the susceptibilities of juiiee, who ■ are only human after all. ■ There are some odd views of Christianity j about. The Bsv. J. 3. Lewie, who has been j on a holiday trip to Britain, reports that he found the ministers of religion " faithful to their sacred calling, careful of the poor, diligent in visiting the sick, in season and out of season attending to the work of the sanctuary"; — which seems a sufficiently good record. But no I—" in connection with this personal character there was an obscuring of the essentials of the Gospel that ono could not but aeplore." The logic of which is that personal character improves in pro portion as Mr Lewis's " essentials " get obscured. There must be a iliw here somewhere; I suspect it; is that Mr Lewis * " essentials " are less essential than he suppoßes. la there not a text to the effect that viaitiDg'the widow and the fatherless in their affliction is pure religion and undefiled 1 One wonldn'tliks to suppose that Mr Lewis would prefer more " essentials " and less true religion, but it looks like it. A. country correspondent writes me that in his neighbourhood the Church Committee looks carefully after the "essentials" and the "foondamectals," but takes little stock in meekness and charity. On a recent Sunday the minister, w"ho is new to the district and had mistaken the hour of service, arrived 20 minutes late. Dating this 20 minutes the committee had held a meeting to denounce their lagcard pastor, had recommended the people to go home, and generally had incited "them to mutiny." However, the cervice began; but, at the third hymn, one of the committee, whose duty it was to start the tunes, "Bulked and jibbed, and told the parson there was too much singing. A discussion followed betwen pulpit and pew, and in the end the tune was got started by the help of a lady. I don't know how fat : these pro. ceediDgs repre B ent the type of Christianity that prevails* in the interior of Ofcago From an outsider's point of view the case looks bad : but there is nothing to show that religion, it Mr Lewis's sense, is not in a flourishing coadition. The " essentials " may be all right. I observe that a local publication has pub lished a list of persons who have been per mitted to compromise with the liquidator! of tiia Colonial Bank, aad it relentlessly give;

;he amounts which were owing and the prosorfcion .paid. Is may be mennoned, by the «7ay, that the list contains some unexpected j sames. It is not my present purpose, how- \ aver, to discuss that matter ; I merely j introduce it as a pag .upon which to j bang a story o£ smart local financ- j ing. A certain man in Dunedin -whom j [ shall term " X," and who was apparently doing a flourishing manufacturing j trade, found himself somewhat involved, and conceived the idea of forming his business into a limited liability company. Certain of his creditors were asked to buy shares, but one in particular dealined to do so unless allowed to pay for them per contra np to the sum owing to him. The promoters could not. 6QB it quite in that light, and negotiatiocs dropped. The surprise o£ the creditor may be judged and his iudignatiou gciessed at when a few months afterwards he was invited to attend a private meeting o£ the creditors of X individually, and it wa3 suggested to him that he should accept say 3s -id in the pound on a debt incurred ia the business which bad been transferred to shareholders. Ho merely x^tnarked that the shareholders appeared to have taken over the assets and left the liabilities to take care of themselves. The patienca of Job is offcea quoted, but even he has not left it on record that he was asked to attend a meeting of creditors under such circumstances. i 1 ' ( i ! I I 1 1 ;

Very shortly not one oE our illusions wil be leffc to us. It has been discovered tha Epicurus was not an epicure at all, but an ascetic. Nearly all the villains of history have been whitewashed. And now Andrew Lang has turned to tho heroes, and has -produced for modem inspection hia version oi Prince Charlie, aud his Highland supporters. According to Mr Lang in his new book, " Pickle the Spy," the young Pretender, was "a drunken debauchee, a broken man, without caudour, courage, character of any sort, incapable of fidelity to a cause, a mistress, or a follower hiding in the alcove of a lady's chamber in a convent, and doing even more contemptible things." Mr Lang aiso proves the " chivalry of the Highland chieftains to have been an absolute imposture, and ullows them nothing but a narbarian and purely physical courage of the wild cat order. When tha^ chivalry was subjected to the test of poverty it broke down ; it became U-eachery of the blackest type. These ' heroes ' became spies in the service of the British Government, sold their master's secret, and were willing to sell bis person for a mess of pottage.' There is even worse than thia behind Pickle the Spy is identified by Mr Lang &i none other than young Glengarry, the sot and heir of the very proudest cf the Highland chieftains, otherwise Alastah- Ruadt M*cJonall. All the romance, the best parl ! of Highland tradition, has been swept awaj at one ruthless blow by Mr Lang, and th< ! Gaelic Society can do no less than call i ! special meeting for the purpose of stating what it intends to do. CiVis.