PASSING NOTES. (From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2263, 15 July 1897, Page 3

PASSING NOTES. (From Saturday's Daily Times.)

The free kindergarteners, sustained by an approving conscience and the comfort of a j full treasury, will bear with reasonable : equanimity the attacks made on their morals, j They are accused, for one thing, of ballet j dancing. Well, I suppose most of us at one time or other have paid to see ballet dancing on the stage, and thought no wrong of it. Yes, and high kicking too. It is not known exactly how high the free kindergarteners kicked ; no statistics are available. But what matter 1 It is a question of taste, not of morals. If Lottie Ooliins came here we should assuredly all go to see her, attracted, rather than repelled, by the height of her kicking. And Lottie Collins would come to kick for herself, not for kindergartens. These things being so, It seems slightly hypocritical to complain that we have been demoralised by the Terpsichorean exhibition at the Garrison Hall. Didn't we rush to ccc it in thousands 1 And, having seen it once, didn't we all unanimously rush to see it again, struggling and fighting with each other to get in? It is rather peculiar that this lifting up of testimonies only begins to be heard now that the sinful show is over and can bs seen no more.

The indictment against kindergarteniug morality contains another count, bnb there is little in it. The shilling that paid for admission bought also a chance in an art union, £he chief prize in which was a bicycle. jFhara mult have beeu some hociw pocus

here, no doubt ; for a bicycle is not a work of art within the meaning of the Gaming and Lotteries Act. But let that pass. If a coach and four may be driven through an Act of Parliament — and sometimes it may, — why not a bicycle? The sin of the ingenious kindergarteners lay not in their lottery being illegal, but in their having a lottery at all. Listen to one of their critics in the Daily Times : " Here we have a school, dealing with children of tenderest years, promoting its interests by a species of gambling. The Kindergarten School has got ita money, but it is guilty of the most successful attempt yet made to instil the spirit of gambling into the children of New Zealand." This is that rigorist theory of morals which began with the Sabbatarian Pharisees and has descended to the New Zsaland prohibitionists. It never yet did any real good in the world, and never will. A moralist of this kidney sees the sin of Sabbath-breaking in the act of rubbing an ear of corn between the hands ; the sin of drunkenness in drinking a glass of wine, though you stop at that ; the sin of gambling in a friendly lottery with shilling chances. Such notions, I should say, are equally opposed to common sense and true religion. " The kindergarteners are a set of amiable enthusiasts bent on supplementing our already bloated system of public education, which is all the same as fitting a fifth i wheel to a coach. But let us not for that reason lightly accuse them of corrupting the public morals. Welcome the rain 1 It Bounds a strange sentiment for the middle of an O:ago winter, doesn't it ? Yet there seemed reason for suspecting the New South Wales drought of having emigrated to New Zealand. For weeks and weeks past Jupiter Pluvius has forgotten us. The Dunedin reservoir has sunk to nothing ; the hill suburbs are buying their water ; the weather prophetß have been in despair. A weather prophet naturally feels a certain amount of responsibility for the | conduct of the weather. There is Mr Panlin, for instance. If Mr Paulin, who is a reasonable man, had not been able to supply a favourable forecast for the Queen's Jubilee he would have lamented i as over a personal culpability. There I ought to be little risk of error in prophesying winter rain, and plenty of it, to people who live in an island moored in the roaring forties. Yet for the la3t month or two in Ofcago a rain prophet wouldn't have earned, his salt. As a consequence — a paradoxical consequence — of tbs ucseasonable mildness one-half the population is in trouble with colds, coughs, and influenza. It is an illustration at the antipodes of the old-world proverb, " A green Yule makes a fat kirk-yard." For some reason not easily discernible people of British race cannot get along comfortably without a du6 scourging of "winter and rough weather," at the proper season. At thia present writing a wholesome sou-wester is lashing the coast, the rain beats on the window pane, the sky rests on the hill tops; all things without look hopefully gloomy and miserable. May it last a week ! The Kansas Legislature has jusfc set a legislative example that might well be imitated by other "countries where the people, or a imjority of them, imagine that the Statute Book can be made to hold a panacea for every human ill, and a safeguard against j every wrong. It has just enacted, or is about to enact, a bill which embodies ; the whole Ten Commandments. I cordially commend thia bill to the favourable notice of the Government for introduction as a Government measure next I session. Mr Seddon will no doubt bring a copy of it with him, and if the party whip is flourished over the heads of Ministerial supperters it will surely pass into law. I should not be disposed to view such an event with disquietude. Some of the commandments might pierce even the indurated convictions of ultra " Liberals." For example, they would see that it is wrong to worship graven images, and might abate their idolatry of the Premier. Possibly they might also realise the spirit; of the commandment which reminded the Israelites that they were once servants in the house of bondage, and act accordingly. They would also honour their parents instead of inferentially classing them as persons whose example was not fit to be followed. They would not kill — any industry by class legislation. Neither would they steal a former Government's measures and alter the brands so as to make them appear their own. Nor would they bear false witness against their neighbour, even though he should be a capitalist and an employer ; nor covet his property though it should happen to be in land. On the whole I can cheerfully recommend the Decalogue

as a Ministerial measure, and hope to see the example of Kanaas followed at an early date. The Colorado Legislature must be complimented on its courage, though that quality is common enough among American Legislatures to forbid surprise at anything they might do. But the Colorado legislators are more than courageous : they are logical. They have passed an act permitting women to be enrolled in the State militia. The measure, however, has not yet become effective, for the reason that it lacks the Governor's signature, and the subscription is withheld because the act is defioient in some essential particulars, inasmuch as it does not specify the uniform that the female wairiors are to wear. The spectacle of a thousand matrons drilling on the common in bonnets and dress improvers is not to be contemplated with equanimity. There are also practical difficulties in the way. It has been pointed out that bayonet exercise would be practised with difficulty in balloon sleeve?, and that to adjust a knapsack to a Zouave jacket, or accommodate it to the fashionable " wings " would be a superhuman task. On the other hand the mind positively refuses to contemplate the effect of seeing a number of matrons, mostly fat and scant of bre&th, marching on to the field in the regui lation uniform of a cavalry man. The male population would certainly fly. And yet why should not women fight? The Amazons fought in ancient times. There are women lawyers, women doctors, women ureachers, journalists, — everything in fact, even to gumdiggers, — and why not women soldiers ? If the logical consequence of women's enfranchisement is the obliteration of all distinctions of sex, the Colorado Act is not only justifiable but commendable. As we have copied so many thinga from America, let us imitate this also, and if that I much discussed cruiser should come along, let us place our female militia in the front line. I now observe with concern that irreverent j people are beginning to count the cost of I making women equal with men. A correspondent, whose whimsicality is amusing though we may not agree with him, writes to me enumerating the advantages of women not being able to read and write, and he asserts that there would be but little opposition among thinking men to a proposal to forbid women and girls from learning these arts. He says — quoting, by the way, largely from a recent magazine — " If women could neither read nor write there would be practically an end to all divorce suits brought by men. There would be no incriminating letters. Nine-tenths of the marital quarrels would not occur were wives unable to read letters they ought not to read. How many happy Christian homes have been broken up because the wife has read a letter which she has found in her husband's pockets; how many happy wives ruined because latters have fallen into their husbands' hands 1 IE women could not write, the hair of the husbands would not turn grey or vanish altogether in the vain attempt to unravel those domestic account books, which • will not come right ' because of the attempt to add together three pairs of gloves, 81b of beaf, and 7s 6d. Blest blessed of all, women would cease to write poetry and books. We should not be pestered with those eternal sex problems, wherein the wife runs away from the husband she loves but who does not love her, with a I man who loves her bnt for whom she has j nothing but contempt. Nor should we be driven to daspair in the attempt to analytically define the mental characteristics of a woman, who, after bearing about a dozen children, discovers that marriage iB a mistake because it may fetter uncongenial soul?, and who incontinently starts off on a bootless, and sometimes hatless, search after her ' affinity.' She may be a bulky matron of almost 50, and the husband a grumpy old humbug of 55, who has not been able to tie his shoe anytime these 10 years, but that does not in tha least quench the fury of the literary woman on the warpath after a sex problem. We shonld be spared all thase miseries if women could not read and write, and, think of it, O ye dyspeptics 1 there would be no more monumental pastry, and no more meetings ' for women only.' Let us pause and ask : Is the game worth the candle 1 " A correspondent sends me a "Passing Note " about the scornful rejection of Australian frozen mutton in some towns in Ireland. While as yet Ido not fuel unequal to the task of writing notes, I nevertheless thank my fair correspondent for the topic, as it famishes a peg on which to hang a few

remarks that I intended to make last week. The manner in which the gift was received was characteristic. The poor women of Limerick did not thus show contempt for it by simply staying away from -the distribution. They attended and received the meat, and then — threw it in the river. The mistake was in presenting the meat in a raw state. If the joints had been nicely roasted it is questionable whether patriotism or appetite would have prevailed. Another correspondent informs me tbat something almost exactly similar happened in Danedin during Jubilee week. There was a distribution of food and blankets at the Town Hal), and amoDg the applicants were two decayed noblewomen from the purlieus of South Dunedin. One of them languidly gave her address, and asked that her dole should be sent to her house per express, and the other fingered the drapery, and asked with a contemptuous sniff whether they called " thim " blankets. And, faith, she went without them, because they were not up to her standard of quality. Luckily she did not accept them and then execute a fandango on them in the street, having, no slonbt, satisfied herself that she had evinced enough contempt for those who foolishly thought they were doing a kindnesß. Note the difference in the reception of food. In London the recipient shed tears over a square meal. In most Irish towns, including Dublin, the warmest thanks were returned. But where was Scotland all this time ? Stands Scotland where it did ? Are there no poor there 1 Or have they all emigrated ? OiVis.