PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2273, 23 September 1897, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

The setting up again of Humpty Dutnpty is to be attempted once more at lovercargill this week, the Hon. John M'K-eczta coming down express to assist. It is a tough piece of work. " Not all the king's horses and all tbe king's men," &c. The Awarua electors have already had a shy at it ; now the Invercargill people are going 'to take a. hand. They can give their Humpty Dumpty a banquet. It would ba more to the purpose if they could give him a certificate under the Bankruptcy Act. But tbe Invercargill banquet may keep. ( What I want to suggest is that whilst wending Eouth the Hon. John M'Kenzie should turn aside to 'Pomahaka. Jast for a friendly look-in. His protons there would be exceedingly glad to see him. He bought Pomabaka for them at a fancy pries ; he has let Pomahaka to them at fancy rents. 'Anyhow, as respects tbe rest part of it, that is what they say. They have been beguiled, betrayed, befooled, bsdiddled, or such at anyrate seems to be tbeir impression, as one may see from the report of their meeting last week. The general tone of the speakers was that it would have been better for them if they bad never been born, or if Pomahaka lay a thousand fathoms under the Pacific. One man was ready to give up his section if he could get back half the value of his improvements ; another had spent £5*50 and was three rents behind ; another had carted more oats on to hi* place than he had carted away — and so on. Plainly it i& about time the Hon. John looked in. He might cheer up these goor fellow* by relating to them his own land 'transactions and showing how Bound Liberal principles combined with an eye to tbe main chance and strict adherence, to the theory of close' settlement have conducted him to the acquisition of Busby Park. Something will fa*va to be done to quell this at Pomahaka or, before the session is a week old, Scobie will have John's head "in chancery. 11

The procaedings in re Oaptain Robin's receotion do credit to us all. What a good,

I generous, simple-hearted, aff-ectionatp, unsophisticated people we are ! Captain Robin has had no opportunity of bleeding for his oountry or of beholding battle's magnificently etern array, and it may be hop-sd that he never will have. But he has gallantly taken a big holiday at our expense, has ridden bold and free through the London streets in the great procession, has been permitted the beatific vision of the Qaeen. For this we receive him back with cheers and embrace?, and carry him shoulder high. The fact is really more honourable to as than to him. It proves that we are nearer to primitive innocence than we thought. We are evidently tbe sort of "people who under warmer skies and on itummej* evenirjge would dance and sing on the village green. Mr Gourley would lead out some representative matron, perhaps Mrs -Hattoa ; the City Fathers would tail on : Alike all ages : dames of ancient days Would lead their children through the mirthful mttze; And the gay grandsire, skilled in gestic lore, Would frisk beneath the burden of three score. That ia the sort of people we are. Only th,e ctimate is wanting. I cote that even our footballers when " laid oat " and " stiffened " by a team from Wellington take it all in a Bpirit of meekness and do not retaliate. Then there is Mr J«sse Timaon who founded a Choral Society, which society, the moment it came into existence, voted out the author of its being, apparently in ignorance of its paternity. Y«t Mr Timeoo resents it not, but writes to the papers dismissing his unnatural offspring with his blessing. Wuen a man who has a just grievance behaves in this way he raises our hopes of poor human nature, We are a simple-hearted people, and occasionally we are also simple-minded. Thus the Hon. John MKeozie — who, though not a Dcmedin man, is next door to it — remarked at the Ward banquet, reported this morning, thab if Mr Waid bad been a Conservative he would not bave become a bankrupt. For child-like unintended irony this is equalled only by Mr J. F. M. Fraser's wise saying on the same subject at the Barns social — that "If Mr Ward was not a Highlander, he ought to be."

Dear Civis, — You funny man ! Tbis is apropos of your Bishop's enake yarn. It mode me quite contemplative on tbe subject of "The Antiquity of Jokea with Speculations on the Probable Periods of Their Existence, Decay, and Subsequent Resurrection." But the ghost of an old uso«quito yarn that I had knowu in my youth came humming the chant of longlost friendship, and with him I flew to dreamland. I saw a mao in a 400-gallon tank. He was bueily engaged in clinching on the inside the stings of a number of mofquitoos that ware poking faces at him through the iron of the liMik ; and wbeu he bad clinched a sufficient number the morqu toes flew away with him. Betides, tbe thought that you wera a haviu' o£ vs — I'm an awfully suspicious person — would keep upsetting the grave philosophic st*»te of mind necessary for the proper contemplation of a subject such as the above ; and I had a burning desire to know "Ben Trovafco." "Anodisas good as a wink to a blind horse," and if you don't see the application of this well-known proverb to tbe o*se in point, you're a bigger fool than I took you for. It may be, though (I like to look at all sides of the question), that somebody has been hiving a lark with you. Now I come to think of it, it is impressed on me that that is the true eolution of the matter in hand. It is not to be supposed that » mind given to the serious contemplation of six matters of such grave import a? occupy the columns of Passing ! Notes would be frivolou-j enough to spot a joke. I Nay, I will assert that such a mind would read a patent pill ad. right to the bitter end before discovering how matters lay ; and, mind, I | don't mean this as a tribute to the genius of I the pill ad. writer. What a time you must have about the Ist of * April! But what has all this to do with the matter of snakes ?— Yours, Balbos. This comes, I suppose, of an incautious attempt to swallow the American bishop's story without an adequate faith in bishops. Didn't I warn everybody that faith was indispensable. After choking and straining and painfully recovering himself — with perhaps nobody there to thump him on the back — " Balbus " rounds upon me, who told him the story, as if I were responsible for his inability to get it down. Unreasonable man ! Let him get his gullet stretched and 'try again. As I make out, he. has a moral conviction tta»fc if the story is a bishop's story he is bound to swallow it. Finding that impossible, he wants to deny that it is a bishop's story. Somebody had hoaxed me. Perhaps so; but in that o*se somebody went about it very thoroughly, since he sent me a clipping from an English paper giving the bishop's story as the bishop gave it. No, my poor friend, you won't get out of it that way 1 What you want is a stronger faith and a wider oesophagus.

Tha noble and refined game of football received a splendid illustration last Saturday, and I doubt not that hundreds of spectators went away gratified with the new insight they had gained into its possibilities. They say tbe populace loves bloodshed, and I would Bngg^sfc that the rulee of the gladiatorial arena be added to those already in use. For example, when a muscular player succeeds in " flattening out " an opponent by means of tactio-i learned in the gymnasium, such as applying the edge of the hand with a quick bun undetected blow on the windpipe, or an elbow dexfceroutly planted in that region of the anatomy known as the wind, he should be empowered to appeal to tbe spectators, crying habet, and the spectators should then signify in the usual manner, by holding thumbs up or thumbs dowD, whether the victim should be epared or " finished " with a well-directed kick on the head. lam sure this could not be called brutality, for we are assured that there was no brutality on Saturday. We have it on the authority o£ that eminently judicial person, Mr, Firth, that euch a thing was impossible, and Mr Firth ought to know, because ha saw the Wellington team play in Chrietchurcb, where they roared as gtsntiy as sucking doves. Therefore the 2000 or so people who allege that Saturday's game was brutal are mistaken, or else they were chagrined because Otago loct the match, and the Wellington team may rejoice under the certificate of good behaviour awarded io them by Mr Firtb, who saw them play in Christcnurch. If we can bring 2000 persona who caw brutal play, the Wellington team can bring Mr Firtb, who didn't see IS, and accordingly they must be acquitted. I am afraid, however, the certificate will be of no use r> them, for I don't believe they can keep their character for gentleness for 24 hours. And I think it very wrong of the scribes of the daily press to write so " hysterically " about a few bruises that a Wellington man would think nothing of, beiog merely incidental ro their " usual hard game," and to say that the rules if observed would prevent such occurrences. If the football authorities do not care to adopt my recommendation as aforesaid, I would suggest as an alternative that they abolish all rules, and simply permit the thirty to indulge in an indiscriminate scrimmage. A few fatalities every Saturday would not matter. In fac^, I feel assured they would be welcomed. When the epigrammatist said that the worst use you could pub a man to was to kill him the Rugby game as played in tbe north was not invented.

I have bad the honour to receive an invitation to join tbe " Order of the Golden Age," tbe choice being offered to me of becoming either a. Companion or an Associate. I gather that to be a Companion one must abstain from flesh, fish, and fowl, but an associate may abstain from flesh and fowl only. There are grades, it seems, in vegetarianism as well as in Theosophy. The permission given -to Associates to eat fish may be regarded as a concession to the weakness of hurcan nature, still longing for the fltsh pots of Egypt. Under such conditions abstinence from flesh and fowl involves a very small sacrifice, for fish can be named which are far richer food than any flesh. I remember reading once that in Scotland servants formerly made it a condition of tbeir hiring that they were not to be compelled to eat salmon oftener than tbrice a week. But to be a Companion and live on ragout of French beans or stewed carrots and potatoes and lentils and such abominations— no, thank you I The motto of the order ie, " Thy Will Be Done " ; and that is exactly what I have been doing all my life. Pnysiologists tell me that oar teeth are those of an omnivorous animal, history tolls me that vegetarianism does not lead to morality, and religion tells me that flesh has entered into the highest ordinances. Therefore. I decline to eat grass like a coo, as the servant girl said when offered watercress. Go to ! Have not English battles been won on beef and ale ? Are not chops and tomato sauce entwined about the most racy breach of promise case on record? Do not even the curlers from the frozen North celebrate tbeir escape from the ioe by a banquet of beef and greens 1 If all the world become vegetarian, or if at least Christendom does co, as the pious aspiration of the Order has it, what is to beoome of onr froasn meat trade 1 I take it that ifc is every patriotic New Zaalander's duty not only to eat meat himself, but to encourage the me of it by others. A fig for the vegetarians !

The Women's Liberal League of Auckland appears to be wrestling with the timehonoured Questions that have engaged the

attention of assembled women since bonnets were invented, babies began cutting t9etb, or servant girls attracted followers. That is equivalent to saying that these topics are as old as the world itself, for Eve discovered that water would serve for a looking glass on' the first day in Eden, and no doubt Cain and Abel cut their teeth like any other little boya innocent as yet of wrong, while tbe domestic help is known from the dawn of history. It ia given to very few women to promulgate anything new on these subjects. The bonnet of tbe woman opposite: is not more hideous than \t> waa centuries ago. Tbe symptoms of Cecil ot Augnetus or Johnnies teeth-cutiing were anticipated long before the flood, und the prototype of Sarah Jana'a young man no doubt >?ku>kea about in the rear of the antediluvian lodge in some vast wilderness precieelj as the faithful butcher boy at the b-tok gate pines for his mate. Of cours-3 of! ;K'« years the sefv?.ot girl question has assumed » slightly r.aw phase, but only in New ZaaltuxO, wbera MaVr Ann's ardent friends WAnt; "ocr to have half a holiday. What more rial.ural I i take if. that a 'ass is the proper complement of a lad on a holiday. Of'what advantage is it to Jack, who, drives a baker'e cart, to be set free from the trammels of duty on Wednesday afternoon if JiU, from the caprice of a perverse mistress, has to etay at home and flHtteu her nose af. the window ? Tbe chanc«s ar« rhat Jack to the bad under the circumstances. Without the sweefc control of Jill, who probably says " Dickon, wot are yer gjvia' xisi" when ha a>jgt;c»3ts the mild ioiprdp'iefcy of a shandygaff, he will orc-d.hhf b'undi-r into a bi'liar-i roo»n, and return liof.v late tve night divested of many sixpences. The Aavktond Liberal League decided unanimously va,t domestics should not; have a balf-boliday. From the point of view of Jack's welfare thay ware undoubtedly wrong. From », controversial point of view they were right, for the domestic servant found ne>t •* single champion. Not ono w»3 prfi.ier,t, which ;s a very remarftable cireamslauc* indeed, a«c l nhow? the domestics' opinion of tha catholicity of the league. OiVJS.