PASSING NOTES,

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 3

PASSING NOTES,

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

What did President Faure die of? There are several theories ; one is that he perished of an article in a London newspaper. The fact, if proved, wouW be flattering to the power of the press, and might lend support to the debating society thesis that the pen is mightier than the swoi'd. Moreover there is precedent for this form of homicide: "Who killed poor Keats? " I," said the Quarterly, So savage and tartarly, " With my little article, I killed poor Keats." But what might kill a poet would not necessarily kill a politician. There are New Zealand politicians — and I could name them ! — who, if the censure of an honest and patriotic press could kill, would have been politically dead and buried years ago. President Faure was a politician, and a successful politioian ; by long use, therefore, hardened against criticism. He didn't die of any article ; what he died of was the - Dreyfus case. So say the best judges, and history will draw the certificate of death in that form. Died of the Dreyfus case! It is a malady of which, before the end is reached, a good many other Frenchmen will die, if not the State itself. As for French justice and French humanity, they, like the President, are dead of "it already. As a specimen of the unvarnished savagery to which Frenchmen have descended a writer in the " Contemporary" quotes a paragraph from the Jour, one of the most influential of Paris newspapers. A member of its staff had fought ft. duel with a lawyer named Morel ; this is how the Jour refers to the affair :

We have had the happiness to learn that the •wound received yesterday by lawyer Morel is anore serious than wae supposed at first. Consideriag that it ie complicated by a bad disease

there are good grounds for hoping that it will have serious consequences. There are no words in my vocabulary, nor in any other man's, that could adequately characterise this. Incident-ally it is evidence of the murderous temper to which the parties to the wide-weltering Dreyfus carse have wrought themselves, and of the need, I fancy, o/ a general blood-letting before the fit can be expected to pass.

The once well-known phrase " the bantltng by the Leith "' has almost passed into the Lirabo of oblivion. Naturally, since the " bantling ' has become a sturdy child, in spite of whooping cough and measles, and is still growing. It is only now and then that a cbance dictum such as that of Mr C. A. Richards, metallurgical engineer at the Mount Morgan mint;, recalls by its ridiculous inaptness Hiose happy bygone days. The phrase would have been music in the ear of this contemner of colonial schools of mines. "From what I hove seen," he says, "of the various mining schools which now exist in Victoria and New Zealand, I am of opinion that they will do very little good ; on the other hand, may possibly do a great deal of damage if established- in this colony on the same lines." Which is , sufficiently severe! Queensland, however, will do well — this gentleman's opinion notwithstanding — if she succeed in founding, on whatever Tines, an institution that will do as steady, solid work, and turn out in an equal period as many graduates fit for directorships of other schools as our Otago School of Mines has dene. One has only to take the University Calendar and turn its pages to be able to smile serenely back upon the Queensland expert. The lis>t of subjects, and the names that guarantee the able handling of them, on the one hand ; the rail of fame upon the other, completely reassure us. iEsthetically, perhnps, the school has much to answer for — well, there's no perhaps about it. the hideous iron building is an architectural crime ; but from the point of view nf efficacy there is no local educational institution of which we may be more justly proud.

If before discussing the Lodging House By-law the City Fathers had taken counsel of the City Mothers, they would have obtained a more intelligent grasp of the subject and might perhaps have spared us certain domestic revelations of a painful nature. For example :

Councillor Chisholm: Look, too, at the absurd proposal that no sheet should be supplied to any lodger which had been used for more than seven nights without being washed. How did the committee come to fix on seven as the number of times a sheet could be used without being washed? How many councillors were there who had their sheets washed every seventh day? From the tone of the question I gather that in Councillor Chisholm's opinion the councillors who sleep in clean sheets .'tie an insignificant minority. The Mayor didn't call him to aider ; no councillor protested ; nor was a show of hands invited from those councillors whose sheets are washed once a week. We are shut up, therefore, to a most uncomfortable conclusion ; personally I shall make a point of asking every candidate at future elections in my ward, " How often do you wasli your sheets?" No candidate whose bed linen will not bear inspection ought to get a single vote. For if a man sleeps in dirty sheets what can be the value of his opinion on sewage, on street sweepings, or the sanitary condition of back yards? From sheets we may argue naturally to shirts, and from shirts to the skin beneath them ; from the state of a man's skin and the condition of his finger nails I would undertake to infer his political principles, his moral conduct, and probably his theological beliefs as well. I observe that at a meeting of the Fabian Society a Mr W. Hood announced as an article of faith that " there was no necessity for washing clothes at all." The Australian -aborigines, and probably also the Maoris, held a similar belief. The Chairman, the Hon. W. M. Bolt, " did not see that they could do without washing, as Mr Hood suggested " — wasn't prepared all at once to adopt that mode of life, but apparently was keeping an open mind : " What kind of clothes would not require to be washed?"' To which inquiry Mr Hood replied that "we could wear paper clothes." I have not the privilege of this Mr Hood's acquaintance ; but if he will show himself in Princes street clad in 3. few back numbers of the Daily Times I shall e.i Mlv know him -uVn we meet. I shall not i.iiii i!-.<; him for d City councillor; I .-hall luco^iiiit him at once as a Fabianite.

One of the salient characteristics of the juvenile free-born New Zcalander is his whole-souled contempt for aliens, and I confess it gives me many a moment of uneasy speculation. It is so manifestly native. It is not the product of some wave of passionate distrust such as might be aroused by terrible disclosures of unsuspected crime, or by fiercs competition in the labour market: it is just the youngsters' way, the flowering, possibly, in new soil of our Anglo-Saxon self-importance. An English friend of mine, thousands of miles away at present, and never likely to return, told me that when he came from London to a northern town, one of the four great centres, the children followed him all round the streets and squares, calling out " Frenchy, Frenchy!" He said that he felfc he had come to a country of barbarians, and in some respects the epithet applies. Cry " Here comes a Chinaman ! " to a group of children, and observe the faces closely ; I am much mistaken if you will not see the element lie meant peep out — the inculture that can see no beauty, no interest of any kind, outfcide its own particular petty circle. What .will it grow to, this same element of character? The following paragraph from an Australian paper may afford an indication* —

Tho vast majority of those drowned were Asiatics and Polynesians, most of whom were single men. Of over 400 lives lost, not more than 12 or 14 appear to have been whites. Those who would have diving carried on wholly by white men may now see what an awful blow would havo been deaH to Queensland had 400 families been now sorrowing for loved ones lost. I leave the thing in all its grim suggesth eness.

Dear Civis, — When anything disturbing happens folks seem to confide in you ; so I will lay before you my grievance. The other Sabbath evening I strolled into a certain Presbyterian Church in this city. The officiating minister shortlj announced a lesf-on in Deuter-nomy. I turned over the leaves of my book again and ngain in pome confusion, thinking' Can this be some new version of the Old Book that I have not seen, or what is it? I had~heard of innovations being practised in Dunediii congregations; but Deuter-nomy, Deuter-Momy, still kept being repeated. An old man, seeing my dilemma, passed his book opened at Deuteionomy. Ha! I thought, and my Scottish blood stirred me up, saying within me: Can this be the good old Presbyterian Church, or are we to follow in tlie wake of High Church brethren? Do explain to me,

' Civia," what all this means ; or are we shortly to hear Gen-sis, Sol-nion, etc., etc.? Wo wonder you write of the style of speech of our young colonials when they listen to such from the pulpit. I feel bore in heart, dear " Civis." Tell me if I must, in my old p.t-'e, learn to pronounce anew? With love to Mrs Civis and the young Civisec, your friend

" Deuter-nomy. 'J_, jSS What this aggrieved Presbyterian heard was probably the word ' Deuteronomy ' with the accent on the first syllable, where the accent ought not to be. I surmise that the preacher, being aware that ' Deuteronomy' is made up of two words ' deuteros ' and ' nomos,' tried to indicate the fact by putting the accent on the ' deut ' instead of on the ' on,' arriving thus at a pronunciation which to his hearers Hounded like ' Deuter-nomy.' By the same rule he should pronounce ' photography ' with the accent on the ' phot,' and ' geography ' with the accent on the *ge.' A little learning is a dangerous thing! With a little more learning he would know that an English word does not .cany an accent on a syllable so far back as 'dent' in 'Deuteronomy.' Note in the series 'photograph,' 'photography,' 'photographically,' how the accent Shifts, pulled towards the end of the woid as syllables are added. But I am not paid to give lectures on phonetics. Write me a letter on something more amusing.

Our local university has never countenanced the theory that students should be segregated from the world by & distinctive dress. Professors with £ome show of reason argued that the fripperies of ancient universities might be ignored in these new regions so long as naught of the essential and enduring, which could be imitated by tne new foundations, should be left untried. In Canterbury, the authorities, yielding a trifle more to augu&t precedent, or possibly impressed by the part played by uniform i«v the development of that most valuable factor of - success which we have never a phrase for in our mother tongue — esprit de corps — decreed that students must attend in cap and gown at lectures. The University of New Zealand exacts a similar sacrifice of individual to corporation from senators and graduates ; but here the interference with private taste in dress has end. It has been left 3w Sydney to make the first

real encroachment upon individual liberty by the promulgation of a delicious Oppian law to the effect that women students must not put in an appearance in the lecture-hall, or even return home from it. with flowing locks or "pigtails." As if the girls didn't grow up too fast already, without such stupid pressure ! The tribune Oppius's sumptuary law stood on the statute book for 20 years : I don't remember seeing the number of convictions under it set forth in Tacitus or Livy, tkough I do recall the former's brief remark, " It was repealed because it was expedient." I wonder if the pigtail clause will last co long ! Civis.