PASSING NOTES,

Otago Witness, Issue 2356, 20 April 1899, Page 3

PASSING NOTES,

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

I knew something of Lieutenant Freeman, whose name and fate lend a tragic inteiest to this week's Samoan news. He •will be remembered by many in New Zealand who never exchanged a word with him, nobody who once saw him being likely to forget his magnificent physical proportions, his bright and cheery face. My last recollection in connection with him is that of someone asking me, " Who is that distinguished looking naval officer?" Lying in his Samoan grave he is not the more to be pitied because he was distinguished looking. Yet, somehow, the fact that he made so gallant a figure of a man increases one's regret, and at the same time quickens one's disgust at the stupid tragiccomedy in which he, along with other brave men, has lost his life. The question in debate in Samoa is, which of two unbreeched barbarians shall be set up as a puppet-king. Warships of the Great Powers argue this momentous question with shot and shell ; Englishmen and Americans gat themselves miserably killed in a tropical swamp. We do not grudge our soldiers to death in a great cause; but this is not a great cause. It is true no doubt, and I don't forget it, that the Great Powers are obscurely at war with each other in Samoa ; that their jealousies and competing ambitions are at the back of the whole absurd embroglio. But not even with this fact added do I find the cause in which Freeman and his comrades perished a great cause. The thiee Powers, one and all, now profess themselves " annoyed at the fighting." Well they may be; and ashamed of it too. As for the Samoans, it ■vvere better if we left them to compose their dynastic squabbles in their own way. Samoa, no doubt, is one of those countries in which civilisation has to go forward in a powder cart. But at present civilisation is not going forward. It is only the powder cart.

Being a pillar of Conservatism, as everybody knows, I should be the very last to encourage heresies, so no one "will imagine for a moment that I sympathise with the Reverend Hector Ferguson, of Northcote, whose work entitled " Spiritual Law Through the Natural World" has set the Melbourne faithful by the ears. (By-the-foy, isn't colourable imitation of a title an indictable offence? If not, why not? Is your patent medicine man more worthy than your literary artist?). Heresies must be wrong because — because they are aeresiaa. Mainriiies always konw best, the

old and tried is always better than the new ' and unproved — everybody knows these things, and no one but a madman would attempt to differ from his fathers. The Reverend Hector doubtless deserved all he got from his Achilles, whom we sadly hear to be laid up since the encounter with an affection of the throat, and what he might have easily foreseen. Still, though my sympathies are all upon the side of law anil order, I must be permitted a faint smile at the expense of the committee of inquiry. This judicious and judicial body got off some very good things in the course of their report. Dismissing their victim's scientific status with an airy wave of the hand, they proceed to this large statement : " The ; book showed not the slightest trace of any , other philosophy than the fantastic specu- i lations of Swedenborg." With all due j deference to the acknowledged learning of j Presbyterian divines, this sounds remarkably like bluff. Besides its claim to knowledge of the late lamented Swedenborg's pioductions — which, isn't it Emerson says, | " would be a sufficient library to a lonely , and athletic student ! " — it would appear to [ claim a working acquaintance with all other systems. But they do better than that. They find Mr Ferguson's teaching on the great points of the Resurrection, the Trinity, the Atonement, and Justification by Faith, to be " opposed alike to the doctrines of the Scriptures and to the standards of the Presbyterian Church." Never was claim to infallibility more prettily insinuated.

Dear Civis, — In reference to Councillor Chisholin's remarks re clean shirts, what about customers of the following stamp? —

One of the old Scotch identities, who arrived in the early fifties, took up his abode away in tho interior of Otago, and there remained. Of late years he had been feeling ill, not beintj able to raise a sweat; became concerned about himself, and consulted the nearest medical man, who advised him to go to Dunedin and have a Turkish bath, which he did with the following result: —

After being in a room heated up to 160 for about an hour, no inspiration ; took him into another room and steamed him, no good ; laid him out on a slab, soaped and rubbed ; result, No. 1 layer removed ; soaped and rubbed again, 2\o. 2 layer removed ; Foapod and rubbed again, pieces of wool this time. The operator commenced to think that he had discovered the missing link, when, lo and behold, what do you think the wool was? Why, nothing more nor less than a flnnnel shirt!

A smilo of satisfaction passed over the old man's face with the quiet remark, " I lo3t that flannel about 45 years ago, and never kent whaur it had ganc to afore."

A T o Sheets. Personally, I do not altogether accept this statement as literally true — not precisely, circumstantial though it is in its details, an-1 headed "a fact." I incline to regard it as a kind of parable or allegory, the bearings of which will lie in the application. Long experience of faith-healing miracles, patent medicine testimonials, prohibitionist statistics, and Mr Seddon's surpluses, has impaired my originally childlike capacity for believing the mai-velloup. Though not exactly a sceptic and a pessimist, I am verging that way. From this morning's paper I learn that a part}' of young men and young ■women are just setting out from Dunedin to evangelise ticuth America ; the spectacle moves me to no enthusiasm. A telegram from the National Council of Women, Auckland, announces the probability of our being able to get female legislators at £40 a year — domestic servants' wages ; the fact does not, in my eyes, make the political future of this country any the brighter. You see I am a bad case. It would be a pity if any guileless reader of Passing Notes should, through believing everything he sees in this column, be reduced to my condition. I particularly warn him, therefore, that the story of the Scotchman and his flannel shirt is not to be received as in all respects true — not necessarily.

The letter of "No Sheets" reminds me of a suggestion for the improvement of the Lodging-house by-law, a suggestion inadvertently omitted from my last week's note on this salutary measure. Perhaps it is not yet too late. Municipal legislation, austere but kindly, condescends to regulate in lodging-houses the swubbing and dusting, the washstands and dust bins, the soap and the towels, the relations of the sexes, tli2 changing of the sheets, all of which is to be to the satisfaction of the inspector of nuisances — a most suitable officer! As to lodging-house sheets, Councillor Christopher bore a testimony which recalls the compliment once paid by a municipal orator to tha Duk* oi Edinburgh in proposing his

health : — " Your Royal Highness is populous afloat, populous ashore, populous everywhere." But my suggestion has nothing to do with lodging-house sheets ; what it has to do with is lodging-house cookery, and, in particular, lodging-house hashes. Of what are those hashes composed? It is a solemn question. Trying to get light upon it from Mrs Civis I have found that ora-cle mysteriously evasive, reticent, all but unapproachable on the subject. Not that she ever kept a lodging-house ; but she does sometimes perpetrate a hash for our own private consumption, and, as I gather, is resolute not to disclose the secret of its composition. She would prefer to perish. Now I don't assume that the wisdom of the Town Hall is equal to penetrating a mystery so deep ; nor would I encourage a debate upon it, lest councillors should again be betrayed into domestic revelations of a painful nature. What I suggest is that there should be added to the by-law a clause restricting the production of lodging-house hashes to not more than, say, three days a week, and providing that every such lodging-house hash shall be made, composed, and concocted to the satisfaction of the inspector of nuisances. This clause would go excellently well with the rest, and I hope some councillor will move in the matter.

More "White Man's Burden." An excellent gloss to this particular song is to be found in a recent issue of the Lancet. Id is an account, in -tragi-comic style, of how an English surgeon fought to eradicate the .plague at Malegaon. (Whoever finds the place without a gazetteer may send an application fur a certificate of merit.) There was no hospital, so a rest-house in a Mussulman cemetery was converted into one. '' Very handy," writes our surgeon with sardonic touch, " for tha cases usually die in five days." Through every conceivable obstacle born of ignorance and superstition, hostility and deception, the plucky suigcon pursued the uneven tenor of his way, and finally reaped his reward in seeing Malegaon free of plague. To be sure his house was looted by the natives, and he himself was smitten by the plague, but these are details. America, having accepted the role of good Samaritan in her turn, already emulates her Transatlantic prototype. In Santiago and Havana infectious diseases are even now almost stamped out, and the death-rate has been reduced enormously. Complete sanitation cannot be achieved till next half year, for the streets dare not be torn up during the rainy season, even for such a laudable end as sewer building. But enough has been done to show how finely the paople of the Slates are shouldering their solf-imposed responsibility to these new portions of their empire. When the fierce Filipinos have learned to trust their conquerors, and taken the proffered hand " without seizing precisely that opportunity to stick a creese into them," the same selfless labour will be undergone in that far quarter of the globe. Apparently nations -do, like individuals, rise to the measure of their opportunities. Civis.