PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2413, 31 May 1900, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

The relief column entered Mafeking on Friday, May 18, at 4 in the morning. At 6 the event Avas being celebrated in the streets of Dunedin. That must be reckoned pretty smart ; but that is not all. As the military critic of the Daily Times has reminded us, New Zealand time is 10 hours ahead of South African time ; consequently 6 o'clock on Friday morning in Dunedin is 8 o'clock on Thursday night in Mafeking. This fact disturbs me not at all. I don't regret one stroke of our Town Hall tocsin on Friday morning ; nor again on Saturday afternoon Avhen " official confirmation " Avas telegraphed from Sydney. As a matter of fact the Sydney news was merely our oavii Delagoa Bay news in another form, and nothing official came till three days later. But it is all right. Our rejoicing Avas prophetic, and it is not every prophecy that gets such accurate fulfilment. When the surrender of Pretoria and the capture of Kruger is announced, I prefer that it should be at 6Jn the morning. To have a great joy sprung upon one 'twixt aAvake and asleep is a rare experience ; I should like it repeated. And so say all of us. There is not a Dunedin youngster who to his dying day Avill forget rushing out into the streets on that glorious Friday morning, atAveen the Avaning moonlight and the rising daAvn, to celebrate the relief of Mafeking. Never Jiaye I .seen a people so unanimously touched by national pride, so unaffectedly and childishly delighted, as the Dunedin people on Mafeking Day. Even Mr Barclay, M.H.R., rode in state in the procession.

f In relieving Mafeking the British Com-injinder-in-Chief has repeated — longo intervallo, and throug'j. the agency of a suboidinate — the strategy of the famous inarch Tvhfch made him Lord Roberts of Kandahar.' 1 A relief colujbmi, cut free from its

base, as self-contained as a ship on the ocean, Avas launched across the desert — in' • the one case from Cabul, in the other from j Kimberley. Between Kimberley and Mafe- '■ kiny is a railway, which railway is in the ' hands of" the Boers. East of the line lies the Transvaal; Avest is British Bechuana-lai-d — desert -"for the most part, as'aforesaid. A sh<mi relief column, never intei'ded to .get there, provided occupation for the Boers along the railway zoute Avhile the true relief, unseen and unhindered, sped on its path parallel with the railway and five and tAventy miles west , >! of it. Similarly, to the north of Mafe- j ' king, Colonel Plumer — another of the never-say-die s.orl — branched off from his direct line of approach and disappeared i' to the westward. He had a tryst to keep ! on the 17th at Pitsani, five and tAventy ■ miles due Avest of Mafeking. There the two columns met, and nothing remained • i hi\i ' to turn eastward, brush aside the 1 besiegers and march in. In strategy" the relief of Mafeking is a sufficient offset , against the brilliant raid of the Boers on Lord Roberts' s communications, a month ago, south of Bloemfontein. Just before the relief, at Mafeking as at Ladysmith, ' the besieging BoerF — big enough and stTong encugh any day for the last six months to run over the wasted garrison if they; could have screwed up their courage to close fighting — made one desperate assault. i They got into the town— at least Com- | ! mandant ElofT and 100 others did — but I they couldn't get out again. Ha ! Fancy ! Baden-Powell, on his very last legs, bag- ' ■ gmg 100 prisoners ! j ' Dear Civis, — In whist the rule runs: "When in doiibi play trumps. I act on the same rule, only under another form : When in doubt I ask the opinion of Civis. Tell rue, then, j and at the same time tell all your readers, j I why the hero of Kimberley should have sunk ' so rapidly out of sight. To White, of course, ! all honour was due; from. Baden-Powell I ! ] Avould not take ono twig of his laurels. Both , i these men did signal service to the nation; ! but what about Colonel Kekewich? Why j • should he be forgotten, or, rather, Avhy should , it be a fact that not one man in three you ineeu knows who the Kimberley hero really ! was? - j 0 TIWBKA. j When honours for this Avar are distri- '• buted Colonel KekeAvich Avill not be over- ' looked. He is not forgotten in the mean- j time : if people talk about him less than about White and Baden-Powell, I suspect it is that they are afraid of his name. Is j it pronounced as two- syllables or as three? i The name of Colonel Kckewich has been \ depreciated by Mr Cecil Rhodes. The Wo '> got on very badly : before the siege ended ■ they had ceased to be on terms of common j ' i civility. The fact is not surprising. Beyond j j a doubt Mr Rhodes Avas of opinion that he could have conducted the defence better himself. Apropos of the Rhodes-Keke- i Avich conjunction — or disjunction — in Kir- ■ i berley a correspondent of the Spectator rei calls a story of Sir David Baird, the distinguished soldier who took Cape Colony from the Dutch in 1805. As a young officer Baird had been captured by Hyder j Ali, Avho chained his prisoners Wo and tAvo. When the news reached his old mother, her remark, based on an accurate ■ knowledge of his temper, Avas simply, " I [ pity the chiel that's chained to oor Davie." There is no military man, I fancy, who j wouldn't pity a commanding officer shut up in a besieged tOAvn wivh Mr Cecil Rhodes. A correspondent relates that the other ] day a pro-Boer made his appearance in an hotel " not two miles from the Times '. office/ He Avas not a Dunedin M.H.R. ; ' he was an itinerant dealer in vegetables. The difference is immaterial. He was not a Dunedin M.H.R. , but, for anything in \ either his occupation or his opinions, he ' might have been. After selling a shilling's ', Avorth of onions in the kitchen he returned ' through the bar, Avhere the landlord was 1 reading the morning paper. " Better neAvs [ from South Africa this morning," said the ; landlord. "If the Boers had started sooner," said the haAvker, " things Avould have been different." "I think they did start soon enough; but the British didn't." '_ " They have no right to take that country from those people ; nor had Aye any right to take this country from the Maoris." "Then you have no right to be here." "I Avas born here." "Then your parents had ■ no right to be here." Such Avas the con- ■ versation — omitting a feAv expletives which . are not essential to the meaning, and which the moral linotyper might refuse to print. Somehow the cook in the kitchen, jjot wind

of this debate ; was it likely that she would buy her "vegetables off a dirty proBoer? "Send him in again! Tell him I v. ant another shilling's worth of onions!"' So they sent him in again, whereupon the cook rains the onions about His head, belabours him with a 12 x 2 batten, and sends him flying through the door with a patriotic kick. I like that cook. If her method of arguing could be applied in all similar cases we should be spared a good desl of patriotic but ineffective letter wiiting in the newspapers. Poetry being, like music, the language of emotion, we naturally '' drop into pcetry " on any great occasion that stirs our patriotism — a relief of Mafeking or the l:ke. And what a drop it is ! We have Mv Umbers, and we have" the Rev. Curzon»Sigger& — Arcades ambc — poets both ; no good citizen of Dunedin would disparage either, or deny them the merit of having diunk at what the American editor called " the. aperient spring."' But there is also the Hon. J. G. Ward. Nobody would have expected it of Mr Ward ; yet, at Wellington, representing the Premier and speaking for the colony, Sir Ward is thus reported by telegraph : — Can we not truthfully say that Stormed at with shot and shell, Baden-Powell stood the test Well With his brave six hundred. The abominable merit of this -forbids the supposition that it was sm impromptu ; he must have made, prepared, concocted it deliberately, in cold blood. Mr Ward as an adapter of Tennyson reminds me of a miscreant (name forgotten) who paraphrased the Pentateuch in rhyme ; m rhyme, but not in metre. Here is a specimen of his handiwork: — Pharaoh King of Egypt was a great rascal, Because he wouldn't let the children of Israel with their flocks and their herds, their wives and their little ones, go three days' journey into the v/ildeiness for to eat the Paschal. Two lines of poetry, you observe — just two ; constructed with that generosity in the matter of metre which Mr Ward exhibits in manipulating his embezzlement from Tennyson. No man is under any obligation to make or meddle with poetry ; the ordinary uses of life are adequately served by pi'ose. If he does make or meddle he does it at the risk of revealing himself unwisely. He opens a window as it were through which you may look into his mind, or what he calls his mind, and take stock of his mental furnishings. " I have no inducement to constitute myself Mr Ward's mentor, but in common charity I would recommend him to stick to politics and prose. "What is the difference between a Yankee, a rooster, and an old maid?" Am Aver: "One sings 'Yankee doodle do,' the other sings ' Cock-a-doodle do,' and tli3 old maid sings ' Any one will do.' " This graceless conundrum was propounded, says- a correspondent of the Daily Times, ac a soiree in a suburban church the other ' evening by one of the ministers who had ' been invited to speak. - It ought to have been capped by another : What is the difI ference between the last speaker and a i jackass? Give it lip? You don't see any I difference? Neither do I! This would have been hard measure, no doubt, since the " reverend gentleman " — as the writer in the Times calls him — probably had no thought of hurting anybody's feelings, still less of affronting universal womankind. I But what are we to think of the fecklessness which permitted a reverend gentleman thus to misdemean himself? And how j -long is a reverendus of this kind likely to be reverence^!? Mind you I know nothing of the place, the persons, the occasion ; all that I know is the very modest letter of complaint to the Times. On the subject of old maids — so-called — Mrs Civis is of opinion that a Avoman is never unmarried unless she chooses to be so. That is an exaggeration, I fancy. Mrs 0. reasons too confidently from her own case. Not every woman is endoAved Avith the poAver to subj.ugate the hearts of men. But in most cases the old maid has had her I chances and has refused them ; what is more, she may have done greater honour to womanhood in refusing matrimony than most of her sisters have clone in accepting it. It is time to drop the imbecile jesting that has been current at the expense of old maids. ___<_ Cms. The Educational Institute held three sit-'J-inaca op. the 2,2 ad. In the morning the annual

report and balance sheet were disposed of. and the office-bearers for the ensiling year elected. In the afternoon the present method of appointing teachers was discussed, and the system had a bad time of it. Teachers' salaries, travelling expenses of delegates, and other matters provided food for discussion till the adjournment. In the evening a paper on "Physical Education" was read by Mr J. W. Smith, and after it hard been discussed Mr 'A. W. Tyndall read an entertaining paper on " Marksmanship in Schools.'' The institute meets again this morning in the Normal School. A sitting of the Assessment Court for the city and suburbs (including Port Chalmers and the Peninsula) wm held before Mr E. H. Carew, S.M., or the 22nd, to hear objections against the Government valuations. A number of objections were lodged, but were struck out through the non-appearance of the objectors. The congregation of Chalmers Church", Dunedin, has decided to ask the Rev. J. IT. Spence, of Clinton, to accept the pastoral charge of the church. The announcement by cable of the breaking up of the-rring which has of late existed in the shipping trade between the colonies and New York will be matter of considerable interest to business people (says the "Wellington Post). Up to a couple of years ago five New York firms — Messrs R. W. Cameron and Co., Arkell, Douglas, and Co., H. Peabody and Co., Nailer and Queerean, and R. and W. Forbes and Co. — practically controlled the colonial trade with their port. Competition came, first from Messrs Bucknall and Co., of London, who put a line of steamers on the trade. Then the Tyser Company also fctepp- 1 J in, and' as the result of the keen triangular competition that ensued, the rates of freights were materially cut down. Two conferences were held in London between the American -firms and Bucknall and Co., the issue of which was an arrangement to pool their interests. It would appear to be this combination that has now broken up, so that the three original competitors are again in the field, and it may be assumed that the old war .of freights will be renewed, to the advantage oi colonial trader.". Parliament is convened for Thursday, June 21. - The Government have fixed March 31 next year as the date of the census for New Zealand; the same date as fixed by the Imperial Government - for the United Kingdom. The Australian colonies" have agreed to the same date. * Owing to the recent rise in the price of sugar and freights, the grocers of Dunedin have decided to advance the retail price to 2|d per lb, and 2£d per lb with tea. The weekly meeting of the Benevolent Trustees on the 23rd, was attended by Messrs C. Haynes (chairman), H. Gourley, R. Wilson, P. Treseder, C. Allan, and C. Ziele. Accounts amounting 'to £45 15s 6d were passed for payment. The secretary reported Jhe expenses of the institution for April to be £251 16s 7d ; there were 24-7 inmates, and the average cost 4s 9d per head. One of the inmates (Charles Bull) had died since last meeting. Some 24 relief cases were dealt with. A rather peculiar case, in which the informant, a woman, was eventually arrested on a charge of perjury, came before Captain Turpie and Mr J. Cagney at Oamaru on Monday. David Grey was charged with unlawfully discharging a gun" with intent to intimidate and annoy. The evidence of Gilbert Ne n bit, farmer, "Weston Park, for the prosecution was to the effect that about 10 o'clock on the evening of the 14th inst. a rail was thrown at his house, his wife telling him that it yi as thrown by Grey. Three-quar-ters of an hour later two shots were fired, the shot going through the window of the room in which his son was sleeping. Annie Nesbit, wife of the previous witness, gave evidence that the rail struck the house about four feet from where she was standing at the door. 9he recognised Grey. She was outside when the shots were fired at the house, and she again recognised Grey. In cross-examination by Mr Lee, the witne<=« contradicted herself as to the story she tokl aboiu attending lo a sick cow when she was out in the zoning. The cow calved the next day. she alley, d, and the calf was then alive. A little later she j\-

'tered this by saying the calf had been killed on Monday, morning in the presence of herself and son. When further examined by Sergelfnfc O'Grady, she had to admit that the cow had not yet calved. After the son of the Nesbit's had given evidence, Sergeant O'Grady took time to consider* whether he should not withdraw from the case, but eventually Avitnesses Avere called who gaA*o evidence Avhich Avent to~ show tliat Grey was in his own house at the time stated. The bench decided that the case had completely broken, down, and the inforj mation \yas dismissed Avithout any blame or I suspicion attaching to' Grey. They directed that Mrs Nesbit be arrested on a charge of perjury, and this having been done, a remand Avas granted till yesterday, when the accused Avas committed for trial, bail being granted. At a special meeting of 'the Albany street School Committee, held on the 22nd insi, Mr Owen J. Hodge Avas recommended to the | Education Board for the vacantrhead mastership. Mr Hodge is at present senior relieving | teJcher', and since the illness of the late Mr J. L. Ferguson has been in charge of the : school. Several members of the school com- | mittee expressed their opinion that the present system of appointment by committees was not a good one, and that the selection of a , head master should rest Avith the Education Board. i The Very Rev. Monsignor O'Leary, of Lawrence, Avho returned on the 21st from a ..twelve months' furlough, met Avith a very hearty recep'Uon from his parishioners (says the Tuapeka Tiniest In the afternoon a con- . cert Avas given by: the children of St. Patrick's . School in honour of the A-ery rev. gentleman. | Avhen he Avas presented •with an address of Avelcome. In the evening a social Avas tenI dered to Monsignor O'Leary, accompanied by I the presentation of an address and a purse of J sovereigns. Advantage Avas also taken of the j occasion to present an address and a purse of j sovereigns to the Rev. Father Keenan, who so ably filled Monsignor _O'Leary's place during the latter's absence. ~" i A charming story survives the departure of j-Lady Roberts to join her husband in South Africa. Amongst the crowd of friends Avho gathered to see her off was Countess Grosvenor, Avife of the Under-secretary' of State for War. Her eldest son by her first marriage has just succeeded to the Dukedom of Westminster, celebrating his rare good fortune by straightway going to South Africa to share the perils and discomforts of the camp. " I am so glad," said Lady Grosvenor, bidding the I Field-marshal's Avife fareAvell, " that Lord Roberts lias placed the Duke on his staff." v Yes," said Lady Roberts, " they are a very mixed lot." is a delightful example of Avhat Dv Manrier AA'as accustomed to record in the pages of Punch as " Things One might Have Put Differently." The attendance at the iWnter show on Thursday was a record. The takings at the door on Wednesday and Thursday amounted to £36*. A deputation from the committee of the Dunedin Technical Classes Association had an interview Avilh the Acting-Premier on Wednesday in regard to the block in carrying on the association's work. Messrs A. R. Barclay, J. F. Arnold, and A. Morrison, M.H.R. 's, attended, and the last-mentioned and Mr A. Burt explained fully Avhat had ; taken place last November between the | committee and the Premier, as set out at the conference on Tuesday eA'ening, and showed the urgency of the case. The Hon. j Mr Ward undertook to immediately com- ' municate with the Minister of Education, ' suggesting a mode by which the needs of the association could be met pending a • parliamentary grant this year in aid of technical education. The deputation thanked I the lion, gentleman for so readily anticipati ing their Avishes, and withdrew. The £20,000 4per cent, debenture issue oi the Dunedin Stock Exchange Proprietary Limited has been over-applied for at a considerable premium. A Wellington telegram states that July 18 is appointed Arbor Day, and Avill be observed as a Government holiday. For the Planting Season, 1900, Niillto AND j Blair have for Sale the " SuperlatiA'e " and ■ "Hornet" Raspberries, both new Sorts, and A'pstly Superior to the Varieties grown hers. Prices on ApplicatioUt