OUR MELBOURNE LETTER

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 10 April 1901, Page 54

OUR MELBOURNE LETTER

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

March 28.

The Duke of Cornwall is to arrive in Melbourne on May 6. Already the city is being prepared for his reception, and for the opening of the Commonwealth Parliament. There can be no doubt that Melbourne will present a remarkably festive and beautiful appearance. I remember reading an acfcount of Newport, the New York fashionable suburb — how the millionaire gave his orders and a palace grew like magic, how lawns and gardens were created almost in a night. Something of that kind is to be ( seen in Melbourne just now. The Duke is to enter the city from St. Kilda, and the apprcJach is being beautified by rockeries and flower beds and shrubberies. The desert waste has literally been made to blossom like the rose — all in the space of a few days. Though occasionally the heat has been over lOOdeg in the shade, and a north wind has raged like the simoon of the Sahara, not a (shrub or a plant has been lost — even theNew Zealand flax bush has rooted and flourished. Needless to say, the water pipes have played an important part. In no quarter of Melbourne has a more complete transformation been made of recent -years than pround this entrance to the city. A magnificent, noble bridge now spans the Yarra, the river has been doubled in width, its "banks evolved into eloping lawns, the roadway raised and widened, and the roadsides beautified by planting. A very fine arch is already being erected on the bridge; grand stands are being put 'up by speculators here and there on the line of the procession ; all the architects are busy designing arches and scheme* of decoration There is to be a German arch ; a, Chinese arch ; industry arches — butter, wheat, and wool, gold, and what not. Different blocks are to be decked out in different echemes of colour — one red, white, and blue, one red and black, one pink and yellow, and so forth. Citizens' committees, municipal committees, merchants' committees, musical committees — all are bustling and hurrying things forward. The painters and carpenters and plumbers are working at high pressure. Even the Harbour Truct is spending £1000 in preparing a pier for the Duko's steamer. Parliament is to sit in the Exhibition Building, which is being redecorated at srreat exIpense ; and Government House is being refurnished. Consequently Melbourne tradespeople are all extremely busy. It is, therefore, with some surprise that we hear of unemployed, who clamour for work under the threat that if they dent get it they'll parade in front of royalty. The first federal elections take place tomorrow and next day all over the Commonwealth — that is, Australia and Tasmania. No man can be a member of both Parliaments — State and Commonwealth, — and here in Victoria several well-known politicians who would have been safe enough for a seat in the Commonwealth Parliament have decided to remain in the Slate Parliament — Mr Peacock, Mr Trenwith, Mr Duncan Gillies, and Mr M. K. M'Kenzie (the blind politician), for instance. No doubt they will spread their wings on some future occasion.

Rather a comical fight is that for the Melbourne seat in the Lower House between Sir Malcolm. M'Eacharn and Dr Maloney. Sir Malcolm M'Eacharn is of the shipping firm of M'HwTaith, M'Eacharn, and Co. He is a substantial man as member of this firm, and, in addition, he married one of the Bendigo mining magnate Watson's daughters, besides which he owns, or hes a big interest iv, the Brisbane trams, which, bince they adopted electricity, have paid handsomely. He got into public life as Mayor of Melbourne, and received his knighthood in the third year of his mayoralty. You could scarcely find, if you searched all Melbourne, a greater contrast to the Radical, silly, impressionable, feather-headed Dr Maloney. The little doctor has a head as light as air, but a heart as big as a bullock's, as the saying goes. No working man ever imagined a political cure for all ills that Dr Msloney did not support. He has been in Parliament for years, and never yet did one atom of good there or wielded one ounce of influence ; but he never turned a beggar away from his door or hesitated to part with his la~=t sixpence in response to a tale of woe. The man who suggested that Dr Maloney would have beaten Sir Malcolm M'E.achani for the City of Melbourne in the fir<t Federal Parliament would three months ago have been considered- a semi-lunatic, but Sir Malcolm has disappointed his friends by an evident attempt to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He believed he had all the better class with him, and he conpequently made a bid for the labour support by declaring himself a protectionist. The labour party, were he 50 time 3a3 protectionist as themselves, would not support him, and the better class are threatening wholesale to vote for Willie Maloney or not vote at. all. Sir Rupert Clarke took the chair at one of the doctor's meetings, a fact of much inteiest to students of family history in the days of " Big" Clarke — the baronet's grandfather.

One result of the expectation of the royal visit is a steady rise in tramway shares. Ever since the first announcement of the visit they hate been on the rise, and when it was feared the Queen's death would prevent him from coming they went back. In the last nine months or so they have gone from 15s to 255 ; and 25s is a high price considering that their par is 10s, on which they pay 10 per cent. only.

Another cause is operating just now to swell the traffic returns. This is the monument just erected in the Kew Cemetery by Dr Suringthorpe over his wife's grave. Dr Springthorpe is a local production— a Wesley College boy and a Melbourne University M.D. I think he is celebrated in university annals as having passed the most brilliant medical course of his own, any previous, or any subsequent time. At any rate he is a remarkably creditable local production, and has earned a name as a specialist in mental .disease*. His wife died three years at>o. and within the last month or so he has had erected over her grave at Kew far and away the finest monument ever seen in Australia. MacKennal, the Melbourne sculptor, had tha carving work, and came all the way from London to superintend the erection. It is a pillared edifice after the fashion of a Greek temple ; under which is a recumbent presentmem of the lady, with an angel by her side and a figure of Grief at her feetall in purest marble, splendidly carved. Report says it cost £5000 How the public does flock out by tram to see it ! On Sunday afternoon there is scarcely standing room in the cemetery, which is the one Melbourne cemetery with a pleasant outlook. Indeed, it ha° more than that; it ha- an e\y.sive and view over mile; of patk-

like country running towards the Heidelberg Hills We haven't got woman franchise yet in Victoria ; if we had Dr Springthorpe would be safe foi any constituency in the country. Mr MacKennal, the sculptor who, as I have said, produced the Springthorpe monument, has " euchred " the National Gallery over his Circe statue. This is bis famous bronze which was exhibited in the Paris Salon. He brought it to Melbourne with him and asked the National Gallery Trustees £800 for it. They agreed to give him this price, but Herr Pinschof, the Austrian Consul, offered him £1000, and the National Gallery was left lamenting. MacKennal's excuse is that the Gallery was not going to pay him cash — it was to be an aggravated case of deferred payments, — but there is a suggestion that he owed the Gallery a grudge, and was not sorry to pay it off. Pinschof is the man who did so well out of bank deposit receipts. His wife is Madame Weidermann, an opera singer in her younger clays, and still the teacher of singing in Marshall-Hall's conservatorium. And Herr Pinschof is Marshall-Hall's strongest supporter. No doubt the artistic professor has advised his patron to the purchase of Circe, which is undoubtedly a very striking piece of work.

The mining investors of Victoria are envying those of New Zealand just now. They read that there is no speculation in dredging investments on your side — the industry gives a cafe, solid return, and the shareholder can reckon on his steady dividends a; he wonld from a bank. "Victorians are sighing for that kind of thing. Scarcely e\cr b<-fore hpve fibaieholders been hit fco hard c^ in tie p.\i=t throe inoiitii-. One iea>-oii i» the decline in the prico cf copper and lend. Mount Lyells have gone down 10 £4; and North Lyells, Lyell Than*, Lyell Blocks, etc., ek\, have gone with them. And Bioken Hills are "following ii.it — Block Tens are down to 80s and Broken Norths and Broken Junctions and Broken Centrals along v v it!i them,. To add to the afflictions of the dealer in <= tor Its, gold is having a run of dropping prices. The Glenfire South at Ballarat is a prominent example. This, mine's hmoiy i- iilmos f romantic. It began its cxi« f .e'.ce as a pio mising alluvial mine, but seemed fated to be a disappointment. Its shnres were sold at Is 6d, but suddenly a quartz reef was ptruck where no quartz reef v.as expected to be, and as it was 27ft thick and prospected 2oz to tho ton, up went shares with a bound to £5. Imagine the feelings of the unfortunates who sold at - Is 6d ! The reef continued its early promise — crushed always over an ounce, and shares went steadily up to £11. But the March crushing has gone some pennyweights under the ton, and the price to-day is only £6 10s — an alarming fall in a month. Long Tunnels, which were over £70 not much more than 12 months ago, are now worth only £?. Whatever else the Rev. Dr Rentoul may be blamed for, he cannot be blamed by newspaper writers for not "making copy." His latest exploit has alarmedj not to say shocked, his friends. He actually and positively appeared on St. Patrick's Day at the St. Patrick's Society's luncheon as the pnncipal guest and speechmaker, wearing the shamrock and a green tie. And to hear him crate,*you could ne\er have possibly imagined that the same little contentious and pugnacious individual had for years preached the Orange sermon on July 12 and come to be regarded as the boldest champion of Protestantism against the "Scailet Woman" What was ChriFt.,pher Columbus-?— A Roman Catholic What was Boward, the leader of Elizabeth's fleet against the Armada?— a Roman Catholic. What was Captain Kane, nho brought the Calliope out of Samoa? — a Roman Catholic. And Archbishop Carr was a gentleman, honourable and manly — and the rest of it The Archbishop was all the time outride tho lunch^m tent, gazing at ihe bicycle race*, afraid no doubt to interrupt the flow of such unexpected oratory. Naturally, the St. Patrick's members cheered the little Belfast man to the echo. But how the Orangemen and the Presbyterians rubbed their eyes next morning !

The ca«e of a lad of 15 who was shot by a playmate through the " didn't-know-it-was-loaded" cause is so painfully sad that it warrants relating. The father of the household kept a revolver in his bedroom. When it was unloaded it lay about, when loaded he placed it under the mattress of his bed. The-vietim had slept over night in the house, and was playing about with the two sons — boys of 11 and 13. A woman of the household making the beds disturbed the revolver, and placed it on a toilet table whilst she went out of the room for clean bed linen. At that moment the boy of 11 rushed into the bedroom, saw the revolver on the table, naturally concluded it was unloaded, presented it at the young visitor, and pulled the trigger. The bullet entered the boy s forehead, and he died withm an hour. The grief of the two families can be imagined. A painful scene was witnessed at the inquest when the little fellow who was the innocent cause of the tragedy had to give evidence.