PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2527, 20 August 1902, Page 5

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

At last we are able to speak of the Coronation as a thing over and done ; which is to say that it has ceased to be an anxiety and has become a memory of delight ; for which the Powers be thanked ! We may now pretend to ourselves, if so it please us, that we never felt a qualm of anxiety in the matter. But is it worth while pretending? For my own part I confess that the ruthless snubbing we suffered when all cock-a-hoop for a Coronation on June the 26th had made me irrationally nervous about a Coronation on August the 9th. Any tiling might happen --the King fall ill again— Anarchists blow up Westminster Abbey. A good many other people, 1 fancy, were quakey after the same manner, though nobody croaked aloud. AH tlie greater our present elation. There are signs' that even tlie King himself has been a bit uplifted since he got Saturday off his mind. Right it is that she should be. His gifts to the nation — Osborne House, and the £100,000 odd that had just been presented to himself — are natural expressions of gratitude. But when we hear of his putting on his crown and Coronation robes v herein to show himself from the balcony of Buckingham Palace and send the multitude gathered there into frenzies of delight, we aie to recognise not niei^ely a bit of kingly good nature, but an unmistakable burst of high spinta. To the Empire nothing could be more vel come, or seem of better augury.

With an exception to be noted presently, our Coronation oratory in Dunedin can at best be described as fair to middling. The Anglicans, it is true, veie in great form. Dean Fitchett is reported to the effect that the Coronation at Westminster was a divine institution ; Bishop Nevill felt himself the proper peison to pioclaim the Kin>^ in Dunedin and also to vouch for the King's moral character, for the reason that he had once bought some of the King's old furniture ; the Rev. Curzun-Siggeis, thud in this consentaneous tiio, sang by mm of his own composing : From homes of British people, From whare of alien tongue. From ship and aisle and steeple, Praises to-day are sung. R*ibe loud the proclamation, From rise to set of tun, Our Kinp, by Coronatioi.— w Echvard, Victoria's son ! From cold Canadian forest", From isles of southern, seas, From all in Australasia, From Africa arid Indies, The sounds cf gieat thanksgiving With one united voice Eve from our complex Empire To crown our nation's choice.

of some of the Coronatioc jratoTs seems a poor thing indeed. But nuat I think to have been very far from poor was- the speaking at the Veterans' Luncheon. Here were no parsons, or none that were reported, and the report from first to last is positively readable. I make my compliments to Judge Williams. Colonel Morris, Lieutenant O'Callagli&n, R.N., Mr Stilling, and Colonel Robin. Beyond any doubt the speaking of these unprofessional was leagues ahead of that by the pulpiteers.

A Southland teacher, feminine gender, invites me to share her amazement and amusement at certain impertinent questions addressed to her by the Education Departn ent. For the amusement, yes ; — a person of my simplicity is always amused by the essentially amusing ; but amazement, no. I am long past being amazed by anything a Government department may do. In the present case tlie Secretary for Education sends to each head master a circular along v/ith a bundle of cards — white, yellow, red, blue. The Secretary wants information "in connexion with the proposal to form a Teachers' Superannuation Fund." On the cards is a series of questions to be considered by the teachers, which questions are the same whatever the colour of the card. Yet the head master is charged straitly — • Pleas 6 be careful to see that •the' cards are used as follows: —

Red, by married men. Blue, by single men. Yellow, by married women.

White, by single women. For what purpose this^. discrimination and this carefulness? Thai is what my correspondent wants to know ; also why it i 3 that being required to fill up a -white card, which on the Secretary's own theory can be done by no other person than a single woman, -she is not only to set down' her " name," " age," and " sex " — her sex, if you please .' — but to state tlie " number of children under sixteen years of age," and " age of youngest child last birthday " ?

Seriously (she says), if these cards are to be taken as an indication of the amount of common sense ruling at headquarters, we poor tea-chers are in a bad way. Sir Isaac Newton cut a big hole in his door for the cat, jvnd a, littlo one for the kitten ; and this has been held a classic instance of the failure of a philosopher to see what is apparent to every blockhead. Hia want of common sense scarcely appears to equal that of our Education Department in taking the trouble to make cards of four different colours, and then print them so as to render the difference in colour unmeaning. May we hope that the heads of the department have some of the philosopher's gieatness of mind since they agree with him in capacity for absurd mistakes. Well, to be candid, you may not hope anything of the sort. Gieatness of mind and departmental officialism are a contradiction in terms.

Dear " Civis," — I invariably read Passing Notes. I have read them for years. I trust, however, that your remarks concerning the Rev. Page Hopps and Charles Bright were not intended to convey the meaning involved in the sentence, " Indeed, the two things naturally hung together "—that is, pro-Boerisna and Freethought. In common with the majority of British citizens, I am a Freethinker, but were I allowed I 'would gladly twist the neck of every pro-Boer. Every man, and woman who does not attend church regularly is a Freethinker, and at no one time is even half the population in a British to^in of any size in church. Have we not the perpetual lament of the clergy that n?en do not attend church? I was in Christchurch a few months ago, and drifted into the Cathedral on Sunday evening. In the three iows of chairs nearest the door there were 103 worshippers, and of these eight only were mal^s. I had 10 idea till then there was such independence of thought in the community. I have scores of friends holding similar views to myself, and can conscientiously declare not one of them is a pro-Boer. Independence of thought in niatter3 theological, I am glad to say, by no m^ans involves disloyalty to the Empire, and judging from the utterances in our nudst of )ato by a few— praise be the gods only a few— who attend church, loyalty is not of necessity the ontcome of attention to ecclesiastical discourses or. Sabbath. Covert sneers at freedom of thought will do it no harm. The day of creeds is done. lfvniamfy swDeps past them. As the outcome of improvement in education there *s more freethought in the world to-day than there has been for centuries, and less pauperism and crime. Men i.ew believe that in the search for truth man needs every faculty. " Humour should carry a torch; Wit should give its sudden light; Candor should hold the scales; Reason, the fn al arbitpr, phould put his royal stomp on e\ery fact; fnd Memory, v. ith a miser's care, sl.&uld keep and gua;d the mental gold."— l remain, yours faithfully,

Agnostic. An interesting letter ; though I don't in the lca-c agn-3 with it. Moreover, the designation " Agnostic " is a little out of date"; on which point pee Professor Hutton's Hobart address. To wnte oneself c'own an "Agnostic" is to confess that one has dropped behind the time«. However, M that pass, and let us come to my own offending. In a note last week I said or insinuated that Frecthought implied proBoensm, so that the two things naturally hung together; — did I say that? Then I lepent and recant. On second thoughts, however. I don't think I ought to admit that 1 said it, or even that I seemed to say it.

The matter in question was a circular from the Rev. Page Hopps, South Croydon, London, inviting me to join him, the said Hopps, and other fanatics in a traitorous " message to the Men and WoniPn of the Transvaal and Oiange Free State," whereby they were to be stirred up to give further trouble. And who might the Rev. Page Hopps be? It chanced that the name, thanks to its oddness, had stuck in my memory as that of an authoiity commended to the Dunedin public by Mr Charles Bright, who at one time had figured amongst us as a Freethought lecturer. Hence, despite his " Rev. ," I assumed Mr liopps to be an ecclesiastical Anarchist of the type represented by Mr Charles Bright himself, who, though he spake much of " Fieethought,' 1 was essentially a crank and hide-bound in prejudices. Far be it from we to suppose an affinity between freethinking and pro-Boerism ! — why, I am a freethinker myself. Ifc is because I am a freethinker, thftt I gq tq. church,. Irue^ I

choose my church, avoiding with care Iftw many platitudinarian varieties ; but if 1 catalogued myself an "Agnostic" and shutt the door to inquiry, of course I shouldn'll go to church at ail. It is keeping a free and open mind that enables me to go to church. When there I don't observe tlirf paucity of men and the unseemly excess o{ women that " Agnostic " rejoices in. Ntf doubt women are the majority, as indeed! they are bound to be wherever it is a' question of ideas and ideals,_of chastity ano temperance, of charity' and humanity, oi the virtues which make straight lives anc good homes. The assemblies in which men form the majority are certainly not for that reason the more respectable, morally ; and it is a question whether they are even the more intelligent.

When Huxley invented and adopted fo* his own wear the term "Agnostic"' (i.e., " one who doesn't know "), not only had he been maddened by the pretence of knowledge where knowledge there was none, but the pretenders — bishops, s some of them — had. insulted and calumniated him. That is a leng story. But, with respect to his meaning in calling himself an '' Agnostic,"' here tare his own words :

The one thing in which most of these good people [the pretenders aforesaid}, wjero agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they, had attained a certain "gnosis'" — had, more or less successfully, solved- the problem of existence ; while 1 was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the/ problem was insoiuble. . . So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of " agnosMc." It came. jnto my head as suggestively antithetic to the " gnostic of Church history, who professed to know as much about the very things of which 1 was igiaorant. People with whom " Agnostic " is a profession of bejief — belief that Christianity is delusion or fraud — may be reminded thab with Huxley it was merely an admission of ignorance. Also they may remember with advantage what Huxley's agnosticism came to when he fat on the London School Board. The following motion had been proposed :

That, in the schools provided by the board, the Bible shall be read, and there shall be given therefrom such explanations and sjiek instruction in the principles of religion and morality, as are suited to the capacities of children. Amendments were proposed, but Huxley vcted against all the amendments 'and in favour of the motion. Amongst other things he tpld the Board that "in his earlier experience of sbkness and suffering he had found that the most effective helpers of the higher humanity were not the scientist or the philosopher, but the parson, and the sister, and the Bible woman." Let my friend the " Agnostic " above put that in his pipe and smoke it. Cms.

Mr E. H. Carew, S.M., on the 12th hold a lengthy pitting of the Magistrate's Court to consider applications for old-age pensions'. He granted seven new dainis at £18, one afc £12, and one at £7. He also granted 27 renewals at £18, one at £14, and one at £11. Included in these latter were two applications from residents in Port Chalmers. One application waa refused, the applicant being in, receipt of an income of £52 a year. The money involved in the pensions granted i-e-rresents £656 per annum. At Mosgiel a few days ago Mr Carew granted five pensions at £18, one at £17, one at £16, one £13, one at £12, one at £11, and one at £5, equal to £264 per annum. The total amount granted in pensions at the two sittings would therefore be £920.

At a special meeting of the Clutha Presbytery, held at Balolutha on Monday last, it was agreed to take a plebiscite of the electors within the bounds of the presbytery on the question of the introduction of Biblereading in schools. It waa arranged to haVe the voting papers issued at once so as to secure their return by the 6th of September.

An inquest was held on the 12th insfc. Ly Mr C. C. Graham, coroner, at Addington Farm, Waitafci, to inquire- into the death of Henry Clark, aged 74 years. Mr William Kilpatrick was chosen foreman off the jury. The evidence went to show thai; th« old man had olimbed up a pine tree close to the house, being engaged in lopping eft the branches, and a larger branch that he had sawn off had fallen and pulled him down with it, the fall being some 25ft. His wife, an old lady of over 80, heard 4!he crash, and caw her husband lying on. the ground. She found him then quito insensible, and could do 1 practically nothing for him. An hour later her daughter came on the scene, and! a neighbour was then callo.l in, who deposed that in his opinion the old man was then quite dead. A verdict of " Accidental death through falling from a troe " was returned.

It is proposed to hold an indu-trial exhibition in Wellington -on an early date. Tho plans prepared provide for 37,000 superficial feet of space, without taking into consideration the Town Hall. This means that 10,000 ft more letting space than at the recent Canterbury Exhibition, and 16,00Cft more than at the last Wellington Exhibition will oe provided.

At the mec-ting of tli" Otago Institute on. the 12th Mcssis K. Chi-holm and T. Brown were elected members. The president intimated that volume 34 of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute had come to hand, and was available for the use of members. Some specimens of fossil leaves, obtained by Mr O'Connor, of Nevis, were also laid on the table.

At a meeting of the Teachers' Assistants* Association, held in the. Normal School (Mr M'Lean. presiding), it was unanimoinly reEclved to support the superannuation scheme which was presented to the Minister by the Otago delegates — Messrs Smeaton and Davidson.

When other remedies fail, try TUSSI< CURA, However bad your^-rold. m&vha. it will owe i'ou.