PASSING NOTES

Otago Witness, Issue 2757, 16 January 1907, Page 5

PASSING NOTES

(Frora Saturday's Daily Times.) That each one of us lives in a world of his own, a world he fashions unconsciously to his own best imaginings or his worst, is proved true every day. A peripatetic Irishman come's along, bent on persuading us to Home Rule for Ireland. Now Home Rule for Ireland is a proposition that may be argued fairly this way or that, — there is something to be said on both sides. But to the Irish peripatetic this sounds like saying that you might angue for or against Russian massacres of Jews, or Belgian atrocities on the Congo. All the vices that go with tyranny of the brutally ignorant sort, with reckless cruelty and lunatic absurdity, infect the British administration of Ireland. So protests the Irish lecturer, and thereby gives himself away. Plainly he inhabits a world of his own, — a feat not distinctively Irish, or how should we explain that eminent Baptist minister the Rev. Mr Gange? Discoursing of the English education imbroglio, Mr Gange is reported by the Daily Times as believing that " the Tory party wanted to keep the people in ignorance " — the Tory party as represented by the late Lord Salisbury, Mr Balfour, and Mr Chamberlain. After this there is nothing to surprise in Mr Ganges dramatic account of the 1902 Education Act, _ its origin and secret history.. What happened was that the Church went to a Government which was favourable to the Anglican party, and the bishops said, " Take over our bankrupt gchoola." " Very well,' replied the favourable Government; "but what are we to do with them 9 " "Dump them on the rates.' and make the rates <=uppoit them,'' was the proposition of the Church of England. AU that I know of the=e dark matters is what any man may know who reads the secular newspapers — the London Times, say, and the Spectator, independent journals with no sectarian log to roll. Formed in tliis school my ideas r>n cutrent history fail to assimilate with those of Mr Gange, and I explain him as I explain the Home Rule lecturer, — recalling, apropos, a sage remark by Tennyson : For every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late and soon .Spins, toiling out its own cocoon. A cocoon-world, the objective expiossion. of your own very self, is, I suppose, an agreeable place of residence, compact and cosy, — for some people greatly preferable to the wide and open-air -world of things as they yre. It may be that in public education the true and necessary middle teim between religion and irreligion is Birreligion. That proposition is at lea6t arguable. There may be a middle term between Uod and Mammon, — I don't know ; perhaps Gammon. That might do;— as a word it smacks somewhat of both. So with Birreligion; &o. again, with Devolution as a mean between extremes on the Irish question. Man, being reasonable, might argue these questions, one would think. Byron's line, it is* true, runs othexw ise : Man, being reasonable, MUST GET DRtfXK. A false inference, which I hasten to repudiate. Let us stop at saying that man being reasonable is bound to exercise his reason, and that debateable subjects ought to be reasonably debated. But we don't get debate ; we get a bad atmosphere. Patriotism, like religion, h> often an afair of antipathies, mainly ; a man is a good patriot or (t good Christian in proportion

as he is a' good hater. Of course from the point of view of sport this is nothing to be regretted. Give us a well-kept ring, we say ; put in it a resolute pair of bruisers ; let the Irish question and the education question be fought out under the QueeusbeTry rules. For a classical example, take the rival editors in Pickwick, "Come on!" vociferated Slurk, squaring up. " I will not, sir," rejoined Pott. "Oh, you won't! Won't you, sir?" said Mr Slurk, in a. taunting manner ; " you hear this, gentlemen! He won't; not th»t he's afraid; on, no! he won't. Ha! ha!" " I consider you, sir," said Mr Pott, moved by this sarcasm, " I consider you a viper. I look upon you, sir, as a man who has placed himself beyond the pale of society by his moat audacious, disgraceful dnd abominable public conduct. I view you, sir, personally or politically, in no other light but as a most unparalleled and unmitigated viper." This is the true heroic style, but from it we have lamentably declined. Each belligerent pronounces his dithyrambios, and makes what Hamlet would call his "damnable faces," when the other fellow ie somewhere else. Possibly religious teaching in day schools is, at the best, worth not much. Mr Gange may be right, there. In isolated cases, however, it appeals to the curiosity always latent in the youthful breast. At a conference of teachers in Lancashire one member gave some examples. He had been stuck up by questions such as these : Who was Satan's mother? When d:d the Protestant religion get agate? When heaven was shut up thre« years and six months in the days of Elijah the Prophet, whftt happened to all the good people who died ? Evidence, this, that the spirit of inquiry i 6 abroad. The fact may be of encouragement to our local Bible-in-Schools people. Little has been heard of them lately. Do they still exist?

A pair of "hunted lovers" \rho flit to and fro in this week's cables appear to have set the tongue of gefcsip wagging in two hemispheres. Surely this is fame. Moreover, their story has generated not a little sympathy, most of it misdirected. Since May last " a Russian army captain has been running away with his commanding officer's wife, and the commanding officer has been running after them. Too much running, it seem* to me. I admire the principles of the American to whom, it was announced : '' So-and-so has run away with your wife.'* Said he, coolly, "Why run?" Certainly the wife who runs away with another man is not such a wife as a husband need run after. She may take her -time. Why run? But there is the possibility of vengeance ; — ah, yes. Think of the feelings of Mr Pott — who has already got into my notes this week — when he read in the columns of his hated rival these graceless lines: Oh, Pott! had you known How false she'd have grown, "When you heard the marriage bells tinkle; You'd have done then, I vow, What you cannot help now, And handed her over to Winkle. The nature of the Russian husband's feelings may be inferred from his acts, which are described as " infuriated." Fleeing before his face, seeking cover at every turn, the guilty pair, or, in sympathetic newspaper phrase, the " hunted lovers," hied America and were turned back from the doorstep, the Americans being a highly moral people. Next the Cape; next Australia, where they are now, beset with "spies" — spies in Hobart, spies in Sydney, spies in Melbourne. The thief doth fear each bush an officer. Appaiently the Australians have been much impressed by the nobility of the lady's declaration that she " never will desert Mr Micawber," that is the present one. Altogether a sordid story, not creditable to public morals, — the proper close for it the Divorce Court plus a horsewhipping. Blackball. December 21, 1906 Dear Civis — I have bsen a constant reader ol Passing Notes for several year 9, and have observed with much satisfaction how you twit all and sundry who err from the truth. I want lo get at the truth in regard to the classical pronunciation of these Latin word 9. Doceo, diHcedo, Cicero, and your own uom de plume, Civis. It the Engli«b " c in the pronunciation of classical La'* in always ijronomiced like ak, or is it not? I would be glad if you could gjve an English word against each of thete words illustrating the similarity of pronunciation. You may "be interested to know -that an Anglican minister (who lives not a hundred miles away from Kumara), a digger (residing in the vicinity of Liveipool Bill's Gully), a school teacher (with splendid academic credentials), and myself (p back-blocks student) will await your reply with keen interest. I write to you, dear Cms, because, from the point of view of truth, 1 reckon you havp got a better claim to infallibility than the Tope — Yours faithful]}, Questioner. The Pope's infallibility ami mine are much of a muchness ; in fact his Holiness anJ I are in the same boat. We both make niifctakes ; we both survive them. Tlu* faithful are in iv> wise shaken; the uj'.Miever continues to oit where he sat before — in the seat of the .cornful, which is his miturdl place. And, for my own part, whenever I blunder badly 1 must be taken to have a particular meaning in it/ So much for infallibility : now for the Latin tongue. F ; rst let me ask whether the Wt-bt Coast ;s; s entiiely without school grammar*. In that state of destitution, if it exists, would it not be well, having written to Civis, to write also to a bookseller? (i^t Abbott's "Via Latina"; therein contained is a summary of the Syllabus of Latin Pronunciation issued by the Professors of Latin at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford in response to a request from the Head Masters of public schools. That will do more for you than anything in this column, the linotype being impatient of prosody maiks. Meanwhile you may fashion " doceo '' upon " rockyj"' "dicere" upon " hikkerydikkefy -dock "—except that "dik" is to be "Seek"; " cedo " may follow the proper name " Cat©," keeping the "d " sovutd. Tken, f&a&aUy, if always y<Mi

' sound the "» " as " k," the "j " as " y,** and swap the vowel sounds about on what you may suppose to be a Continental model — if you do this, minding carefully your longs and shorts, you may lead a peaceful life in the class rooms of the Otago University. How do I pronounce my own name? A weighty question, no doubt, cropping up as regularly as the gvs bill, though l'have elucidated it times i innumerable botL in prose and verse. Latin proper names in. C, when indicating persons of distinction, as Caesar, Cicero, Civis, are naturalised, domesticated 1 , treated as English. Readers of this column softly syllable their Civis with a sigh — the sigh of content. Dear Civis, — As you are an enemy of slipshod English, allow me to bring under your notice the ambiguous manner in which some shopkeepers receipt their customers' bills. Several tinies after paying a, " sweet-william I have had the document returned to me bearing the legend, " Paid with thanks." Now as I had certainly paid the bill with money, the worthy merchant's superscription, seems to approximate to the untruthful, if not to the libellous, for it imputes to me a I degree of meanness and it arrogates to the shopkeeper himself p degree of benevolence of which i trust we are both incapable.— Yours, etc., " Pay. The formula "paid with thanks" is elliptical. Filled out it would _run "Bill , paid, and payment received with thanks." Or the recipient may have been intending you a compliment, perhaps undeserved. For, be it remembered, purchase and sale is an exchange of services. Eaoh party I to the transaction gets what he wants, both are benefited. But if you, the buyer, obtain immediate use of the commodity I but do not make immediate payment of its equivalent, it is you, the buyer, who chiefly owe thanks. " See it ? Possibly not ; few people do. The tradesman who expects i payment of his little account is always in the wrong. Hence, when receiving payment, his feelings overcome him; it is more than he was entitJed to expect, and in confusion he writes " Paid with thanks." The American backwoods preacher who passed out his hat and received it again, empty as it went, remarked piously that he was thankful to get his hat back from such a crowd. Not seldom the creditor who " receipts " a bill is similarly thankful for small mercies. \ Cnrcs. We have authority for the statement that Cr J. Loudon and Cr J. Gore will be candidates for the city mayoralty. Mr W. J. Morrell, M.A., the new • ictor of the Otago Boys' High. School, arrived in Dunedin on the 10th inst. A very sudden death occurred on the 12th on board the schooner Jessie IJliceol, at present lying at the Dunedin wharf. Captain Sundberg, the master of the vessel, had been ailing Tor 6omo days, although be had been going about his duties as usual — as a matter of fact, he was in the city on Thursday afternoon,— but shortly* after 1 a.m. on Friday he took a serious turn, and expired before medical aid could be summoned. Our special correspondent at Patearoa vrt r€S : _«• The two-year-old son of Mr D. C. Stewart, of Patearoa, was acci1 dentally drowned to-day in a bath in which there was only 4in of water." A largely-attended meeting of earlysettlers, convened by Mr Thomas Alloock, representative of Otago Early Settlers' Association, was held at Waikouaiti on Wednesday, 10th, to make arrangement* ; for celebrating the sixty-seventh anniver- | sary. The meeting was most enthusiastic, j and it was decided to hold the celebration 'on Wednesday, January 30. This anticipates the date of the first arrival of settlers, which was on the 16th of March, 1840, but is necessary on account of the exigencies of harvest. The meetings hitherto held have been, when not marred by the weather, most successful and enjoyable, and as this is the seventh year of celebration it may be taken for granted that the experience gained will assuredly cause this gathering to reach a very high standard. Excursion rates are kindly granted by the railway authorities; tickets for return between Dunedin and Oamaru, including all intervening stations, will be issued on the 29th and 30th of January, a\ailable for return until February 7. As proof of the heat in Central Otago, we are informed that some red clover sown on a Friday in prepared ground and well irrigated was through the surface on the following Sunday. During la-.t week 30 patients were admitted to the Dunedin Hospital, and 28 discharged. There were three deaths in th# institution— namely, Thomas Ritchie, William Brownie, and Annie Cockburn. The number remaining in the. Hospital at the close of the week was 113. "Do the Maori people seem to be increasing?" was a. question put by a press interviewer to the Chief Justice on hia arrival at Rotorua on Friday. Sir Robert replied : " I cannot understand our last census. Ether the previous censuses were wrong, or t\\h census is somehow inaccurate. Wherever I go in Native districts the Natives seem hardly half what they were 20 or 25 years ago. The Maoris at Tokaanu are not, 1 should think, half the number the} were, foi example, in 1885—22 years ago. And they do not seem to engage tn farming operations a*, they did then. Some of thorn, I understand, have sold timber o» their land-, and this is giving them a prefecut revenue, and has had the effect of making them cease to live an industrious life. I was told that the Maoris used to have .sheep running near Tokaanu, but that the high price of sheep induced them to part with their flocks, and now there is nm stock on their lands, which are becoming overgrown with manuka and fgrfti"-