PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3518, 16 August 1921, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Time*.) Football lias reigned and ruled in Dunedin this week, but without any damage to our self-respect. It is true that we gave a civic reception to the South African footballers; but there is nothing in that. Civic receptions are cheap. If the Maori Healer came here he would probably get a civic reception; Dempsey, who knocked out Carpentier, certainly would. There is record of a Dunedin mayor in the olden time who gave a civic reception to a pair of professional sprinters. Of course we would receive with every courtesy visitors from South Africa whose names suggest their kinship with the South African Dutch who fought us so well in the years gone by; —let us hope they are no followers of the would-be rebel, General He^tzog! It was mainly in honour of the South Africans that we gave ourselves a halfholiday. Wool is down and money is tight, but not so tight that we couldn’t take a half-holiday off to see our football amateurs beaten by a team of football experts. Beaten they were, and it was quite to their credit. A win against opponents working together with machinelike accuracy, thanks to long association, would have been less to their credit. There is such a thing as playing a game too well. 'the Australian cricketers in England play their game too well, pursuing a career of triumph with scandalous consistency,—scandalous because it argues misdirection. Perfection in anv form of sport means imperfection in things of greater moment. As in cricket, so in football—whilst lire game is on, football should be played as though football were the chief end of mail; the game over, the player is no longer a footballer ; he resumes the habiliments of civilised human life and is once more a citizen. The difference between expert and amateur is the difference—not always remembered—. between vocation and avocation. Sport as a vocation is best let alone. Nearly allied to sport are amusements generally,—in particular, music and the drama. I am afraid to say the same principle applies,—that in the concert room and on the stage we should dispense with the expert and be content with the amateur. A Gilbert and Sullivan revival is promised us; the thing will be done well, and may I be there to see! Experts only! Hut Gilbert and Sullivan opera has been clone in Dunedin by amateurs; I am not going to say that it was done well; but

we got lots of fun out of it. So also the serious drama. I recall an amateur performance of “Hamlet” on the Dunedin stage;—the Ghost had an Irish accent, and Hamlet, in preparation for his great soliloquy, was thought to have refreshed himself with beer. Talk of amusement ! —what more could we want? To great singers and great actors the world attaches an exaggerated value. Caruso, mein a

groat singer, is more honoured in his death than warrior, priest, or statesman. All Naples turned out to bury him, which is more than Naples would do for pope or king. An Italian singer of long ago had equal distinction, as Horace notes in lines the bare look of which has scared many a schoolboy— Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopolae, Mendici, miniae, baiatrones, hoc genus omne Maestum ac soUieitum est cantoris morte Tigelli No reader of mine need be scared; —there is always a “crib” to fall back upon! Crib or no crib, the meaning is that all the rabble of Rome, its mummers and its mimes, were in mourning for the death of Tigellius the singer. And doubtless they all went to his funeral. We are assisting by anticipation at the obsequies of Caruso.

A discourse by a Baptist minister on card playing (D'aily Times of Tuesday) displays a commendable non-acquaintance with the subject. How should a Baptist minister know anything about card playing ? It would be highly improper. Drawing from a bottomless well of ignorance, the reverend gentleman said that card playing had to do with “admission into society.” From the card table in “society” dishonesty and cheating were inseparable. “The sly wink, tlm suggestive nod, the negation of the head,” Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, in short, supplemented by “the accidental disclosure of a card,” were the methods by which persons of “no retinea scrupies ’ contrived to “promote their interests in the game.” Sixpenny points the preacher did not mention, nor betting ; perhaps being aware that you might bet upon anything, oven upon the length of a sermon. But he did mention that “the card table produced jealousy, contentions, and envy, and led to alienations, bickerings, and strife.” Its popularity in face of these patent evils he left unexplained. Some cue should introduce him to Charles Lamb and “Mrs Battle’s Opinion on Whist.” It would be interesting to see a Baptist minister won to that lady’s enthusiasm for “a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.” Spite of an occasional recrudescence of Puritanism (“recrudescence” is an uglv word, and _ I apologise)—spite (I woulcl say) of this or that pulpit tirade against card playing, dancing, and the like, we may still hold that “the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.” There is no going back to the Quarterly Fast, nor to the agitation against “human hymns and organs,” nor to a Sabbatarianism more than Jewish. The London Times reviews a book entitled “A Hundred Years in the Highlands,” by Mackenzie of Inverewe. At the Free Church yearly communion, “after the service the minister and his wife used to entertain the heritors and elders at an excellent dinner, providing plenty of port and sherry, but warning them not to drink water unless liberally diluted with whisky; for the water, drawn on Saturday, would he unpalatably fiat.” But why drawn on Saturday? It would have been an unpardonable •sin to go to the spring on the Sabbath for a jug of fresh water. Any one guilty of so doing would render himself liable to Church discipline and censure from the Kirk Session. Among the backsliders “fenced” from the yearly communion were “frequenters of concerts and dances.” So was it in the days of out fathers, or at any rate of our grandfathers. We seem to have travelled far since then. And vet —and yet-—if Presbyteries and Kirk Ses-

sions had the’r way, port and sherry would be emptied into the drains, and of whisky to dilute our drinking water, fresh or flat, there would be ne’er a drop. “Brother Ra-stus, do you think you am improving?” asked the negro pastor severely, in a chicken-stealing case. “Yaas,” answered Brother Eastus, “I think I bin done improving,—in spots.” Writing from “down under”—bv which understand South Otago—a Scottish woman enters a passionate protest against the League of Nations as she understands it;— Sir, —They will be going to make us a nation of shopkeepers right enough. What shall we do with “Scots Wha Ilae”? We won’t he allowed to teach the children “A Hundred Pipers,” “Men of Harlech,” or anv of these old tunes that made the Scots “bonnie feehtors.” But no ! they’ll never take the fighting spirit out of the Scot. Then she drops into poetry; And he told us where to seek him— In the thickest of the slain. . . . And a smile was on his visage, For within his dying ear Peeled the joyful note of triumph And the clansmen’s clamorous cheer. So, amici the battle’s thunder, Shot and shell, and scorching flame, In the glory of his manhood Passed the spirit of the Greame. “You may bet your boots”—she continues —“that if the League of Nations is going to menace the Empire the Scots will not be in it.” I make no bets, but I readily believe. Some energetic remarks that follow are to the effect that the Dunedin Presbytery and Professor Pringle had better believe it t-00. England can keep her dearest jewel bright And see her sons like to their sires renown’d, Whose Shakespeare is with deathless Ho-rner crowned, Her freedom, the world; hope, throned in the Light. —From - sonnet by Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate. In Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner” the shooting of the mystic Albatross brings a weird penalty: Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung, says the Mariner. Days grew into weeks before this necklet, by now a pestilence, ceased to adorn him. At length, somehow, the murderer of the bird underwent a change of heart; the hideous tribe of water-snakes that dogged his curse-ridden ship seemed to him a thing of beauty; unawares he even blessed them; That self-same moment I could pray, And from my neck so free Tlr* Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. Perhaps if I could discern beauty in the Bridges lines at the head of this note, and in the last of them discover sense and metre, a similar deliverance might be mine. Last week, after lengthy discussions, I announced a closure; —of Robert Bridges and his sonnet we had reached quantum suff. But no; —my precincts are still haunted by that detestable line— Her freedom, the world; hope, throned in the light. T. Thomson, who is sworn in its defence, will find comfort in a letter given below signed “Student,” under which modest alias a very competent authority conceals himself. 1 regret to note that T. Thomson has a grievance ; —in speaking of him as the writer of “an anti-Civis screed” 1 descended to “personalities.” T. Thomson is a person, and I am a person, though sometimes doubting whether 1 am not an institution; —any exchange of speech between us will necessarily be charged with our respective personalities. If there is offence to his personality in the words “anti-Civis screed” I wijl try next time to think of some other; —and meantime humbly pray that my personality may never have anything worse to answer for. Dear Civis, — I hope you have not really closed the interesting discussion upon Bridges’s sonnet. Even if the suggested reading of “world-hope”—with or without a hyphen—be an error, I think you have forgotten an important point, and Mr Thomson also, in spite of hie recognition of the archaic leanings of our author. The laureate writes Ilia participles in “ed” with an apostrophe when he desires them to read as monosyllables. Take, for instance, “Eros and Psyche” : in the first six stanzas we find “recover’d, unmatch’d, wax’d, uncontrol’d, unspill’d. silver’d, enchain’d,” as also “accomplisht,” which form achieves the same end as “accomplish'd’’ would. The inference is plain that in the sonnet under discussion “throned” is a dissyllable. Accepting the amended reading which makes “world” an epithet, we shall find that the line . wings finely. No expert reader of blank verse, stressing the four words “freedom,” “world,” “throned” (first syllable), and “light” will fail to make music of it, any more than ho will of the first line of “Paradise Lost,” with its three stresses on “Man’s,” “first,” and “fruit”; it is only the inexpert that expect sense, stress, and verse lilt to be everlastingly concurrent, not perceiving that the charm of verso

pure and simple, as distinguished from song, consists precisely in the continual meeting and parting of these physical and mental emphases in delicate “pas de deux.” I am always sorry to find myself in disagreement with you on literary points, and I trust that you will acquit me of aught but a desire to help m a good cause when such occasions come.—l am, etc., Student. Odds and ends, chiefly front the Backblocks : table in country newspaper: Perth, July 22. Reserved judgment was given in a case in which John Simopolis claimed £25 from Henry Scruth, hotelkeeper, the former claiming that he had found a moose in a beer bottle. Defendant stated that it was a physical impossibility. The moose is a beast with horns, halfbrother to the buffalo. The physical impossibility of finding a moose in a beer bottle would be relieved somewhat if tha name of the man who found it, ‘‘John Simopolis” could possibly be Scottish. But the one impossibility is as impossible as the other. —Next, country mayor, enlarging on the popularity of the Springboks: “Already the ladies are calling their babies after them.” Voice from the crowd: “What!—already?” The local paper turns this neatly : “Portion of the Mayor’s remarks was drowned in the roars of laughter which greeted an "unconscious joke regarding the Springboks’ popularity.” —Last (for this time) : From North Otago : ‘lf you want to lose vour appetite the luncheonette at Muttonburv's is the shortest way.” Ominous, or at best ambiguous. Like—'“Try our Safety Razor—new patent. You will hever use another.” Ciyis. —•