PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3869, 8 May 1928, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Otago Daily Times.) For Bible readers the land of Egypt is sometimes the land of Mizraim, and sometimes the land of Ham, the father of Mizraim. This Ham, a son of Noah, had some share in the scandal * in Noah’s family, and some share in the consequent curse. Though always a land of wondeia, Egypt has nothing to boast of in this remote and questionable ancestry, nor to-day may Egypt be proud of her ungrateful attitude towards her best friend. Said England unto Pharaoh, “ I must make a man of you That will stand upon his feet and play the game ; That will Maxim his oppressor as a Christian ought to do ” ; And she sent old Pharaoh Sergeant What’s-his-name. It was not a Duke, nor Earl, nor yet a Viscount— It was not a big brass general that came ; ‘But a man in khaki kit who could handle men a bit. With his bedding labelled Sergeant Vihat’s-his-name. Thus did England—or the British, we had better say—rescue the Egyptian people from their worst enemy—themselves. Left again to themselves and to President Wilson’s “ eelf-determination ’’

—blessed word ! —they would relapse into a Bedlamite succession of caliphs, pashas, and viziers out of the Arabian Nights.

Take an incident or two—fact not fiction —showing things as they were before the advent of Sergeant What’s-his. name. His Khedivial Highness sends with Oriental compliments a kindly message to one of his chief officials:—“ Life, (J my friend, is uuceitain. We must all be prepared to meet our death at any moment.” The recipient understands, asks only for time to say his prayers, drinks the cup of poisoned coffee offered him, and the next day is reported dead of apoplexy. On the Nile, the steam launch of the same Khedivial Highness runs upon a shallow. “ Give the reis (steersman) a bundled blows with the courbash ” he orders. Hie Nile is low. and presently the mishap, is repeated—the boat sticks in the mud. “ Give him two hundred,” his Highness roars; whereupon the reis jumps overboard, but is not allowed to drown; a boat is put off and the man is brought on board again to be catechised fry his Highness. Why did he jump overboard 1 Because he preferred drowning to another flogging. “ Fool,’’ exclaims his Highness, “ when I said two hundred I did not mean lashes but sovereigns.” and—believe it who will—forthwith hands over the money in a bag. Quite in the manner of the Caliph Haroun Alraschid. But quite in the manner of a lunatic at large it was that the same Khedivial Highness strewed.-a kilometre of road with gunpowder a foot deep and marched through it with lighted pipe, compelling his suite of officials to do the same. The Land 'of Mizraim ! Once, twice, thrice, have I been there, a gaping tourist for whom the Nile, the desert, the pyramids, the Sphinx, the mummies three thousand years old, were enchantments that never palled. But the-finest thing that 1 saw in Cairo was a British regiment marching down the main street, a hard-bitten British colonel riding at the head of it.

Dear “ Civis,” —His Excellency the Governor-General when opening a chrysanthemum show at Auckland said that he had asked his wife what he should say in his formal opening speech, since he knew nothing about chrysanthemums. Her Excellency promptly advised him to tell the truth.—(Laughter.) “So I must confess that I know nothing about them, beyond the frivolous fact that I believe the woid_ ‘ chrysanthemum ’ is the only one in the English language for which there is no rhyme.” Sir Charles evidently forgets his Punch: — First to St. Paul's, where the choir a nice anthem hums, - Then to the Gardens to see the chrysanthemums. Certes, the rime appeared r. number of years ago! A Governor-General opening a flower show may be as frivolous as he pleases, and can’t go wrong. He will promote the gaiety of the occasion, and may even protest (to applause) that he doesn’t know a dock from a daffodil. With thanks for the Punch quotation I permit my correspondent to continue: — While I write, may I venture the ?uestion, Why, O why did you add resh life to tbe strange notion that “ East is East, and West is West ” is Kipling’s maxim, when palpably his maxim is But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth. This rebuke from a .contributor that I have reason to esteem! I rub my eyes. We have not as yet a Kipling concordance; but I open at random the lumpy volume (730 pages) “ Rudyard Kipling’s Verse, Inclusive Edition,” when 10, first shot, “ The Ballad of East and West ” — Oh, East is East and West Is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great judgment seat. Then follow the lines quoted above. The couplet impeached by my correspondent is Kipling all over, and Kipling would not; be ashamed of it. Whereas, strange to say, he was ashamed of his “ Recessional.” But that is another story.

The story 'is authentic and has often peen told, possibly in this column, but is forgotten. I may bring it in here : The London Times invited Kipling to write a poem on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Tubilee. Everybody was writing “ Jubilee verses.” and the note of national pride, dominant at that moment, offended Kipling’s ear. He would write no Jubilee sonnet 1 I'he editor of The Times visited Kipling in quest of the required verses. The poet picked out of his wastepaper basket a crumpled sheet, and offered it to his visitor, saving, Here are some verses, if you think are worth printing.” It was the “ Recessional.” “ The tumult and the shouting dies The captains and the kings depart; Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, A humble and a contrite heart.” The editor knew a good thing when he saw it. Carrying off the verses, he them, afterwards sending Kipling a generous cheque. Which cheque— so the story goes—Kipling politely returned. The Recessional was Kipling’s “ ugly duckling destined to become a swan? There are other ugly ducklings that nevei change a feather. For example, the spiteful epigram upon Lord Curzon:-— My name is George Nathaniel Curzon I am a most superior person ; My check is pink, my hair is sleek, I dine at Blenheim once a week. Spring Rice, the author of this mdy duckling, lived to repent it. Curzon’s own comment was: “ I am not superior. lam not vain. lam not arrogant. I am miserable.” Suffering from an incurable curvature of the spine which compelled him to wear a steel cage, physically miserable he well might be. Take a prose example. Algernon Charles Swinburne, to whom we owe a vastitude of melodious verse, could be angry in prose with the anger of a spitting cat. In his essay on Charles Dickens his ecstasy of adoration in fanatical, and woe to any who ventured to find the minutest flaw in Dickens’s splendour. George Henry Lewes permitted himself to make the perfectly sound criticism that Dickens exaggerates, upon which Swinburne, without any reasoned refutation, merely called him a chattering dunce, a malignant booby, a smirking scribbler, a consummate quack, and the ugliest of all human beings except “his consort George Shocking! And there is no reason to think that Swinburne ever repented. Still hoping for a conversion, my Pussyfoot friends continue their pious efforts. This week, appeals and arguments (now in the waste paper basket) would fill a column. By way of reciprocity and in token of good will, I present my solicitous friends with an extract or two from Andre Siegfried’s “ America Comes of Age,” a volume of 360 pages, the latest and most authoritative study of America in its economic and psychological aspects. Spite of his German-looking name, Andre Siegfried is French, a professor in the Eeole Libre des Sciences Politiques of Paris. He has published hooks on Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand—the lastnamed in collaboration with our own Downie Stewart. Treating of America, he naturally has a chapter on the liquor laws. In certain influential classes of society, notably among the rich Protestants of the East, the Funda-

mentalists of the South, and especially among the farming districts and small towns of the West, public opinion favours anti-alcoholic measures of the most drastic character. I he West of to-day, he explains, “is anything but a fantastic land, of adventurous pioneers. Instead it is populated by respectable bourgeois, who are morally timid, who think like their neighbours, never miss church, go to bed early, and i. short are as boring as the Garde Nationale of Louis Philippe! ” —a comparison wasted upon the English reader. He continues: “They are first cousins to the .English Pharisees of the Victorian era; and in America at the present time nothing can be done against them or without them. They want prohibition to cleanse public morals, and wherever they are numerous they have succeeded.” This fine unity does not exist in the 6 opposite camp. Hostility to prohibition is found above all in the cities, first in the upper strata of society (except for the pillars of the church), then in the middle class in general, and finally among the lower class foreigners. We must bewarfi of the fallacy that all Americans are “ dry ” by conviction; for, if so, how can we explain the extraordinary attraction " that alcohol has for so many of them? In the best clubs and in the smart set, the efforts of the extremists excite only sarcasm and anger, and conversation inevitably drifts back to the Eighteenth Amendment, nine times out of ten to condemn it. Another brief extract, and for this week Pussyfoot may rest in peace. There is nothing astonishing in the serious moral disorder that has been revealed by statistics, especially since ... In Chicago the figures are positively terrifying; arrests for felonies rose from 15.273 in 1920 to 16.516 in 1924, whereas those for misdemeanours rose from 79.’.80 to 239.829. In New York deaths from alcohol, which dropped to a low figure after 1917. have started to rise again. The establishment of Federal prohibition appears to have coincided with a recrudescence of immorality. To say that the new regime caused the present moral relaxation wo Id be unjust; still, it certainly did not prevent it. Dispassionate—as I am myself, fairminded, moderate, and, as the country mayor said, leaning neither to partiality nor impartiality—this French critic commends himself to me. With commendations I pass him on to the propagandists now slumbering in the waste paper basket. When they wake. From Otaraia, wherever that may be, “ An Exhibition Yarn by a Backblocker.” I will condense it for him. Visiting with his the Exhibition Art Gallery, and g he knew “ a ' little more about m, and a little less about sheep and turnips,” he came upon a picture that fixed his attention, “‘the most striking picture in the gallery.” ' The picture was “ Brinhilda and the Elders.” the subject being a redhaired, plump young lady, minus of . thatch, and retreating, or going the wrong wav about, through what appeared to be manuka scrub. She was watched by three old men. From the excited expression in their eyes they might easily be wishing they were thirty years younger or fewer in number. “ Brinhilda and the Elders ” is a I modern transcription or parody of “ Susanna and the Elders,” .an edifying ! Jewish legend to be found in the ! Apochrvpha, but not in the English . Bible published by the British “and I Foreign Bible Society, which is perhaps a pity. But to finish the story: — Seated in front of the painting was an elderly aiple (from the town). The old centleman was telling uie old lady, it was Eve being driven out of the Garden of Eden.” The old lady knew better. She replied: “I'm sure it isn’t Eve because she used to wear fig leaves.” But here the band in the rotunda outside struck up and I came away. Eve and her fig leaves! Banana leaves would have been more expansive. But at that early date fig leaves sewn to- | gether for aprons were perhaps the only resource. Yes, they had no bananas. ; Civis. I