PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 4039, 11 August 1931, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

The Chief Justice, Sir Oracle at Delphi, has been provoked to suggest that his lesser brethren, magistrates and justices, should prohibit bookmaking bj’ the imposition of more repressive penalties, —no more mere pecuniary oblations to the public purse. Who knows? The subordinate judges may prove deaf to the admonition. Apart from this, at trial,. common juries seem always reluctant to convict The explanation of this straining after the quality of mercy is not far to seek. The very members of the panel may still have to collect a handsome dividend from the prisoner within the dock, debitum in presenti solvendum in futuro. There is no feeling of com plicity or of compounding a felony lurking in the breast of the juror. Mr St. John Ervine views these minions of the turf from a different angle again. Their association for him has a purely literary flavour—a bookish rather than a bookieish one. The first grown-up books I read ■were lent to me by a bookie to whom I used to say, “Ha, you!” when I passed him, idling, ns I imagined, at

the corner of a street. The first was called “The Silence of Dean Maitland,” and the second was called “ Oliver Twist.” I read them eagerly, and was initiated into the great world of letters. And by a bookie, too! When I read in the newspapers of some unfortunate commission agent, as the bookies have to call themselves, being chivied into the courts for taking bets in places that are not places withiu the’ meaning of some Act or other, I feel ashamed of the laws that harass decent men who happen to be uninfluential and poor. That is due to my sense ot gratitude to that bookie, who, I dare say, died long ago.

When distinguished visitors touch at our shores, civic authorities should proffer fitting 'honours. According to the theory of Pythagoras, Princess Flipperl ing. scion of the house of Phoca and daughter of Proteus, should have been recognised as no common seal. Un heralded and unpretending, she entered the cloaca maxima of the city, but, not finding this ambulatory to her liking, she submitted to her captors. The Mayor, councillors, and burgesses should have bestirred themselves and con sidered her position as granddaughter of King Neptune. The chief magistrate, being an expert in sealskins and furs, would, no doubt, have had something to say en rapport with the occasion. The Princess could have been given the freedom of the city and of the harbour and presented with an illuminated address bearing the imprint of her inanimate cousin the borough seal. Greater to do has been made over less worthy visitors. The Princess, however, comported herself with fitting dignity, looked a minor royalty, said nothing, but looked pleased and bright, and her dress furs garbed her form to perfection. Indeed, the lady typistes of the municipal offices were justifiably jealous. If her entrance to the city was inglorious, her exit was ignominious, escorted by corporation employees in mercenary tumbril. She speedily cast the dust of our streets off her and headed towards Cape Saunders, and at Seal Point that night there was a delighted mamma and family circle to welcome the prodigal, and the reunion was sealed with amphibian endearments. Nothing was said of the queer reception at Dunedin.

Our Scottish householder, who has sworn eternal lealty to his plate of oat parritch of a morning, after disposing of his golden glory and proceeding to rasher of bacon and eggs, stirring meditatively his cup of tea, may not entertain further pleasing thoughts anent a free breakfast. Bohea is to be taxed by the Prime Minister, along with its concomitant sugar, and that notwithstand ing the precedent of the loss of the American colonies by a like tariff and the fall of many a Ministry beside. One is consoled with the thought that if tea drinking procures indigestion, the community health will improve with the imposition. In the old days in England tea was sold at so much the gallon, so why should we not have forthwith a tea brewery?—as safe an investment as beer, and stocks would be watered in a species of harmonic progression. There are different ways of making the beverage, the Russian'way, the hike warm water method, and the way of the Irish peasant. In the last, a quantity is thrown into the pot on the fire in the cabin in the morning, and there it stands simmering all day long, that those who want it may help themselves. Would this compound equal the vigorous charms of poteen?

Northern friends, conscious of some few degrees Fahrenheit, mere skiff of snow and smatter of rain, in their favour not infrequently deride the fancied rigours of Murihiku. The deni zens of Otago, to the Wellingtonian—who might suitably adopt /Folus as his tutelary deity, wind bags and all—are immured in a prison of glacial sleet and hail; we are the Hyberborei, enclosed in Scythian wastes and Rhiphaean snows. And to the Aucklander, we are represented no doubt as veritable troglo dytes. This tramontane condescension is only natural. The Latins and Greeks viewed with the same shivering revulsion the peoples of their north:— Tails Hyperboreo septem subjecta trloni Gens effrena virum Ripaeo tunditur Euro, Et pecudum fulvis velatur corpora saetls. One regrets then that higher latitude and broader acre lead the Mayor of Dunedin to speak with a show of disparagement of Southland: — “ You will have noticed in the ■ papers messages from the little county of Southland (some people take it to be a province) about Southland being under snow, particular reference being made to Queenstown. As far as I know, Queenstown is still one of our own resorts,” said the Mayor (Mr Black). “Going into Southland is like going out of a palace into a cottage. Southland is a nice place, and we love it. but as soon as it comes poaching on our reserves we say: ‘Hands off!”’ For most intents and purposes the distinction is in limbo. Province or countv. what matters it? Our southern neigh hours once rejoiced in a separate pro vincial entity, but returned to the sure and safe fold of Otago before inanv moons had passed. Palace and cottage, province and county—there is small likeness here.

Knox Church is, it seems, to have a new organ. Our Presbyterian fathers were resolutely opposed to instrumental music in the kirk—tuning fork and precentor maybe, but no kist o’ whistles. It was Pope Valerian who first introduced the organ into church music in the year 666 a.d. Thereafter organs were installed in the principal churches on the Continent and skilled builders sent to England to fit up organ and carved loft. Nearly all these were ruthlessly’ demolished’by th e iconoclasts. Puritan and Presbyterian. Nothing sublunary seems to have changed so much as opinion regarding appropriate ritual in the musical service of the Church. And given the organ accompaniment to psalm, hymn, and song, we can safely evolve to organ voluntaries from “ Tanqhauser ” or “The Ring,” no one being much the wiser. I do not know the dimensions of the new instru ment for Knox Church, but presume it is but a baby compared with the world’s largest, some 100 feet high and 50 feet wide. The first-met deacon or elder will supply the desired information; they are well-informed men as a rule when statistics as to their own kirk are in question.' No doubt they, to a man, know the height of their spire that soars above the level of George street.

A correspondent sends a storv of Tennyson to cap the one that recently appeared in this column. At a function near his country house at Aidworth, there was a young lady, the dream of whose romantic sou! was to be introduced to Tennyson. Her heart’s desire was granted to her, and they sat down side by side on a garden seat. Dead silence fell; she was far too rapt and reverent and overpowered to- speak, and he had nothing to say. Suddenly he found something to say, and he ’ pronounced these appalling’words: “Your

stays creak.” Nearly swooning with horror and deeply hurt at this absolutely unfounded assertion, she fled from him without a word. Presently she observed that lie was stalking her; she tripped from one gay group to another, and always the poet followed her, like a b oodhound on her trail; The dream of her soul had turned into a nightmare; certainly he was after her, and who could tell what he would say next? She dodged and she doubled, but she could not shake him off. Then she scurried up a long path, only to find that she had entered a cul-de-sac bordered by cabbages and asparagus and closed at the far end by the potting shed. She fumbled at the latch, intending to hide herself from the dreadful presence, but, it was locked, and now, he closed in on her. “ I beg your pardon,” he said, “ it was my braces.” Civis.