HERE AND THERE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7424, 25 November 1893, Page 2

HERE AND THERE.

Prohibition will not be one of the side issues in the Waihemo election. The twa Maos are baith Hielanmen, ye ken.

Hamlet would not have said 11 Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt,” if be bad been in the upper seals of the Theatre circle on Thursday evening. He would have felt it melting too fast.

Poetic license was strained a long way by Charles Dickens when, in one of his stories, he comforted bis hero, lying at the bottom of a pit shaft, with the companionship of a brilliant star shining down upon him the whole night through. Making the sun stand still for an hour or so was a trifle to that. A New Zealand poetess—no leas—stretches her license rather far too when she writes of a New Zealand *■ brook, in which the moon may gaze, and wonder at her semblance sweet.” This is taking too much latitude with the possibilities of our latitude.

Mr Scobie Mackenzie says 90 per cent, of all the olaptrap and humbug in the world belongs to politics.—Soobie’o addresses reduce the percentage required from other politicians to make up the average.

It has been discovered that “ the dignity of labour ” is claptrap and humbug, and that the real dignity lies in collars and cuffs. The latter expresses the faith which guides conduct. Perhaps the later doctrine that cleanliness is not a virtue may lead to a recasting of the moral estimation of “ biled shirts." A return to moleskins and blue jumpers for all hands would make this colony dumb.

The French Academy has decided to reform French spelling. And the same stupid objection is being made that is so regularly offered to the reform of English spelling that a word should, as far as possible, bear witness to its history. What would be thought of people who argued that a threshing machine should show the history of its development, or the street express by its form continually remind us that its original was a wheelbarrow ? The word in use is an instrument. Its history could be safely left to the highclass lexicographer, the user does not care a fig about it.

A Melbourne " eccentric ” in a communication on the way out of the depression worked off some smart sentences. Here are a few of them -Eccentrics and cranks have their uses in the great world’s economy, quite as much as they have in machinery. They give a new direction to the working forces.— Satiety and over culture so tint our lives that, if some of us were put up to auction, we would not accept ourselves as a gift.—The dream of the past was to give happiness to all the world ; the hope of the more practical present is not to give pain.—Man is a strange animal. Directly he is born as a babe he begins to cry j then he grows up and makes other people weep.—At one time Sydney people used to talk about their harbour in a way to make the sea conceited. Let us be careful net to speak so much about our distress as to make poverty proud. Let the man be silent who can help neither with money work, nor practical suggestion —Luxury kills the nation fatter than poverty. Dire necessity has taught Victoria a deep appreciation of this lesson, and she now turns downwards to the land with all its ceaseless promise.