WAIKA TO WHISPERINGS

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 56, 8 October 1881, Page 54

WAIKA TO WHISPERINGS

— Billy was in great form at the concert. He shut his teeth and waded in. — The Mayor is more than ever on the warpath, and is going 1 to make it hot for Fred . — Jimmy sat on the platform near Spurgeon, and drank in.the welling truths first-hand and unadulterated. — William Lee Bees is spoken of as a probable candidate for either Waikato or Waipa. Let him come. We will cary him shoiilder high — to shout as they did, the boys at Te Awamntu. — Father O'Q-ara, the popular Roman Catholic Priest, more power to him, plays cricket like an angel, and, I am told, intends to assist in some of the matches. — It is to be hoped the farmer near Cambridge, whose wife has just presented him with the second pair of twins in succession, is the same who had this year Hi per cent, of lambs in his flock. — A gentleman named Mr Scandalous has been making the young bloods of Hamilton merry with his presence the last few days. — The conductor of our concerts should really give up that practice of tapping the music stand with his baton. If my gallant friend discovers any harmony in it, no one else can. — Ned was nearly done out of his block of land " in the interior " the other day, his kind friend over the road having fetched in a few additional owners (native), which Edward, with great chagrin, had to buy out. The sly covies didn't get anything by it themselves, and why on earth they did it, no one can understand, except Ned perhaps. — Richard Swiveller is back again among the haunts of his happy and guileless youth, where, in the days that are gone, he pulled daisies and made pretty, but alas fragile, chains of the stems of the dandelion — that is to say Dick (dear old boy, who doesn't love him) is in Cambridge again. He has pitched his camp down by the banks of the river, where he does most all things at fresco. —The Fancy Dress Ball, on the 20th, will not be numerously attended, as the youtful Mr Spurgeon says it is sinful to go to such places. We cnuuot, he put it, ask the Almighty to accompany us, and so we ought not to go. Sad, isn't it? I wonder whether the 2>reaeher asked the Loi'd to go with him into Tre wheeler's shop, in Hamilton, and see thnt he didn't consume more buns and coilee than usually falls to the share of one man ! - — -The concert at Hamilton on Thursday was a grand success, contrary to the expectation of many people who supposed the late unpleasantness which arose had put a damper on the general spirits of the amateurs. But they all sung with verve, and the encores were loud and frequent. Special praise ought to be awarded the instrumental selections, which were bright and sparkling bits of music. Mrs Dawson gave a beautiful rendering of " Jessie'd Dream,' ' and Miss Kate Hunt sang "The Lover and the Bird" with sweet pathos. Both were encored as well as many others on the programme. The concert came to a close at about 10. 40 p.m., the audience, though kept so late, going away thoroughly delighted. ■ — A correspondent at Te Awanmtu sends me the following : — It is a work of no small difficulty in a hole-and-corner Athens of New Zealand, like this for instance, for any quiet aud unassuming individual (not one of the noble army of Bumbles) to existat all, except on the kind sufferance and patronage of that 'Ackney and Hislington bred class of haristocrats. Take my own work of posting my morning letter yesterday as a specimen of what we have to submit to in this .long-suffering and overclerked country. With its usual pleasing official manner of doing everything to disoblige the public that pays it its wages, the Post-office opens its doors for the sale of stamps five minutes after the morning mail bags are closed, and, as no storekeeper in the town naturally will be bothered by doing t'ae work of the paid official, not a stamp is obtainable in the town. Pleasingly ignorant of these little omcial arrangements, for the better noii-perforniance of duties, I am knocking at the Jack-in-the-box contrivance, in which official dignity loves to frame itself. As no answer is vouchsafed, and I hear the sound of Bumble within disporting in the bosom of his family, I knock a little louder, ana am greeted with derisive laughter and stentorian shouts of " Why don't yer knock a little louder?" On my complying blandly with the request, the Jack-in-the-box contrivance flies up with a sudden spring, and a red head adorned with pink eyes, expressing furious auger with an unenlightened inferior and einbitterinent of feeling with regard to the ten per cent, reduction of salaries, springs into the frame work. On my presenting four penn'orth of coppers, received from my redhaired friend in change the day before, as payment for two stamps, they are flung back at my head, and on to the floor, or anywhere else, with the remark: "We don't take nothink o' that kind." On looking at them I see they are decorated with the intelligent countenance of Mr Samuel Cooinbes, or some equally worthy Auckland luminary; and I humbly offer a shilling. " We hain't obliged to oblige you fellers with no change at hall, and another morning I shall keep yer hup to the mark," says Red-head, spitefully. " No," said I, "I suppose, with the amount of salary they pay you,it is hopeless to look for a decent or civil servant in any of the small official departments ; still I should fancy you would find it an advantage in many ways to be as obliging as you can to the public without fn tally injuring your constitution." Red-head glared evilly through his box, and indulged in a volley of abuse about " Gettin' out o' bed wrong side fust," and a variety of similar light and brilliant remarks, interspersed with free use of the word " bloody," so dear to the 'Ackney and Hislington mind ; and just then a member of the Refuge for Destitute Loafers — the Constabulary — well-known for his perfection in all the accomplishments of that high class of civil servants, comes swaggering in with his mail bags. Being in his usual state of early morning inebriety, and seeing his beloved " pal " in altercation with one of the inferior public, he shoulders that member of socieoy forcibly, and with a torrent of blackguard abuse, to the further side of the office. Upon protesting against this treatment, and threatening to complain to his officers, he tells me I am a b y liar, and that he will knock me down. I signify the pleasure it will afford me to witness such a display of his powers, and tell him that if his officers allow such a drunken blackguard to swagger about threatening the civilians I will seek for protection at the Police Court. The string of foul-mouthed abuse to which I am subjected for the next ten minutes by the two Bumbles, and the carefully got-up assortment of lies spread about with reference to me with the various paltry, though carefully conned and hatched, systems of annoyance devised by the gentlemen, would puzzle anyone with less experience of, and contempt for, the inferior officials of New Zealand — the loafing blackguards — trying vulgar insolence as a means of extortion where abject fawning fails to bring in tips. I have had to deal with these gentleman before, and had a police official lodge a false charge against me before now for the express purpose of trying to frighten me to compoimd the matter with him, so that I fully appreciate the measure of their honour and the value of their services, and will always oblige them whenever I have the opportunity with the expression of my full respect for them.