THE FREETFUL PORCUPINE

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 750, 13 May 1893, Page 5

THE FREETFUL PORCUPINE

A Quill for Everyone.

The half-holiday, question has been taken up by the ' senior member.' That settles it.

The survey staff has finished the survey of the private silver mines at the Barrier. Perhaps they will have time now to attend to the arrears of public work.

The little West Coast town of Reefton has the electric light for private usfe. And yet Auckland and the other larger towns of New Zealand are contented to jog along contentedly behind Reefton.

The journalists of New Zealand are agitating for a charter recognising journalism legally as a profession, and giving those engaged in it the same professional status as is enjoyed by lawyers and doctors. An Act securing this advantage. to pressmen was passed in England several years ago.

It is very wrong that the right of caning a pupil in our public schools should be exercised by anyone but the head master, and it is pleasing to find that Mr H. Wilding is moving in this direction. He holds that corporal punishment should be inflicted only by the head teacher, or, if necessary, by an assistant in his presence.

It seems that the sudden suspension of the Auckland Permanent Building Society was quite unexpected to the staff employed in the office — so Budden, indeed, that the announcement came quite as a shock to them. That this was so is conclusively shown by the fact that Mr Harker, who has been in the service of the company for many years, deposited £500 with the society only three or four days before the notice of suspension was sent out.

The local architects are naturally very much chagrined to find that tbe plans for the palatial new offices to be erected by the Auckland Herald proprietary have been prepared by a Sydney man. Were there no architects in Auckland capable of undertakng this work ? It looks very much as if Messrs Wilsonß and Horton thought so, at all events. The snub is all the more severe in view of the fact that the wealth which has enabled the firm to venture upon the construction of these new buildings has been to some extent derived from the constant and liberal patronage of the very men who are now so Bhabbily passed over.

The difficulty of preventing frauds upon charitable agencies by wholly worthless and designing people is illustrated by a capital story told by Pastor Birch. It relates to the mission with which he was associated m Birmingham. One day, he says, a woman came crying to the mission offices, declaring that her husband had died and that she had not the means to enable her to bury him, besides which she and her family were starving. She seemed sincere enough, and evidently was in great distress, but it is a first principle with these agencies to investigate every application for relief and prove whether it is genuine before help is given. In this case, the lady visitor accompanied the poor woman to her home, and there sure enough in the only bed-room of the wretched tenement was the body of the defunct father laid out in state. The lady visitor gazed pityingly at the pinched features of the departed mainstay of the family, and having comforted and counselled the lone widow, gave her a sovereign and took her departure, promising to call again. Ere she had gone fifty yards, however, she remembered she had forgotten her umbrella, and at onoe returned for it. She opened the door quietly, and lo ! and behold, there was the corpse sitting up in the bed, tossing the golden coin high in the air, while the lone widow, with radiant face, was olutohing frantically at it.

The prevalence of measles just now suggests that it is a long time since the ' measles and jealousy ' verdict has had a turn at suicide inquests.

A gentleman who visited Waitapu, the other day. asked a Maori how long the Maori Parliament was going to last. The native grinned as he replied : « Till the tucker' a gone I 1

The senior member is very wrathful because lie was not called to a seat in the Cabinet during the re-construction last week. But, hush ! whisper : Shera is being reserved for greater things. He is to be our fir3t elective Governor. %

One of the latest items from "Wellington is that Sir George Grey has Bent his cordial good wishes to the Government. But then there is a great deal of difference between 1 - Sir George Grey's oordial good wishes and his cordial support. Poor Tol6 !

It is the poor man who is mercilessly dealt with when he becomes bankrupt. Just fancy a lawyer appearing at the Supreme Court to ask that one Murphy, a working miner, with 34s a week on which to support a wife and five children, should be compelled to put aside part of his earnings towards the payment of his debts. No wonder he withdrew the summons. And yet wealthy men are whitewashed for a payment of twopence in the pound, and then continue to be wealthy.

One melancholy fact in connection with the drifting away of Mr Webster's beautiful yacht, Wanderer, from her moorings at Ponsonby, and her wrecking during the gale, was that several steamer and cutter hands at Devonport saw her drifting past the jetty there and would not bother themselves either to go off and see to her safety or to apprise her owner of her danger. One sordid customer was remonstrated with concerning his laziness, and he growled out : ' Well, if I had gone, how do I know I would have b<?en paid.' Comment would be superfluous.

Automatic baby-rocker, lock, stock and barrel, (patent rights, that is) been sold to aMr Hurst. Consideration : £800. Buyer going Home to introduce the affair to stylish mammas. Hurst has got a bargain I Why, McGlashan offered a couple of thousand for the patent, on behalf of the syndicate he belonged to. But the offer was declined. Baby-rockers thought they could do better so refused. Now they wish they hadn't. They might have done worse perhap3 than leave the invention in the experienced hands of Mr McGlashan who would, in any case, have run the rocker for all it was worth.

Our local dudes are slowly recovering from the burst of extravagance into which they were betrayed by the Gaiety girls. But, alas, some oi them cannot recover, and three or four of them have taken a quiet and maybe reluctant leave of our fair city. One local warehouse laments the loss of its only noble-man. He had mortgaged his income to the extent of £100 for little luxuries for himself and the girls, and high collars and bouquets, and what not, and being only an invoice clerk — well, as the immortal Shera says, the strain was too much. The young man is now supposed to be visiting his cousins in some serener clime, where the ' dunner ' ceases from troubling, and the penny dude may be at rest.

There are by far too many jacks-in-office in Auckland. While heads of departments in our public offices are almost always courteous and obliging, underlings, as a rule, put on a most objectionable amount of side, and totally overlook the fact that they are public servants, whose duty it is to treat the public with a reasonable amount of civility and respect. A gentleman who had occasion to visit the Customs last week paid over to the clerk who attended to him a George 111 shilling, worn smooth on one side, but showing the king's head on the other almost as plainly as it ever did. The coin was curtly refused. The gentleman, who had been patiently awaiting his turn, dreaded very naturally being denied the opportunity of passing his entries that day, and managed with some trouble to, substitute a sixpence and six coppers for the rejected shilling. ' I oan't take coppers,' snapped the clerk. ' ' You will refuse them at your own risk,' replied the gentleman, ' copper is a legal tender. Will you take the pence or leave them alone ?' Then it dawned on that official that he bad got hold of the wrong end of the stick, and he made no farther fuss. Bat, really, it is about time that this sort of thing received a sharp oheok.

Mixed metaphor : — ' Zamiel ' tells the readers of. his • Kandom Shots ' that it would take a teen hand to get to windward of Mr Seddon. The idea of a keen hand going to windward is decidedly original:

There is at last a prospect of friendly relations between the two local arc societies. Seeing that . there are scarcely enough artists in Auckland to constitute one good society, it is to be hoped the union will be consummated.

Here is an extract from Wanganui Stage 'In Memoriam ' lines on Ballance : —

' Never no more will he stand as before

To converse with the men of the nation.' The style seems familiar. Could the writer have been ? But no matter !

X>nce more the cable announces the betrothal of Prince ' Georgy ' and .the PrinceßS May, and once more the Royal pa's and ma's, all round, are receiving the congratulations of all sorts of people. It is to be hoped the young couple will be happy, although it is hinted that had they been as free to choose as are young persons in a less exalted sphere, they would not have selected each other as • life-partners,' to use the phrase rendered locally famous by the late lamented Hannaford. Which seems to imply that being a Royal Highness is not without its little drawbacks.

Servantgalism has been supplying the Star with ' copy' lately. Editor Leys led off with a leader. Now, the letters are pouring in. Dr. JBakewell's missive in Monday's paper was characteristic. It was bold. In it, the doctor seized the bull by the horns, and sought to solve the servant girl difficulty in one act. ' Let the girls have their eveningß free.' Such was the gist of his letter. ' What concern,' he asks, 'have the employers with what a servant may do with herself from 7 p.m. till 7 the next morning ? Of course Mrs Grundy will lift up her eyes in holy horror.' Why of course she will! Not only that. She will have a fit, and it will require .smelling-salts and burned feathers to bring her to. But why in the name of humanity should we have an eight hour law for factory girls and an eighteen hour law for domestic servants ?

Inspector Hickson must be a man of some consequence, for he does not even condescend to do such a little thing for himself as to carry home his own copy of the Star. Every afternoon, at a certain hour, it is the duty of a constable to proceed to the Inspector's residence in the suburbs with that penny copy of the Star. It matters not what police duty demands the constable's attention, it must wait. But why on earth can the Inspector not take his Star home in his pocket like other men ? Or why can he not have it left at his house ? Just imagine, there are only three constables at the most on town duty every afternoon, and one of them must go to the Inspector's house with the Star, even though the Inspector is going homewards in the very same tramoar. Utter rot. Nor is Auckland an exception. The same thing is done in every large town in the colony. And such is the state of things that exists uader the administration of Commissioner Hume.

It was on the recent passage of the Manapouri from Sydney. Sunday evening had arrived, and everyone considered it desirable that the occasion should be improved by divine service. Pastor Birch was on board, but he was a martyr to the miseries of mal-de-nwr, and there was little likelihood that he would be able to officiate. But nobody else could be found to conduct the service, and so the worthy pastor yielded at last to the persuasions of the majority, believing that id was his duty to subordinate the infirmities of his own flesh to the spiritual infirmities of those around him. The service commenced very mcely, but ere it was half way through anyone could see by the woebegone face of the pastor that the stifling atmosphere of the saloon was exercising its effect upon him. At last the crisis came. Pastor Birch commenced in a mournful voice to repeat the Lord's Prayer. He got on nicely with it till he came to the words : ' Give us this day our daily bread.' But the thought of bread at such a time was too much for him. His countenance became ' sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,' he gasped, coughed, and then with a look of abject misery exclaimed—' I am so sorry, my friends ; but I have forgotten the rest ; and, oh ! I am so sick. And he fled.' For once, the infirmity of the flesh had prevailed. .