THE FREETFUL PORCUPINE

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 751, 20 May 1893, Page 5

THE FREETFUL PORCUPINE

A Quill for Everyone.

Where on earth is the 'senior member ?'

Very significant. Queensland Minister of Works was defeated by a labour candidate.

Three more banks have gone aloft on the other side. The man with the big overdraft is the only individual who is making money there. He always comes out en top.

The aristocratic suburb of Mount Albert supplies the most recent example of w»maidenly indiscretion and masculine inconstancy. Tbe young man has fled from his responsibilities.

The French papers are making merry over ' the great news ' from Berlin. ' Can any one guess it?' they ask, satirically. Never ! It is that the Kaiser has — turned up the points of his moustache.'

The latest defender of Theosophy is no less a personage than John Abbott. Let us think. Didn't John Abbott used to preach from the Tabernacle pulpit ? Ah, but this is a progressive age.

Cause and effect. Our judicial benches are filled with jellyfish justices and our streets swarm with shameless young blackguards of the larrikin persuasion. One class is largely responsible for the existence of the other.

It is cabled that seven brokers on London Exchange suspended payment owing to the tightness of the money market. Tightness of the money market wouldn't affect some of our brokers very much. They are so used to it that use has gradually become seoond nature.

Borrowing colonies that have been too energetic in raising the wind must eventually reap the proverbial whirlwind. New South Wales has the touch of a tornado in prospect. She is to make provision for the payment of loans amounting to over seven millions falling due within the next six yearß.

The AHerald had a cute little paragraph the other day saying that the tenders for printing the electoral rolls varied considerably between the leading newspaper offices and the smaller jobbing offices. Just so. In other words, the leading newspaper offices formed a ring to corner the work at exorbitant prices, and made the unfortunate little . mistake of omitting to take the smaller jobbing offices into their calculation. The ability to print electoral rolls is not confined to the leading newspaper offices.

He lives out Grafton Road way, and his wife recently left her home to visit some friends in the country. She had no sooner gone than he began to make rather warm advances to the young servant girl. These were indignantly declined. Then he behaved so outrageously to her that she fled from his house and took refuge with her mother, a hard-work-ing woman. Meantime her wages remain unpaid. But the . Dewly-formed society for the protection of women and children got to hear of the case, and has sent the man a private hint. The chances are he'll pay.

The comments of Dr. Giles upon the action of grocer Dawes in going to the police because a child had stolen some biscuits from him were fully justified. How much better it would be in these oases of petty larceny by ohildren to go to the parents of the offender rather than to rush off to'the police, and by giving formal information of the theft virtually compel them to arrest the child. In fact, in this, as in other cases, even after the police discharge the unpleasant duty that is thrust upon them, the informants have an access of sympathy for the juvenile offender and the greatest difficulty is experienced in getting them to appear at Court to state the circumstances of the theft.

The Surrey Hills Debating Society has abolished the totalisator.

Kissing is said to be bad for the complexion. The complexion must suffer very badly in Auokland dnring the pionic season.

Elections are causing some fun in Queensland. Mr Glassey has been twioe defeated. So glassy, you know, that the electors can see through him.

Bulgaria must be a pleasant place to spend a honeymoon in, if we may judge from the faot that they tried to murder Prince Ferdinand on his return with his bride. These emperors and princes seem to have a lively time of it from their faithful subjects.

Is there no limit to the kidecency of the daily papers in their ill-advised endeavours to cram their columns fall of gossip concerning Scott? Even prayers have to be quoted at full-length to vamp out the penny-a-line drivel. Is this not blasphemy ? What are the editors thinking about?

And so the famous Tennyson Smith has abandoned his proposed trip to America, and will not represent New Zealand at the Congress of Good Templars. But was he authorised to do bo ? and, if so, why the ohange of front ? Were the dollars too few ? or is he going to England — that famed country where he can command his own prices for his watery rhetoric ?

The officers of H.M.S. were entertaining their friends with a grand lunch, and in attendance were Borne typical British tars. A young lady wanting some bread, looked behind the chair at one of the fellows in waiting, and asked him to bring what she wanted. But he drew himself up stiff and stern, and to her amazement replied, 'Can't do it, miss ; I'm told off for taters.'

They were a fond young couple out Remuera way, and they loved not wisely but too well. A matrimonial alliance eventually became necessary to the fair fame of one of the youthful lovers, but the other wouldn't because he couldn't. However, the maiden's father furnished a dove-cot for them, and there being no help for it, the young Adonis ' faoed the music* — that is, the wedding march. Even now, though -the couple are. one in worldly estate, they are said to be not by any means unanimous in either heart or mind.

About thirty years ago, a widow lady residing in Parnell (a wild kind of a place in those days) had the misfortune to drop her purse containing eight onepound notes. The loss was advertised in the local dailies and given every publicity possible, but the owner never set eyes on those notes again. But of course tbe purse v. as found. The lady to whom it belonged is dead now, but a member of the family has, after all these years, traced the notes. They were picked up by a wellknown suburban resident, who must, one would think, have seen their loss advertised. This man, welljjo-do' then, and extremely well-to-do now, was billed the other day for the £8, together with compound interest. It made a nice little sum altogether, something over £70. Did he pay' up ? Oh, no 1 He didn't give himself away like that. But the funny part of the story is that although he didn't pay he didn't repudiate the debt !

The warmth of "Waikato hospitality is almost proverbial, but occasionally it becomes a trifle too warm, if we may judge by the experiences of Mr Creamer, of the Colonial Mutual, who is in town after a trip through the Waikato. He was benighted in the neighbourhood of the ' Woodlands ' estate, and, having called at the house, was invited hy the housekeeper to sit down in the dining room till Mr Gordon (the manager) came in. He did so, and he says he won't forget his reception. His description of it is very funny. The manager, having poured out and drunk a glass of whisky, opened the ball with the curt question, ' Who are you and what do you want?' Creamer explained, and to his mortification was told that none of his sort was wanted about the place. These insurance agents had a trick of making for the plaoe for the purpose of getting cheap lodgings, and two of them had been driven out of the paddock with a stockwhip before now. Creamer questioned the courage of either his augudt interrogator or anyone else to use a stockwhip on him, but he took his departure. It was fourteen miles to the. nearest place of accommodation, but, fatigued though he was, he preferred fourteen miles in the saddle to any further test of the hospitality of Woodlands.

It came out at the inquest on the hospital porter last week that he had received ' a shilling a week ' as wages. A shilling a week ? What 1 all at onoe ? A Chinaman advertises his business for Bale in Monday's Star. Says he wishes to leave for ' a warmer climate.' Hem ! How about that Chinese mission ?

The bravest are not always the tenderest, as the poet sings. There is a red game rooster, for instance ; he will fight a bird double his size, but he outs up tough in a chicken pie.

Society for the Protection . of Women and Children is investigating a number of sensational cases. The first prosecutions are expected to eventuate very shortly. They will probably give people something to talk about.

An interesting marriage eventu--ated on Tuesday. It was that of a lopal boniface and a blushing young thing, rather more youthful, we understand, than the bridegroom's daughter by his first wife. May they live happily ever after.

Local dudes (penny paper collar variety) appreciate the City Hall sixpenny pops which enable them to give the girls a treat at a small oash outlay. At the last concert we noticed those well-known masherß— but, no, we won't give them Q-w&y—this time.

' Three charcoal geese ' advertised for sale in Monday's Star. And we notice tbat ' a circular man ' is wanted for a Southern sawmill. A circular man, we presume, meanß a good all round man? Like Rosa Dartle, we only ask for information.

Designs to be invited for a statue to John Ballance, and our only Steele says if the competition is a general one he is going to have ' a big go in for the honour of Auokland.' This is indeed gratifying. Auckland is touched. If she is not ahe ought to" be. Honour of Auckland, eh ?. Of course, ' the pooket of Steele ' is no consideration in the matter.

Further information that has reached us concerning the story of the Queen-street tradesman and ohe of his female employees with whom he was on terms of too great intimacy shows that the girl herself was not the paragon of virtue she was represented to be. Our paragraph was in error in saying that the son of the tradesman gave information to his mother. It was one of the girls engaged in the workroom who gave information.

We fully concur in Dr. Giles' decision in the case against Van Breda, a shirtmaker, for not paying his girls for the holiday on Good Friday and Easter Monday. "Van Breda sent his girls away from Thursday till Tuesday, and then set up the v defence that they were only engaged from day to day, and that tbey were really not in hiß employment on the days of the holiday. Dr. Giles held that this was a flagrant contravention of the spir of the Act, and his decision will be generally approved of. The admission of one of the girls that on the Thursday there was a notice in tbe factory that they were to return to work on Tuesday shows tbat there was no dismissal.

The unhappy Scott is proving a godsend to the daily papers, ln the morning paper, we learn that Scott ' is reading the Leisure Hour,' or that he has taken to smoking a clay pipe. And before we have fairly had time to drink in these thrilling details, the Star is out with a fresh budget of Scottiana. In one's mind's eye one can see the youthful reporter of the evening paper, his mouth wide open, busily jotting down suoh tit-bits as : ' Probably a Presbyterian minister would have had the sad duty of visiting Scott, had it not happened that Mr Calder attended the funeral of Mr Thompson.' Why the fact of Mr Calder's having attended Mr Thompson's funeral, should peculiarly qualify him to administer the last consolations of religion to Scott, the Star young man does not stop to explain. Perhaps he had no breath left. He was after more ' items ' and oouldn' t spare the time. It is not long before he pulls out his little note-book to joii down - An Interesting Circumstance,' which, being boiled down, amounts to this : That Mr Calder had, before the Scott case cropped up, often looked out of his back window • trying to locate the exact position of Waikomiti. Little did he ever imagine that one day he would be called upon to administer comfort to a condemned man, who had been the chief actor in a tragedy of which that distant landscape was tbe scene.' And this is colonial journalism ? Why, Lloyd's Weekly or Reynolds' wouldn'D stoop to ladle out suoh maudlin drivel as this !