TIT BITS AND TWADDLE

Observer, Volume XI, Issue 752, 27 May 1893, Page 11

TIT BITS AND TWADDLE

It is very hard for a man to teach bis wife how to play cards and be polite at the same time. Quong Tart, the well-known Sydney merchant, says it is the duty of his countrymen in Australia to petition Parliament to exclude Afghans. Bather rich this ? A small Ponsonby sinner was told by his mother the other Sunday morning that it was very wrong to play with his tin soldiers on the Sabbath. ' Oh, but, 9 he said, ' this is the Salvation Army. 1 The new telegraph-forms are backed with ' ads.' and a 'Frisco timetable. Good idea, but this will impair the usefulness of the forms in one way : it will prevent their utilisation as note or scribbling paper ! London Times declares colonial governors will soon become ' mere figureheads.' Quite, so. Why should we pay any titled or untitled nonentity that may be seleoted for us by the Home Government while there are plenty of colonists able and willing to fill the vice-jregal boots ? Austrian bookmakers are grumbling. They have always had to pay an income tax and. a license fee, and now a new Bill has been introduced exacting a tax of 5 per cent, on all bets, and all bets under 100 florins are to be reckoned as that sum, and taxed accordingly. This latter provision is intended to check minor gambling. And it is going to do it. Talk about Sabbath calm! you ought to have been in Masterton the other Sund ay. The local Salvation Army halted in front of the house of a well-known free-thinker and proceeded to seranade him. Just as the band struck up the house door flew open, and the resident and his family emerged on the verandah, each armed with a fog-horn. And then the concert began 1 The noise made by the rival bands resented the screams of sixteen pigs in their death agonies, mingled with cbe cries of twenty-one fractious babies, with a railway whistle and a steamer. 1 siren ' thrown in. The fog-horns conquered. The Army had to give them best. At last meeting of "Wellington City Council, Cr. Petherick got hopelessly mixed on the subject of football. He tried hard to explain the difference between the Eugby and Association game. After floundering along for some time he said : ' I don't know whether I have made mysdf understood, but you see it is this way : in the one case the men— er— kick the .ball and ' 'And in the other case,' ..interrupted Cr* Harris, ' the ball kicks the men ?' ' Not at all 1' replied the peppery Petherick, 'Bless me it's as simple as A BC. In one case you see they kick the ball with the feet,' ' and in the other case,' yelled another councillor ' they kick it with the hand. That it ?' And then poor Petherick gave it up and Bat down. Ho, ho, ho! When His Excellency the Governor was at Napier the other day the local Caledonian society presented him with an address, from which we extract the following : — ' The Society hopes that New Zealand will be one day governed entirely by Scotsmen, and believe the colony will then be placed on a footing of commercial pre-eminence, etc., etc' The people on the dais who were not Scotchmen were unable to repress a smile during the .reading of the addresß and the smile became audible as soon as the Governor had gone. Hiß Excellency's reply was very neat. He said : — ' The colony gives evidence, wherever a thorough fusion of the three races takes place, that the result is the formation of a race possessing the fine qualities that distinguish the British nation, etc' The address reminded all present of the well-known Scotch prayer, ' Lord, gie us a good conceit o' oorsels.'

If we could see ourselves as others see us, what contempt we should feel for the judgment of others. The South Australian papers are couducted on business lines. During the recent elections the dailies declined to re port any candidate who refused to pay £4 4s a column for the insertion of his speech. A Queen-Btreet merchant says when a vacancy occurs in his office for a clerk he always gives the preference to a married man, because they are not in . such a hurry to get home of an evening as the others are. ' Recent visitors to Auckland,' says the Christchurch Weekly Press, '.have been struck with the marked signs _of revival to be witnessed in that city after a prolonged period of depression. There are several causes contributing to this improved state of thingfl which there is every reason to hope will be lasting.' Oh, yes, we've turned the corner, and now we've got a straight run before us. The ' pome ' market in this colonyis much depressed. Amongst the applicants for relief to Wellington Benevolent Trustees last week was a poet who stated he was sure that if he could only get a show he could make ' a tidy living by his pen.' He added that he had sent a poem on the death of Ballance to the Governor and was awaiting His Excellency's acknowledgement. A Hunterville man was ordered to contribute 4s a week- for the maintenance of his step-father a short time back, and because he refused to .obey the magisterial command he was arrested and got seven days' ' hard.' Hunterville people sympathise very much with this man, and he is going to fight the order of the Court. It seems pretty rough on a poor beggar, dependent entirely on his own exertions, that he should have to contribute towards the support of a man who is no blood relation. Burdette, the funny man of the Burlington Hawheye, has been dropping into poetry over Wilhelmj, the violinist, whose appearance at Abbott's Opera House some years ago will be remembered. The. lines are supposed to be addressed to ' William J., as he was called here, by a love-sick maiden : — Oh, king of the fiddle, Wilhelmj, If truly you love me just tellmej, Just answer my sigh By a glance of your eye, Be honest and dun't try to sellmj. With rapture your music did thrillmj, Wfth pleasure supreme did it fillmj, But if I could believe That you meant to deceive, Wilhelmj, I think it would killmj. The Rev. Sydney Baker, a Christchurch shepherd, delivered an address on newspapers in that city the other day. It was a very good address, too. Speaking of leaderß the lecturer said : ' A Btandard volume of literary and unquestionable excellence which for generations may have moulded and shaped the mental habits of men, is a force to be reckoned with. But its influence is feeble compared to the leader of these flying sheets. What a mighty agency for good or ill lies daily here. And, in the main, this weighty and responsible task is in the hands of men not only of high intelligence and literary ability, but who are also of lofty and patriotic purpose— men who, behind the mysterious ' We,' are not to be bought and tampered with, but who aim at inculcating truths and principles which at heart they believe to be for the welfare and moral prosperity of the people.' 'Sweating' is carried on to a terrible extent in this colony at the present time. There is hardly a town of any size in which the abominable system is not practised. In Wellington it flourishes ; Auckland is less notorious for its sweating dens, but the Napier evening paper quite recently drew attention to the rapid growth of the same shameful practice in that town. In Napier it seems girls have to take home work at night and finish it, bringing it back the following morning, but receiving no extra pay for the long hours worked. In other cases, a half-" holiaay is given on the Wednesday afternoon, but the girls and women have to.return to the shops on other occasions and make up the ' lost time.' ' The power to punish the sweaters,' says the News, ' is in the hands of the people.' Quite so. It may be very difficult to reach the sweaters by Act of Parliament, but if the people will only set their faces against the iniquity it will vanish.

Oh, the brute ! He said to her the other day as they sat at dinner : 'If I had known you were going to have one of your veal pies to>day, I would have as-ked Tompkins up. I met him in Queen -street, just ho. ' 'Asked Tompkins up!' she replied, ' I thought you hated him ?' 1 That's where it is,' he said, ' I do.' Women's Eights ? Why , they will soon have no rights to battle for ; they will have got them all ! A lady commercial is just now travelling down South (last heard of at Timaru). She represents a great English firm of manufacturing chemists. And she is tilling her little order-book, too ! Wellington Benevolent Trustees come in contact ■ with some queer characters. Amongst the latest applicants for charitable aid was an aged, gaunt woman, miserably dressed, and half-starved. Thirty years ago that woman was a belle of the bar ; she presided at the counter in a leading Wellington hotel, and all the chappies went mad over her. Now she is old and ailing, and the chappies are for the most part staid and sober middle-aged men with wives and families, and who go to bed at ten and cannot understand what the young fellows can see in those barmaids. The behaviour of Wanganui hoodlums at Mr Ballance's funeral was simply disgusting. They climbed the trees around the grave, shouted, yelled, whistled, and conducted themselves as only colonial hoodlums can conduct themselves. Finally, when the last volley was at the 'present,' two larrikins shouted ' fire !' from among the trees, and the College Cadets, being unused to Major Messenger's voice, did not notice the false command and fired, putting the whole party completely out of time. Then the hoodlums, in great glee, executed a wardance on the unenclosed graves and ran whooping away. Where were the police ? Oh, the blue was invisible, as usual. Her mother thought it was time to bring him to the scratch, so the' other evening she tackled him as soon he got back from the office, She said : 'So you want to marry Minnie ? You've made me so happy ; to no one would I resign my darling with more confidence than to yourself. She is yours. Were she here at this moment I should say, " Bless you, my children." ' 'But— but — I haven't—' stuttered the astonished youth. 'Never mind, never mind. Moneys not everything. We shall get along well enough, I dare say. If you love her, that's all I ask. 1 'But— but— l don't want ' ' No, I know you don't want to wait, nor shall you. Minnie is yours.' Should the reader see a distraught youth skulking along Queen-street wharf and glancing furtively at the black draught flowing past, he may presently hear a splash, and then he can rest assurred that Minnie is still unwedded. It happened in the Ponsonby Boad. He is Iri3h, quite Irish you know. He was walking quietly home, thinking of home rule — not Irish Home Rule, something nearer — when his foot slipped on a banana-skin and down he went. His fall was seen by a Scotchman who happened to be passing at the moment, and who hastened to his assistance. ' How did you manage to fall ?' enquired the Scotchman, as he helped the other fellow to get up. ' I waß going along steadily enough,' said the Irishman, ' I managed to fall not— with— standing.' The Scotchman didn't see the joke. He walked on without a smile. By the time he had reached Karangahape Boad the joke had percolated. He saw it ! He smote his knee and laughed aloud. Just then up came a friend who asked : • What's the joke ? Don't keep it all to yourself ?' ' Man Jock,', replied the Scotchman, ' a man fell down just the noo ' ' Well V ' Weel, I picked him up.' ' What of it ?' 'I asked him how he fell and what— ha! ha!— d'ye think he said?— "l fell nevertheless."' - '