AFRETFUL

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 922, 12 September 1896, Page 7

AFRETFUL

A Quill for Everyone.

The behaviour of the crowd towards the referee at the Otago v. Auckland football match on Saturday last was scandalous and indefensible . It is no disgrace to us to be beaten in a fairly -fought contest. But it is a disgrace to us that we cannot take a beating in good part. There was nothing of tho spirit of true sport in the behaviour of the howling mob on Saturday, and to jeer and hoot at the referee was simply venting our spleen upon him because our men were not equal to the team opposed to them. It may be that his decisions were not as satisfactory as they might have been, but these decisions were impartially given against Otago a 9 well aa against ourselveß, and it was apparent that the referee did his best It was the ill-behaved, wretchedspirted barracbers, and not the footballers, who brought disgrace upon the city.

The passages made by the intercolonial steamers between Auckland and Sydney of late have been remarkable for their slowness. Some few years ago the steamers made passages at their best speed, but they either seem to be degenerating, or else making np in the saving of coal what they cost some time back in cut-throat competition. The Tasmania, however, woke up her rivals the other day by doing the Sydney- Auckland run in the good time of four days .one hour. Apropoa of this subject, a correspondent, ' Porpoise,' writiDg to a Dnnodin paper, asks : — ' Isn't it time the U.S.S. Co., with their " magnificent fleet of palatial steamers," got a few 20 knot intercolonial boats, so that travellers could get from Dunedin to Melbourne in two and ahalf days. Then a fortnight's holiday would mean nine days in Australia, and five days going and coming. This would be a decided advantage over the antediluvian coal barges which now wander in a harmless sort of way along our coasts at a "fast and furious" 10-knot speed!' As far as fares are concerned, many Aucklanders will be better able to pay the high fares next Christmas, but the existing rates to Australia could very well be reduced wittiout loaa to the steam companies in the trade.

Devonport is a great place for sensational marriages. A fortnight ago, it startled as with the union of a bride of fifteen and a groom of fifty-two. Now, we have hnrled at us the wedding of a male youth of twenty odd and a lady who has been a grandmother for many a long day. It is a romantic story, too. The young man was engaged to the lady's daughter, but the poor girl was accidentally drowned, whereat the youth was inconsolable. However, a year later, the lady's husband died. Then the youth found comfort in the society of hiß mother-in-law who was to have been, and the other day he married her. He couldn't keep out of the family. The lady, it may. be added, is possessed of considerable property, but this was no inducement to the young man. He married for love— he loved her so. Who that has sat through a programme, say, like 'East Lynne ' at the Opera House last week, will not sympathise with the niggers in this good story from the Bulletin? 'We were at Balranald the other week (writes a poor player to the Bulletin). Success had thawed the managerial heart, and one night we passed in about a dozen aboriginals, who seemed, from the boards, to thoroughly enjoy the performance. After the show, we found the nigs waiting for us at the stage-door: 'You gib it thickpen' ?' asked one, apparently the boss. ' What for ?' inquired the manager. ' Waffor? We bin werry good. We sit an' listen all you yabber, not say anything. We think it deserve him thickpen'.' There is a yarn told somewhere of a lawyer who was sent some free tickets for an amatenr dramatic show, and afterwards paralyzed the management by sending in. his bill for attendance and consideration of same, 13/4.

The eternal Little Barrier Island ! Will its troubles never cease ? It looks very much as if in Tenet ahi the Government have got a veritable ' Old Man of the Sea," who will not be shaken off. Tenetahi certainly is a sticker. Evicted twice from the Little Barrier by an armed force, and ordered to leave on half-a dozen occasional he is there still, the ' lord of the fowl and the brute.' Tenetahi has been for the last six .months ostensibly engaged in catching his pigs and cattle, the magistrate having given him leave to remove them, but the Hauturu gullies are deep and the bush is thick, and such an adept at not catching them as Tenetahi and his family will probably take about ten years to round 'em all up. The latest phase of this farce is that the Government are going to catch Tenetahi's pigs and other stock for him, and are calling for tenders for the work of catching and removing them to Auckland ! The whole thing is ludicrous, as 'well as expensive. We presume that the deportation of. the porkers will .be followed by a third eviction, of Tenetahi by an armed force. Would it not pay the Government to once and for all pay Tenetahi the extra sum he claims, and save all this trouble and hullabaloo over a few kiwi and moreporks ?

A venerable ship's compass, which is now in the possession- of John Bell, our stump-speech friend, has had a rather curious history. It is abont fifty years old, and is said to have, at one time, belonged to the schooner on board which the Rev. Volkner was captured by the Maoris at Opotiki in 1865, and afterwards killed. Subsequently, the compass got into the hands of the natives down Thames way, and until lately was in the possession of the Maoris at Tapu, where a European resident eventually got it and sent it up to Bell. It looks ancient enough, though the needle is good, to dispose of it to a museum on the strength of the fact that it was originally left in Auckland by Captain Cook. The social status of footballers appears to be gradually rising. Of the four representative teams that have visited us this season it was remarked that at least three were composed of sterling, wellbehaved, gentlemanly young fellowtj. The Wellington team was a notable exception, bnt it does not follow by any means that Wellington footballers are" not as wellbehaved and gentlemanly as in other places, though the team that recently travelled was a bad advertisement in thie respect for football in the Southern city. At the Thames, especially, they carried their roystering excesses to an intolerable extreme. Taken as a favour into a first-class hotel, which is invariably crowded with commercial people, they played up high jinks; and wound up by breaking £5 worth of furniture, while their whole bill for accommodation was £5 ss. We sympathise with the Wellington Rugby Union, which is jealous of its good reputation, and which could have had no knowledge or suspicion of how its representatives would play up when they got away from home. An individual who ran away with another man's wife from Auckland, and took passage to Wanganui, received rather a warm reception there at the hands of the injured husband. The latter gave the gay Lothario the benefit of his pent-up feelings, in the shape of the results of a cultivated muscular development, and the wife enticer had to seek shelter .at the hospital, and lay up for repairs. He is now puzzling out whether there is any truth in the old adage that the way of the transgressor is hard. 1 ' O, wad some power the giftie gie them . to see themselves as others see them ' — the Devonportians embarking on the 8.35 a.m. boat every morning for Auckland. The time is up, the skipper is patiently waiting, calmly, apologetically exhorting them to ' hurry up, please,' and yet they dawdle along the gangway as if it were the pirate's plank to their doom. First grasping one hand-rail, then the other, now addressing a remark to the friend in front, then to the one behind, the melancholy procession wends its way aboard to the cune of ' Hurry up, please ' Were it not for the fact that the men are not the only offenders, one would feel inclined to conclude that the morning smoke contributed not a little to the slowness of the morning movements. Verily, though the Devonportians may be an advanced, they are by no means a ' fast people.' The Chinese laundrymen are doing a big trade in Auckland, thanks to the women and to the youthful fops who like their shirts made spotlessly white for something less than nothing. There is one laundry in Grey-street where unpatriotic idiots of both sexes send their clothes to be ironed by the evil smelling Chow, while poor and hard working white women are thus deprived of the work which should be theirs, merely for the sake of saving about threepence on a dozen articles Those who patronise the Chinaman in preference to their own countrymen and women deserve to be sentenced to pass a night in one of the Chinese dens in Wakefield ■ street. They wouldn't send any more clothes to a Chinese laundry. 'At present,' gravely f^ays an English paper, 'the skins of Australian kangaroos are much prized ; a skin is worth more than an average sheep— carcase, wool and all — for which reason squatters are giving up sheep-farming for kangaroo raising.' This sort of news reminds us of the announcement recently made by London Tit Bits that one of the chief items of food consumed by the people of Nelson was locusts, which it was averred grew to an enormous size down Nelson way. At the recent Melbourne lecture on ' Medical Education,' a clergyman elicited a cheer from the ' distinguished ' audience when he urged on doctors that it was their duty to point out the immorality of keeping children at school for a long stretch in the day-time and then piling weary homelessons on them at night. But when he was logical enough (and manly enough) to refer to the immorality of merchants com-, petting their tired clerks to come back to the vitiated air of their offices at night to save a few shillings, the ' distinguished ' audience hissed and groaned inwardly, and was outwardly as demonstrative as a block of ice.