"Pars" about People

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 922, 12 September 1896, Page 18

"Pars" about People

Ovide Musin, the violinist, could not complain of any lack of musical apprecia- , tion on the part of the inhabitants of the goldfield town of Kalgoorlie. The charge for admission to his concert was 15/- for front seats and 5/- for back seats, but when the people got there they found no seats at all. The men in whose charge the arrangements were, had neglected to provide seats. But the people didn't mind. -They stood throughout the concert uncomplainingly, and didn't stint their applause, and this was one of the strongest compliments the celebrated violinist ever received. Once more Queen-street is honoured with the wrinkled and stage-worn, but still humorous and mobile visage of the venerable Grattan Riggo. It does us good to see Grattan's rugged countenance occasionally. It makes us feel young again, to say nothing of making us laugh, to meet the theatrical veteran pursing up his theatrical lips, and screwing np his nose to windward, as in the brave days of yore, when Romeo slew Julias Caesar, and the Ghost walked, and other wondrous things happened at the Opera House. Mr Riggs came here in advance of the Pollard Opera Co. The announcement of the death of Mr John Grey, cordial manufacturer, was received m the city last week with profound regret. Mr Grey was a man of the highest integrity in business, he was a good citizen in private and public life, and in his capacity as councillor he has rendered useful and irreproachable services to the ratepayers of the city. Mr Grey invariably took a warm interest in public affairs, and away back in the sixties, when a resident of Dunedin, he was also a town councillor there. He was a man well-liked by all who knew him, and general sympathy was felt for his family when the news of his death was made public. Mr Charles Grey, one of his sons, is standing for his late father's seat in the City Council, and being an old Auckland boy, and one possessed of exceptional ability, he will have considerable support.

Lawyer Jellicoe is offering a reward of £100 ' to any person or persona who shall give such information as will lead to the capture of the Irish ruffian ' who assaulted him recently. There are people who say that if Jellicoe had not taken the part he did in a recent-indecent assault prosecution he would not have been assaulted. Mr Northcroft, R.M., is a magistrate who seldom lets an offender leave the Court without a sermonette on his wrong-doing. Nor does he couch his homilies in the stilted high-borse style usually affected by policecourt beaks The other day a yonng fellow employed on a fi9hing-boat was up before him for drunkenness. The prisoner explained that he had come ashore with 7/6 as the result of the week's work, and meeting ' some of the blokes ' he had a few beers. ' And you knocked down your 7/6 ?' queried the Bench. ' Yes, your worship.' 'That's

the worst of a lot of you chaps,' said Mr Northcroft, 'yon can't save your money; you must go and knock it down as soon as yon get ashore. Then when a rainy day or hard times come, you are pinched, you're stumped.' The Bench wound up by advising the delinquent to go and sin no more, and save up enough money to buy a boat of his own. But the average oyster boy isn't built that way. Julian Thomas (' The Vagabond ') who died suddenly in Melbourne the other day, had some friends in Auckland. He was a journalist and litterateur of an exception- : ally able type, but his norn de plume thoroughly described his roving character. Like Gr. A. Sala, Thomas was a man who had a very nice appreciation of the good things of the table, and he has growled at the cookery in many lands. He last visited Auckland some six years ago, when he came up by the Union Company's Island steamer from Samoa. ' The Vagabond ' had voyaged over moat of the South Pacific, and had foregathered with more dusky monarchs and chiefs than even Robert Louis Stevenson or Sir John Tbnrston.

Mr R. H. Hooper, who established the vierorous little Socialistic weekly, Forward, early in the present year, has acquired an interest in The People, a Wellington weekly journal which is making headway under the capable editorship of Mr Haggenl We understand that Mr Hooper will hold a co-editorship on The People, so that he will have in this position greater scope for the exercise of his journalistic talents. George M. Pickles got into such a pickle in town this week that he got fined £1 or seven days for drunkenness. ' M.' in George's name probably stands for ' mixed.' He had evidently been mixing his drinks with more frequency than was wise. Had he confined himself to pickles, ' neat ' or mixed, he would not have had to interview the ■Rhadamenthine ' beak. 1 The 'Trilby' Co. made things rather lively on the Qaeen-street wharf and the mail steamer Mariposa when leaving for 'Frisco last Saturday. One of the male heroes was so affected at parting from one of the fair ones left behind here that he threw her his bell-topper as a keepsake, but the tile dropped down between the steamer and the wharf into the sea, whereat ' Taffy ' wept bitterly for several seconds. ' Trilby ' and ' Madame Vinarcl ' also wept intermittently, varied with bursts of laughter, while they assured their whaif friends that . they w ere ' all right.' Some gamin on the wharf appealed to ' Trilby ' to show her feet, but the stately lady wasn't having any off the stage. ' Jack ' Poland, erstwhile of school-teach-ing and journalistic fame, is now agent for the Ngunguru Coal Co. at Paeroa. The followinff story is told by a Southern exchange : — A little girl of seven, (the daughter of the house) was, as a, great treat, permitted to ait at the table one' day when a Bishop was to dine with her parents en faniille. Her mother carefully instructed her. She must remember that this was a very great clergyman, and when she spoke to him she waa to speak very properly, so as to show that she had been brought np in the fear aad admoniton of God. The little ladj . ' caught on,' but very dimly perceived her way out of the difficulty. At dinner, seated beside the great prelate, she partook of soup and fish successively in silence. When the entrees came on she wanted salt, and observed the salt cellar on His Lordship's left. She wanted the salt, but she dreadfully wanted to frame her request for it in "such a manner as to meet with her mother's approval ; so she said half hysterically (touching His Lordship's; sleeve lightly ), ' Pass the Bait, — for — for God's sake !

Premier Seddon's two daughters were in Auckland this week. They have gone to the Thames to inspect the gold nnggets with which Shortland and Grahamstown are paved. Mr Alfred Havelook Benge, formerly of Devonport, is to get the Waihi School headmaatership. This is rather better than Woodside, and before long it will be a bigger school than Devonport. A Wellington fair lady now in Auckland waa the heroine of a divorce case at Wellington recently, in which there were no leas-, than twenty-seven co-respondents, though all were not named. Some of them were men of considerable wealth, and great influence, and it is said that the club habitues of the windy city fairly shook in their shoes until that divorce was granted. Mr George Fowlds was proposing at the Women's Political Leagne meeting the other night the establishment of a municipal farm for the support of the destitute. But if the corporation wages sheet were examined it would be found that the municipality is a bit of a refuge even now. The cadets from Kumara whom Premier Seddon has introduced into the Permanent Artillery are the snbject of a good deal of heart-burning among our ' soldiers ' in Wellington. Men and - officers complain of the cheekiness of the youngsters, and it may yet even come to mild mutiny. One of the candidates for the Wellington City Council this week is a queer old fellow who at a former election he contested based his claim to support on the ground that he was more than ordinarily a Wellingtonian, because— he had never been outside the Heads since he landed forty years before. He had a plethoric money-bag, but the ratepayers then evidently thought that a man whose experience had been confined to his own Jittle parish was not the one to look to their interests. Mr George Court, the well-known draper of this city, is back again in Auckland after his business trip to the old country. Like many others of our citizens who have visited England after an absence of some years in the colonies, Mr Court didn't cotton kindly to the old place. His heart was in New Zealand, and he wasn't happy until he had taken ship again for the antipodes. While he was in Birmingham, Mr Court walked into the dining room one morning to find Mr Harvie, of Durhamstreet, seated at breakfast there. It was a strange meeting of two Aucklanders so far away from their home. The redoubtable Donald Dinnie is a familiar figure in town just now, with his kilts and all. Donald badly scandalised an old lady and her daughter from the country the other day. They were going down the •wharf, when suddenly the kilted Donald came striding up from the Thames steamer. 'There's a man coming without any trousers onl' shrieked the old lady, and both she and her offspring faced about the other way and covered their blushing visages with their umbrellas until the unconscious Dinnie had marched by like the Macgregoron his native heath. Then they opened their eyes and resumed their walk, but the shocked dame was heard to announce her intention of telling a policeman of the shocking trouserless sight she saw down the wharf. We wonder what she would say if she had gone to see ' Trilby ' or the ' Gaiety Girl ?' Ex-Treaaurer Ward, in the days of his prosperity, took up what was looked upon as without exception the finest business site in Wellington — that on which the Queen's Bond used to stand, at the corner opposite the Post Office, as yon go off the wharf. For its lease he agreed to pay the Harbour Board £220 per annum. Now he has bad to sell-his interest in it, and the goodwill has passed to the Nathan firm for £105. There is talk of a big building going vp — but so jthere was when Mr Ward invested in the property. There is an old ex-cannibal Maori at Rotorua on whom the tourists play cruel practical jokes A favourite game is to decoy the old man round to the hotel for a drink — and he will walk five miles for one — and fill him up with a villainous decoction of kerosene, castor-oil, croton-oil, rum, whisky and beer. It' 3 all the same to old Patara, who smiles ecstatically as the mixture goes down, with one hand extended across his stomach, after the style of the grotesque figures in Maori carvings. But then the stuff begins to get in its work — but we will draw a veil over the old ' maneater's ' sufferings. Next day, however, he bobs up again for his drink as usual .He must have an iron constitution, for he has been known to walk forty miles a day, notwithstanding his 85 years and the infinitude of drinks he has. swallowed. The one- time cannibal warrior, Patara te Ngungukai, has | become a sorry ' cadger ' through contact 1 with the noble tourist. ' Give me sixpence ' is the burden of his lay. A visitor to Botorua told the tatooed old fellow that he would like' to have hiß head after death to preserve as a curio. 'All right,' quoth Patara, 'how mnch you give me for it now ?'

The old couple Mr and Mrs Jones, victims of the Petone murder, were extreme Sabbatarians — wonld cook no food on Sunday, and even take in no milk. An amusing story is told in this connection. Mrs Jones once, dnring thtir residence in an isolated place near Hokitika, went through a huge Saturday clean-up, and next day dressed herself to go to church with the children as usual. To her horror she was acco3ted at the door by a blacksmith, who had instructions from Mr Jones, who was away, to shoe their horse. ' But you're not going to do it on Sunday?' exclaimed the shocked lady. ' No, of course not, but I'll take it now,' was the reply. An explanation being made, the good woman's horror deepened, for it turned out she had Bpent the day shß held so sacred in house-cleaning — had, in fact, lost her reckoning by a day. A similar story used to pass current in the Waiwera district of something that occurred about 30 years back. The Rev. Mr Ashwell started out from North Shore on one of his tours, and one Sunday morning, when on his way to the place of worship where he was to preach, passed a potato patch at which the selector was industriously digging. The rev. gentleman pulled up in order to reprove the Sabbath-breaker, and then it turned out that he and his neighbours had conscientiously observed the previous day as the Sabbath, and were now nard at work under the impression that it was Monday morning. These things seem impossible now-a-days, but there were times when clocks and watches were less plentiful than now.

' Bagplanter ' Joe Ivess is off to Sydney to purchase a plant for a new Opposition paper to \e called the Ashburton Standard which he will run in competition with the Ashburton Mail, originally another of his own creations. Joseph aspire? to Parliament again, you see, and ranks as an ' Independent Liberal.'

The death is announced of Madame Anna Kuppert, of face-wash fame. Her maiden name was Amy Shelton, and she was born in a small Missouri town. Full of energy and ambition, she started out to seek her. fortune. „ In.St. Louis Bhe acquired the recipe for face-wash, and managed it so well that in ten years ehe had built up a fortune. Madame Ruppert was the first advertiser to take an entire page of the London Daily Telegraph. It was in conjnnction with her that Mr Dampier produced 'Bobbery Under Arms' at the Princess Theatre, London.

A Sydney cycliate has been interviewing her clergyman as to the effect the bicycle is having on church attendance. Hear what he says : — ' The cycle, my dear Sirl, is, I am convinced, an invention of je devil to lnre young men away from the house of God. Have you not noticed that instead of attending church, they get on those infernal machines and ride away ? I have noticed that once a member of my church gets a bicycle he falls from grace. He neglects the morning service, and is too tired, I suppose, to attend the service in the evening. 1 It wonld be just as well to encourage- congregations to wear their bicycle costumes to church, and see that ' stables ' are erected for the accommodation of the machines. There is nothing lost by shaking hands with Satan when you meet him.