"Pars" about People

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 924, 26 September 1896, Page 22

"Pars" about People

Uabon Von No&beck, who was killed on the Island of Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, the other day, as reported by cable from Sydney, visited Auckland Beveral years ago in the Austrian training corvette Saida, which was then on a cruise round the world. Goldfields Warden Kenny irreverently referred to the Treaty of Waitangi the other day as a ' venerable bogey.' He was quoting the epithet used in Parliament lately, and when he had made hia remark he looked as if he thought he had said something terribly brave and wicked. Mr Kenny has such a respect for precedents | and things antiquated that we were quite , astonished to hear him talk of the aged | Treaty in this flippant fashion. The veteran W. G. Garrard, Auckland's honest dog-catcher, is to the fore again. This time he wants to get into Parliament. [ He offers himself a bleeding sacrifice on i the altar of his country for £240 a year, j and one of his principal 'planks' is, of course, the naval and military land grants. "W.G. wants to see justice done to those venerable warriors, the ' hold soldiers,' who, like the U.S. army of pensioned veterans, increase year by year instead of dying out. ' Willyum Jarge's ' panacea for social ilia is apparently contained in this rather vague announcement — ' I will Dot starve the poor woiking masses for the unnatural beings,' the said unnatural beings being, no doubt, the ' social pests ' who boss the poor man round and rob him of his beer. Our grizzled and waTlike friend "W.G. has an infinite capacity for oratoi y, and when he fixes hia medals on and rubs his horny hands, preparatory to addressing the electors on' the woes ot old soldiers, may we be there to see.

Oar friend Tenetahi, of Little Barrier Island fame, will soon have to bid hia tui and moreporks a last fond farewell. The Government have accepted a tender to catch his pigs for him and remove them to Auckland (the palatial new Government steamer Tutanekai will just come in handy for the job), and the litigious Tenetahi wiil no longer have an excnse for sticking to hia ancestral humara flat at Hauturu. We wonder if The MacAliater is to be aent down with a warrant for those pigs, and whether a Permanent Force expedition will be necessary ? The Little Barrier and its pirn and evictions rival the moßt comical doings that ever were amongst the Irish ' tinantry' at Kuockmedowny or Kilmaclone. A Ohriatcburch idiot, writing to 'a London paper.laments the fact that the Prince of VValea yacht Britannia baa been beaten by the Kaiser a Meteor, and inanely suggests that British trabjecta shonld unite and aubscnbe enough money to present toHBH to buy a bran-new yacht to beat aUcomera*. A truly brilliant proposal! That Chrisfcchurch admirer of royalty ought to buy one °A 1 u he .ll? ttelt ? n ' crft cts' and send ifc to Albert Edward. He may get knighted yet if he isn t careful. Anyhow, colonials have something else to do with their money than to donate it to royalties for yachts wherewith to get beaten by the sanerkranta. Rontgenßay pictures of Jack Gibbona'a elbow and Arthur Adams'a Trilby foot the first of their kind taken in Wellington were objects of criticism in the Evening 1 ost office window for some days lately Most people didn't see any special pointa" of beauty about 'em to make them worth putting on Bhow. i. T * e t i_ Honorable William McCulloHgh, he of the 'extensive printin' establishment in iUgn-sntrate beyant,' nas been utteringsome oracular sayings in the land of Burns ana red-hairea Highlanders. He was at the Dnnooa 'Highland Mary' gathering the other day, and he incidentally referred, after very kindly speaking up for Bobbie Burns, Highland Mary, Sir Walter Scott and others, to Bnrns Clubs, which he said with an air of wisdom, were 'silver bands which helped to keep the Empire together This is coming it rather strong for Burns' Clubs, William. We thought our frozen mutton trade, and navy leagues, and Governors, and most of all, our National Debt were the 'silken' or 'silver' bands which 'bind us to the great mother country ' etc But we were mistaken, it seems. We had imagined that Burns' Cluba were assemblages which confined themselves chiefly to the innocent relaxations of drinking whiakv neat, dancing the ' Ghillie Cailum,' and amemg 'Anld Lang Syne' with mnch nnsKiness and hiccupping at 2 a.m. But the Honorable William knowa better it appears. Count Jouffary d'Ab'bans, who'bas been tourmg the West Coast recently as the representative of a powerful French mining syndicate, met with a narrow escape one day. He visited Smith's claim, Westport, aud watched the sluicing of the face with much interest. Just as the Count passed °? I 'face' collapsed, and the debris pinned the visitor against a tree. Fortunately, thanks to prompt assistance, he was not injured. Next day, in talking over his escape with a Westport man, the Count casually asked him :— ' If I had been killed in such a rough place, how would you have taken me out : lam fifteen stone ?' ' Oh,' said the man addressee^ 'we are very practical people here. We would have cut y°n up into pieces that one conld carry.' 'Well, under these circumstances,' replied ! the Count, with a twinkle in his eye, ' lam glad to have saved you the trouble.' The following, from' a Taupo correspondent, knocks the stuffing completely ont of the ' Wet Wragge,' or S.E. by W., or E. by IS :— An old Maori woman living about 60 miles from here predicted that Taupo and Tokaanu were to be blown to Hades on a certain date, later on, and before the period she had fixed on had arrived, she informed her neighbours, and it spread like wildfire amongst the natives, that she had postponed the event until the 28fch inafcant (long before time indicated first). Natives bundled up ana hooked it, but, most marvellous coincidence or somthing else, there were four or five alight shocka of earthquake between 7 p.m. on 28th and 6 a.m. on 29th. Doesn't she wipe out the meteorological boys ? ° Kyrle Bellew, wherever he goes, telle the story of his first histrionic attempt when he performed a Shakespearian part before a number of Melbourne pressmen with a view to getting their opinions as to whether j or not he was ever likely to succeed as an actor. After the performance the scribes j B&id ' Don't !' unanimously. Kyrle seema to think the result rather rough on the pressman, and is apparently oblivious to the fact that his way of teliing the story is a trifle egotistical. The actor met one of those old press friends of his whilst he was in Melbourne and reminded him of the! incident. 'You see I have succeeded in spite of the judgment,' he paid. 'Aren't you surprised ?' ' Yes,' said the pressman, - thoughtfully ; ' remembering how bad yon were then, I am more than surprised, I am astounded that you were allowed to live to succeed.'

Veteran M.HR. Saundera, the father of our Parliament, is writing his autobiography, and will publish it shortly. If Sannderß Bets down faithfully all tbat he has eeen of the doings of his fellow Parliamentarians in and about the lobbies when constituents are not looking, the book will make interesting reading. The Seddon Government seems to have a penchant for putting monuments to the memory of defunct Maori chiefs. Some time ago, old Tawhiao and some of his fellow skeletons got a big monument at Ngaruawabia ; Te Wheoro got one on the Waikato ; a few other big-wigs of colour have also got stones instead of the land laws they wanted ; and the latest dead patriot to get a monument' from the Government ia Kereru, an TJrewera chief, who died recently. Kereru had fought against the pakeha from his youth up, and was a consistent follower of the late lamented Te Kooti; therefore, with rare logic, the Premier gives him an obelisk be* cause he is dead. It's a fine thing entirely to be a Maori chief. £ ou get military expeditions after you when yon are alive, and you're bound over to keep the peace, and not pull up survey pegs, and when yon finally ' peg out ' yourself, the Government gratefully gives you a granite monument. It is droll, as Max O'Reli would remark More journalistic mems. — Mr C. Marter, who has just left the Acw Zealand Times — by the way, his competitors of the Wellington Post showed hearty comradeship by making him a presentation — is to be replaced by Mr Cowen, formerly sporting writer to the Times and just back from Sydney. Mr H. Carrick, erst of the New Zealand Iferald, then of Samoa, but latterly mating in a Government department, is again in journalistic harness, having been appointed to the Napier News staff. Sjgnor Crinpi, the great Italian states man, is a man with varied, irregular, and multitudinous matrimonial experiences. When he was first in office much pressure was brought to bear on Qaeen Margherita to induce her to receive his wife. For a long time she declined. At last she consented, with this stipulatiou : ' 1 will receive the Signora Grispi, but there must never be more than one, and it must always be the same one !' Anyone desirous of being eaten in a thoroughly practical and workmanlike manner can be accommodated by applying at any hour of the day or night at the Solomon Islands, Western Pacific; every care taken, but no responsibility. The Solomons afford an excellent field for scientific investigation just now, in connection with the study of the habits and customs of the merry little cannibal. Baron Von Norbeck tried it the other day, and got eaten, but that is a detail. We think we should like to go to the Solomon Islands and see those interesting cannibals It would be a pleasing change from Queenstreet. There would be no bills to pay, no callers to bore us, and no ' pars ' to write ; and even if we did get eaten, it would be a refreshing novelty which might make good ' copy ' elsewhere — who knows ? Few colonists have had a more eventful life than Mr J. Webster, the veteran settler of the North, whose pretty home is at Oponoui, on the Hokianga,of which W. P. Reeves, the Parliamentary poet,wrote when the divine afflatus lay heavy upon him : — 'There, screened in a twilight of whispering fern, We saw, through the fronds, looking forth. No weltering sea of the South, cold and stern, But the brilliance and glow of the North.' . Apropos of the recent maasacre of an Austrian scientific expedition on the island of Guadalemar, in the Solomon Islands, Mr Webster can recall the time, now almost like a dream to him it is so long ago, when on October 15, 1851, his friend Ben Boyd, of Wanderer fame, was mysteriously killed on the same island by the Solomon cannibals. Boyd was act Australian squatter millionaire, and Mr Webster was his fellow-voyager on board his yacht, a 240-ton topsail schooner. Boyd was killed while ashore shooting, and Mr Webster, who remained on board, had a fight for his life that morning, when the swarthy* yelling man-eaters of Guadalemar attacked the Wanderer. The yacht escaped, thanks to her guns (one of which, the bow-chaser, is now in the Albert Park), but nothing more was ever heard of Ben Boyd. Mr Webster, who is now 78 years of age, drove cattle overland from Sydney to Adelaide in 1839, f ought blacks on innumerable occasions, landed in 1841 at the Bay of Islands, joined Nene's Ngahohi war-' riors in the 1845 war, went to San Francisco in 1850 in a barque as super cargo, cruised through the South Seas with Ben Boyd, and had a narrow escape, in 1855-56, of becoming a veritable ' King of the Cannibal Islands,' under a proposed South Sea Islands Republic, which must be classed amongst the things ' that never | were,' was wrecked in the Wanderer at Port Macqnarrie, went gold-digging in New South Wales, and finally returned to Hokianga over 3(3 years ago. 1 here he enjoys; in, the evening, of .bis life, his wellearned btiivi cp,m digriiiate, -after a life of knocking about which few men can equal.

George Augustus Sala died at a moment when his financial position was at its lowest ebb. Shortly before his death Lordßoaebnry granted him a civil list pension of £100 a year, which, of course, died with him. Mrs Sala has thus been left in a very precarious and distressing financial position. A member of the Napier School committee told his colleagues an interesting little story that had come under his personal notice. A girl educated at a public school came to be married. In due course she had a little being to dress, and how to cut out its first pinafore bothered her. But she solved the problem by laying the youngster on the floor toes downwards, and snipping xound its little figure till 'she bad a garment to correspond. This was a convincing argument for technical education. How many young wives in Auckland, we wonder, have had to wrestle with the same difficulty? Messrs George and Kersley, a Wellington soft goods firm, to singalise a prosperous year of business, entertained their employees at supper the other evening, and presented them with bonuses of a fortnight's pay for all those of over twelve months' service, and a week's for the rest. Very good indeed, so far as it goes. Bat these employees should not make too sure of their bosses' generosity till the time for their annual holiday comes around, and they see whether the cash bonuses be not, after all, made a set-off to the usual allowance of breathing-time. This is what we have known to be done in more than one Auckland honse that had got credit for its liberality, anyhow. It is strange, yet nevertheless true, that when a man 'goes bung' he invariably finds the Official Assignee to be his best friend. Mr Lawson, oar own Assignee, is one of the

most kind-hearted men alive, and has cheered many a drooping debtor by protecting him from the merciless ' sharks ' that generally surround him in his misfortune. Jackson Palmer's speech for the peggingout applicant in the Pukemaukuku ( Aitken's Freehold) mining case iv the Warden's Court in Auckland the other day, was a forensic wonder. He orated for four hours in opening his case, and in the course of his argumeut he pretty well covered the whole ground of ancient and mordern mining, commencing at the time when the ancient liomans pegged out claims in Macedonia, and floated ' wid cats ' on the Venetian capitalists, and referring incidentally to the landing in Britain of the late Julius Coesar, with whom he was, he might mention, intimately acquainted. Then the festive advocate slippsd gaily through reigns and centuries at a bound and showed how claims were worked in the days of good Queen Bess, and how the ' social pests ' collared all the dollars in those bad old times. Then he wrestled with the Treaty of Waitangi for some time, and wanted to read it through, bat the Court baulked at the ' venerable copy ' and wonld only stand the first clause. It could endure Macedonia, and even Julius (Jcesar, but the Treaty of Waitangi was too much ! Jackson's comprehensive speech reminds one of the story about the French advocata who started a Court address by saying : 'In the beginning of the world — ' "The learned judge stopped him and, leaning over, said: * Yes, yea, Monsieur, but if yon pleaee we will pass on lo the Flood 1'