Tit Bit and Twaddle

Observer, Volume XXI, Issue 1163, 13 April 1901, Page 15

Tit Bit and Twaddle

What is described as the 'pluck and energy ' of some New Zealand young men in Victoria who walked 150 miles to get work, is sorely another example of the exhalting process of the journalistic soothsayer of everything New Zealand to do well. Writers knew a man in Victoria (be wasn't a New Zealander) who walked 1,300 miles to see his nnole abont a job, and daring the journey he earned only half-a--crown. It is lime that the yonth of this country awakened to the fact that there are others besides them who do little, everyday things, and are not anxious for every journal in search ot copy to pat them on the back Pilgrims on the Continent crawl longer distances than 150 miles, and we think them merely fools, and forget their ' pluck and energy.'

Touching the failure of Advance to rake in the unearned increment to New Zealand punters, a yarn haa been gently filtering through for the past few weeks, and haß at last solidified into something tellable. In Auckland dwelt (and still dwells) a young commercial traveller, wellknown for his ' sore things. ' So ' dead a cert.' had he got in Advance that be pat hie metaphorical 'shirt' on him, and ordered a great quantity of material shirts in ' advance.' Quite a lot of lines appeared in tradesmen's ledgers. 'Mr Oooksure, 2 dozen Dnke of York ties ;Mr 0 , 4 salts ; Mr 0., 2Dr Jim bats,' etc., and ad in/initum. And another entry in another tradesman's ledger appeared : ' Mr 0 , rubber stamp, Advance." Cocksure got his goods home and stamped each artiole indelibly 'advance,' the sentiment of which was appropriate bat not in the way be intended, and it transpired aa all know that if he got his goods home he failed to persuade the horse to get there, and now there ia a man of savage demeanour spending his time aexatohing out ' Advance ' from shirts and oollars, handkerchiefs and white waistcoats, and Moses at the trinity of globes has issued green scrip for quite a lot of fashionable wear. Cocksure haa sworn off liquor and cigars, works overtime, and positively hates the inoffensive equine to such an extent that he ' peds ' his journey home rather than employ the horse-drawn oars.

Formerly, the death of a contingeoter was the signal for hundreds of columns of meaningless paper spoiling in the press, the exhalting of virtues manufactured by the toribe tunning into pages of twaddle To-day, in the corner of a Saper :—' Enteric. 1077, Lamont; 461, foDonald.' Bated with slaughter ? Hardly. ' 1 will never oeaße to send men as long as the Empire requires them.' It is ao easy to say with a pen, but those eloquent numbers !

The value of an oath has been called into question by magistrates of all ranks lately, and it Is apparent that from the ease, with which the biblical osculation !b performed, and the subsequent fairytales indulged in by attestanta, that the statutory ' swear ' is little use in getting at the trnth. The lady who was asked by the official, ' Do you know the nature of an oath ?' replied, ' Yes, y'r honour, since me 'nsband is a bulloofcy,' was not required to guarantee the truth of her remarks in her husband's way. The recent lady whose experiences of police courts gave her, in her own opinion, the right to self-administer the oath, did so originally. She had stolen a ehirt, and gave a sworn denial thus : ' The evidence I'm a goin' to give (Bmack) is the truth (loader smack), the whole truth (osoulatory explosion), and nothing but the truth (volley), and I didn't take the shirt.' She had taken it, however and an unoonvinced justice sent her oellwards for a week's spell.

During the recent returned troops hnllaballoo, an inoffensive German gentleman waß enjoying the general turmoil excessively nntil a citizen of generous presence nsed the German's feet aa a platform to view the dust-coloured ' heroes.' Mein Herr ' stood ' it for some time, his native politeness overcoming his pedal torture, bat at last he broke forth. ' Mein friend, I know mine veet vaß made to walk upon, but dot brivilege belongs to me.' The stranger dismounted to the strains of ' Soldiers of the King.'

From Paris comes the wail of a sexagenarian bridegroom, weeping that Madame, his eighteen-year-old wife, preferred to be 'a young man's slave ' rather than a ' old man's darling.' Poor old Marseillaise had been ont to the Moulin Rouge or the Service at Notre Dame or something, and was rushing gaily home to the arms of his adored Lnoelle. Aa he ranged alongside his hovee r a flower-pot, which he recognised as belonging to the sill of the connubial bedroom, smashed down on the pavement in front of him, and following It, per water-pipe, was Monsieur Jeune, a young fascinator who had apparently forestalled Marseillaise in bis amiable intentions. Madame welcomed her aged husband with all sweetneßß, but learned avocatit are to be engaged in sifting the reason why M. Marseillaise desires a separation from Madame. Oherchez la'femme i

Latin was taught in thin particular glrla oolle^e, and the sweet girl who was considered to have quite a fund of Latin learning in her pretty bead, was the s'u©ject of admiring comment by her adoring mother. Mother, anxious to exhibit the depth of her girl's knowledge, obtained the Latin exercise book, and handing it to a gentleman gaest bade him read. This is what he read : — Boyibus kissibns Sweet glrliorum ; Glrlibua likibas, Wanti Bomoram. The oft recarriDg word 'trooper' in New Zealand literature somewhat grates upon the nerves of the ultra-particular, but the, as frequently recurring anachronism mounted trooper grates still worse. Firstly, then, the word ' trooper ' is only used officially to describe a cavalryman, and as the men whom a people with swollen military appetite refer to are not cavalrymen, they have no more right to the title ' trooper ' tban haa the ordinary policeman to be calhd a dragoon. Ail New Zealand soldiers on aervice are olasßed as Mounted Infantry, their drill ia infantry drill, and their mounts the means for making infantry mobile. A man who is a trooper does his fighting on horseback, or at least did when the term was applied, and, therefore, to call him a mounted trooper is juat about as aenaible aa calling a foot soldier a pedeatrian infantryman, or Rotomahana Lake Rotomahana.

The ' civilised ' way in which the Christian soldiers are christianising China is well shown in an article which Dr E. J. Dillon, who followed tile army in its march to Pekin, contributes to the Contemporary Review. Sample : — ' In the house of a rich man stood a large black box. A torturing stench proceeded from it. "It is the girls, sir; three girls," answered my attendant, who was a European. " Their corpses are lying in the box there," he explained " Who put them there ?" " Some officers." " Are you quite sure of it ?" " Tes, sir ; I was here when it was being done." " Did you see the young women yourself?" "I did. They were the daughters of the man who owns the house. The officers raped them, and they had them stabbed with bayonets. When they were dead they were pat into this box, and it was covered up, as you see. There were worse oases than this. Theße here were raped and stabbed ; others have been raped to death and got no stabbing.

' Numerous cases are cited of women of all ages between six and sixty oommitting suicide by plunging into rivers to escape the lustful attentions of oar soldiers. Bat a large number of ill-atarred women fell alive into the hands of the Allied troops. ■' I saw some of them in Peking," says Dr Dillon, "already dead with frightful gashes in the breast, or ekulls smashed in, and one with a horribly mutilated body." A lady missionary in Peking pat ap a Bhelter for these women and girls, bat so abandoned were the troops to devilry that they hang about the refuge, employing varions devices and tricks to get hold of the women. Life or female honour was not worth a moment's purchase at the hands of the brutalised Europeans. "No man of average honesty," concludes' Dr Dillon, "who is acquainted with the masses in Ohina, will hesitate for a second if asked to say whether China is really lesß olvillaed than each of tbe Powers who would regenerate her.".' Who, indeed t

The very modern maiden tries To be as manly as she can ; She douß her brother's fronts and ties And other sundries shaped for man. She's got the cane and cigarette, So manhood doesn't seem so far ; But what she has to taokle yet la ' mashing ' girls behind a bar.

An Australian scribe who has seen a pair of ' ammunition ' boots worn by Tommy on service give them as one of the reasons why the British soldier cannot catch the Boer. As the Boer is never running away on foot it doesn't matter much if his mounted pursuers have boots or slippers on. He also states that the Boer's boot is ' admirably adapted to get over the gronnd quickly.' Possibly he saw a' veldsckoon made in Nottingham or Holland, and ooncluded because the brand waß Datoh the burgher army wore it. The Boer wears what he likes, and amongßt other things he likes is the British Ammunition boot, which thousands of him is wearing, and for which he will give a pound He has captured whole truekloads of boots, and the Boer fiom the south of Gape Colony to Eomatipoort may be seen wearing the favourite foot gear. The army boot, though heavy, is admirably adapted for its work, as the sole is broad and well shaped. No infantryman would think of wearing light boots which would lame him, and a mounted man who fights on foot, if climbing kopjes in ! veldschoon,' would curae the day ne threw his ' ammunitions ' away. The Boer, on the authority of one who was their enforced guest on two occasions, wear anything from top boots to ' veldachoon,' and silk hats to red handkerchiefs.