The Fretful Porcupine

Observer, Volume XXVI, Issue 44, 21 July 1906, Page 16

The Fretful Porcupine

IT seems that there are two tides to the question of J. J. Craig's application for a private wharf, which the Harbour Board has refused. The other side, which has not yet been stated, puts J. J. Craig in a strong position. If the principle of private wharves and the creation of vested interests in the harbour is bad, J. J. Craig is not responsible for it. The Board itself created the objectionable situation in 1883, when it gave considerable reclamation concessions to the Freezing Company, with the riparian rights on the northern or outer Jharbour frontage. Since that time, Mr Craig has bought the Freezing Company lease, with all its rights, and for the next 28 years he is entitled to enjoy the riparian right* of this frontage.

Mr Craig claims that it is his right under his lease to erect wharves from this northern harbour frontage, so long as the plans are approved of by the Marine Department, and only two years ago, under the hand of J. T. Julian, chairman, the Board granted Mr Craig a license to construct a wharf or wharves, and hold it or them at an annual rental of £20. Aa a matter of fact, according to Mr Craig, tha Harbour Board has no power to prevent him from building any wharf he chooses from the northern side of the Freezing Company reclamation, and, having been advised to that effect by it« solicitors, it is now endeavouring to prevent the plans being passed by the Marine Department.

What do the Christian Temperance Women mean by their resolution deploring the prevalence of the opium hab.t amongst women ? Are the women of Auckland addicted to the opium habit? Or is this another gimlet-female yarn on a par with the A. J. Black slander about the nightly procession of incapable young men iii Queen-street?

Satisfactory to hear that the Hon. Hall-Jones has hopes of reforming the Legislative Council. As it stands, most people think it is past praying for. Mr Seddon used to say it must be ended or mended. In view of the large number of aspirants to seats in the Lords just now, however, it would be nothing short of a public catastrophe if it were ended. Besides, it may be necessary for the Ward policy to begin with re-ward.

The young and charming lady teacher in a certain country school had been promoted, and being on extra good terms with a member of the school committee, fell in eagerly with the proposal of the committeeman that he should arrange a presentation. The girl being popular, subscriptions flowed in freely, and something less than £10 was collected. The committeeman came to town and bought the present. It was a nice article of jewellery. But, as bad luck would have it, the young lady had a very similar article of jewellery already, and thought Bhe would change it.

Accordingly, on her next visit to Auckland, she called at the jewellers', and they very kindly allowed her to choose another article ia exchange, at something under £10. Then the jeweller mentioned the delicate question of the difference in price. " But," remonstrated the surprised lady, " my present cost nearly £10." The tradesman shook his head. " Oh, no," he said, "it only cost £5, though we allowed it to appear that it cost the greater sum." It is reckoned that the subsequent interview between the school teacher and the committeeman waa a sultry on*.

Two more shipments of immigrants from the Old Country have arrived in the colony. Already, a considerable portion of the earlier arrivals have drifted back to Auckland and Wellington from the co - operative railway works, complaining that the conditions of labour there are impossible, and that things in New Zealand were grossly misrepresented in London. Like the Irish applicant for a position in the police force, they are now looking for a clane andaisyjob, with the proviso that it cannot be too aisy. Seems to us that some of these alleged desirable immigrants expected to be welcomed by a brass band, and to be regaled on turtle soup three times daily at the public expense.

Why all this agitation in the daily papers about the care of children's teeth ? The greater proportion of New Zealand children have no teeth except what the dentists are supplying them with. What young New Zealand badly wants is a miniature spring rattrap device, fixable to the gums, that will enable them to do without teeth and toothache, but especially toothache, for ever.

Since Alexander Black — the evangelical gentleman who is providing Auckland with Sunday sensationalism at the price of the threepenny-bit contribution to the collection plate — took the platform against the totalisator, the bookmakers are inclined to make him their patron saint. On the occasion of his anti tote deliverance, every penciller in the city turned up, and voted to a man, some of them with both hands, for the resolution that denounced the legislation of the totalisator. For once the turf experts and the evangelists found themselves on common ground, and it is no wonder that in their unanimity they were emphatic.

Had the lecture depended upon Mr Black's personal acquaintance with the totalisator and its methods, it would not have been a brilliant success. Obviously, he had never been on a racecourse in his life, and would hardly have known the tote-house from the weighing - machine. However, the " points supplied by Dick May, as an admitted expert at the game, filled out the details pretty satisfactorily, and Dick, from the auditorium, beamed approval upon the efforts of his apt pupil. When it came to the collection, the visitors from Tattersall's put up a handsome purse for their new ally. They do nothing by halves. Also, it was thought desirable to make the most of the importance of the anti-tote demonstration in sending the resolution to the Government. " What shall we say as to the attendance!" asked someone. " Oh, put it down at five thousand," calmly suggested Dick May, and the audience exploded at the idea of five thousand people being crammed within the walls of His Majesty's. Just what representation went forward as to the strength of the meeting it would be interesting to know.

Otahuhu is in the midst of an ecclesiastic turmoil. Some iconoclastic person, indignant at the placing of a cross on the communion table of the Anglican Church, has spirited the awful exhibit out of the building, and the High Church section of the worshippers vow summary vengeance upon the perpetrator of the outrage if be can be discovered. A couple of hundred years ago, this kind of thing would have set a whole community agasp as a bit of unpardonable sacrilege. In- these more enlightened days, it provides only a little comedy, sniggered at by all exfept thai enthusiasts directly oonscraeo.

The Russian court - martial has acquitted Admiral Roshdestvenski on the charge of cowardice. We should rather think it would. Roshdeatvenski is no coward. Did he not, with only the Baltic squadron behind him, fearlessly engage a formidable fleet of fishing boats at Dogger Bank ? Roshdestvenski is a hero — a Russian hero.

Some days ago John Fuller's feelings were ruffled by the receipt of a peremptorily-worded telegram from a timber-milling magnate in the wilds of Taumaranui, "forbidding" him to engage the said magnate's son for his vaudeville company. As it happened, John was not up to that moment aware that any songster from the wilds was anxious to enlist under his wing. Presently, however, a countrified lad turned up at the Opera House, " talked tall " about his concert performances at Taumarauui, and ottered to submit a sample with a view to engagement. It was the "forbidden" youth, but John Fuller, always on the look-out for good vocal goods, agreed to put him to trial. Half-a-dozen bars of the first song were quite enough. The aspiring Taumaranuvian was gently advised to find some other vocation than the musical platform, and sorrowfully he turned away.

This, however, didn't end the matter. Another evening John Fuller was sitting in his stage box at the Opera House enjoying his own show, when an usher stepped up with the announcement, "A gentleman wants to see you, sir." Swallowing his annoyance at the interruption of one of his favourite turns, the manager stepped forth to the main entrance. An important-looking personage there awaited him, andjntroduced himself as Mr Blank, from Taumarunui — the peremptory father of the ambitious amateur. By this time John's wrath was overflowing. " How dare you, sir send me an insulting telegram dictating how I am to conduct my business V he demanded. " Well," replied the visitor, as soon as he could get in a word, " I don't want my son to go on the music - hall stage." Mr Fuller calmly assured him that on that score there was not the smallest danger, and left him to his own reflections. But if anyone else finds the backblocks youth still hankering after a musical engagement, it is as well that he should know now that the said youth's father forbids the banns.

No doubt it is necessary to give tha Zulu rebels a sound drubbing. For all that, the accounts of the way in which it is being done are far from pleasant reading. Last week, for instance, we heard of a Natal force of two thousand hemming in a Zulu impi and mowing down 547 without any casualties on the British side. Little glory for Tommy in fighting with machine guns against almost unarmed savages. It savours rather of the slaughter of the ratpit or the battue of helpless game birds.

The officials at the Auckland Hospital were thrown into a state of excitement one night last week by the receipt of a message by telephone that two cases requiring special care were being sent up. It happened that the nursing staff were short-handed that night. However, the emergency had to be grappled with, and it was. An outside nurse was engaged by telephone, and came post haste in a cab. Then there was bustle in the preparation of beds, and soon everything was ready for the reception of the patients.

All that night the matron and the extra nurse sat up, anxiously waiting for the expected invalids. Daybreak found them still waiting, and never a sign of a new patient. However, in the course of the morning a carrier arrived at the hospital and delivered two tiny cases of delicate surgical instruments. These were the " cases " that required special care ! Now there is the deuce to pay about the expenses and salary of the nurse who was called in so suddenly in the emergency.

A mare and foal were sold at the Hamilton pound the other day for the magnificent sum of sixpence. And yet sausages are as dear in the Hamilton market as anywhere else.

The spectacle of the congregation of St. Andrew's Church calmly discussing, as a matter of course, the purchase of a new pipe organ, recalls the time, not yet so very far distant, when the introduction of instrumental music was the cause of schism amongst the Presbyterians of Auckland. The first harmonium procured for St. James's, for instance, cost the chuich an influential section of its supporters, llather than submit to the innovation, they seceded from the church and attached themselves to one which at that time was conducted in Pittstreet, and subsequently in Newton, almost on the site of the present St. Benedict's, by the Rev. Dr Wallis, who was true to the traditional Presbyterian methods of psalmody, and lost no opportunity of heaping contempt upon the new - fangled " kist o' whustles." What must Dr Wallis and his followers think of St. James's now, when it has progressed far beyond its modest harmonium, and rejoices in a new and ornamental pipe organ ?

There is another instance of the completeness of time's revenges in the fate of Dr Wallis's church itself. One of the venerable doctor's pet aversions was the Roman Catholic church of his day. His weekly fulmiuations against "the Scarlet Woman" made his conventicle a favourite rendezvous with the Orange leaders and red-hot antiPapists of the city. But in process of time Dr Wallis's church passed into the possession of the very body he detested so cordially. It became the property of the promoters of St. Benedict's, and was used in connection with the work of that parish.

The foreign person who desires to know something of New Zealand and who applies to the Government of this country, is treated with great liberality. The literary giants of the Tourist Department are turned on to him, and he is told the most minute things about this colony. When the Tourist Department has done with him he knows more about the colony than most colonials. The Department sends him a library worth about £1, beautifully illustrated, and turned out in a style that few countries are able to reach and none to excel. He gets a geography and perhaps a year book. Then there is a very full and very complete settlers' hand-book, which will take him a month to learn ; a beautifully-illustrated guide to New Zealand, containing some hundreds of line photos ; Mr McMurran's book, maps, extracts from Land Acts, and various other matters. Up to now, the Tourist Department has not got into the habit of sending the report of the Land Commission, which is six inches thick and weighs twelve pounds, but ' so kind is our Government that if anybody wanted one, and sent a bullock team to fetch a copy away, no objection would be made. Since the office-copy of the Land Commission , report has been relegated to the museum, we have been able to move about more treely.

So far as the discovery of the perpetrator of the Monowai swindle is concerned, the mountain has been in labour and has produced the proverbial mouse. The Committee of the Stock Exchange will report on Monday that it has investigated the share transactions on the day of the hoax, and that there is nothing to implicate any member of the Association. At the same time, it will also report that having enquired into the business done in Monowais by one individual who was a considerable seller that morning, it considers his evidence unsatisfactory and contradictory. This will be accepted as a satisfactory white- washing. But surely the Committee of the Stock Exchange knows enough to take more definite action.

Timaru must be a delightfully healthy spot. A story is going the rounds concerning a medical man who lately hung out his shingle there, and waited for six weeks for patients who never came. Then he decided to make for some less salubrious corner of the colony. Timaru had frozen him out. In other centres things are different.

If you happen, on a railway journey, to see some passenger display to the guard a shoddy-looking gold trinket of nondescript shape, and hurriedly return it to his pocket as though ashamed of it, the chances are that he is a member of Parliament travelling upon his railway pass. The new passes are the meanest-looking concerns of the kind issued since the Government departed from the conventional medallions and Maltese crosses, and laid itself out for something that was meant to be characteristic of the colony. In this instance the kiwi which stands for the New Zealand design is a very ordinary and solitary-looking fowl, conspicuous for nothing but its shabbiness. Moulded in about 15- carat gold, the medals are a kind of jewellery from which a London coster would turn with disdain. Small wonder that members are ashamed of them, or that they have pestered the life out of the Acting -Minister of Railways in agitation for their recall. It seems, too, that this year's issue was to be the members' permanent pass— the idea of a change at each election,, is abandoned.. In that case, what could have been better than the tiki or the patu that have been the designs for recent Parliaments t

Blinks is a busy man about town, and, when he promised to take his wife to the theatre on the last night of " Sin bad the Sailor," he had wholly forgotten several letters that must be written to catch the early mail next morning. However, anxious to keep faith with the good lady, he despatched a message telling her that he would get dinner in town, and would meet her at the entrance to the Arcade at a quarter-to-eight. Punctually to the minute, Blinks was there. Standing in the shade, inside the entrance, was a familiar female figure in evening dress. " Ah," he chuckled to himself, "Alice is here before me. Hope I haven't kept her waiting."

Tucking his arm under the lady's, and proceeding to hurry her along with him, he was about to begin his apologies for not being earlier, when the lady drew her arm away sharply with a hysterical shriek, which brought the gaze of all the bystanders upon him. " How dare you !" screeched an angry and somewhat terrified female voice. Blinks glanced at the lady, and gasped, but words failed him. She was an absolute stranger. Before he could attempt to explain, however, his wife hastened up. She grasped the situation at a glance. She explained, apologised, and, in fact, smoothed out the situation as if it were the creased folds of a last year's skirt. Blinks was saved.

It has been made perfectly clear by Premier Hall-Jones this week that none of the aspiring Liberals who consider that they have mortgages upon the vacant seats in the Upper House are to have their ambitions gratified before Parliament meets. Consequently, Arthur Rosser, P. J. Nerheny, Harle Giles, William Johns, Jerry Lundon and Co. must restrain their eagerness, and postpone the packing of their portmanteaux for the present. There is, indeed, more than a possibility that the whole system of ap-> pointment to the Council may, in the coming session, be radically amended. Whether Mr Hall- Jones's scheme for election of Councillors by the members of the House comes off, or whether a system of election by large provincial constituencies is preferred, the. hopes of the Auckland Lib-Labs who have been kept on the string for years will have been blown to the winds. They have, it is to be feared/ " missed the bn«." •- -- •-■ •:■■ '• ' ' :

An instance of the difficulties that hotelkeepers have to contend with in regard to the law as to prohibition orders is seen in a case that was before Magistrate Kettle this week. An expressman was driving from Farnell to Newmarket with two men as passengers. These two men, to the knowledge of the driver, were prohibited persons. On the way they overtook a fourth person, who happened to be unaware of the embargo, and he also was given a " lift." In return for the favour, he was, on arrival at Newmarket, importuned to "shont." He could not well do otherwise than agree, and the express stopped at the Royal George Hotel.

Had the probibitees gone into the hotel bar they would, of course, have run the risk of being bowled out. So only the driver and the man who was shouting entered, and the shouter, at the driver's instance, took halfpints of beer outside to the men who were "minding the horse." As it happened, a policeman was handy — they give closer attentions to hotels than to any other part of a district — and recognised the open-air drinkers as persons under the ban. Hence the proceedings, which were brought against all four of the parties. Luckily for the man who shouted, he was able to make it clear that he was an innocent dupe in the matter, and the magistrate let him off. The driver fell in for a swinging fine of £10, and those half-pints of beer to the prohibitees cost them £5 a- piece. The point is, however, that if the facts had not made it quite clear that the publican had fallen innocently into a trap, his license would have been put in jeopardy.

An interesting meeting took place a week or two ago between a Waikato settler seventy-seven years of age and his brother of sixty-one, whom he had not seen for fifty-seven years, and who had lived no further away than Otago. As with so many other colonial pioneers, the Waikato man lost touch with his family very soon after quitting the roof-tree, and did not learn that hia younger brother came out only a few years later. It was the southerner who learned by chance of his brother's whereabouts, and journeyed to the Waikato to look him up. What an overhauling of fifty years' family history there must have been.

The objection of the Star and of some members of the Education. Board to the publication of the inspectoral (or inspectorial, just as you happen to prefer it) grading of school teachers, is a little beside the mark. Nobody is asking that the names and qualiftctions of the hundreds of teachers in the province should be blazoned in the newspapers. Nor is it likely that any af the papers would consider it worth while to burden their columns with a mere list showing that Mr Smith is in the opinion of the inspectors an " excellent" teacher, or that Miss Brown is " a capable teacher but weak as a disciplinarian." And that, it is understood, is about all that the inspectors' classification shows, over and above the general departmental classification which 'is annually made public in a State paper.

But what the teachers do ask, and what, as a matter of fairness, they have every right to ask, is that the com' plete schedule of their names and the inspectors' pronouncements upon their teaching capacity shall be available for their inspection. Hitherto, this right has been denied them. The most that any teacher has been able to do has been to ascertain from the secretary of the Board on personal application, and almost as a matter of favour, how he or she stood in the eyes of the inspectors. In fact, the teachers have had a strong suspicion that it was the predilections of the chief inspector that principally governed the matter until lately, when the whole inspecting body met in conclave and made the adjustment. Aa regards any favour or bias that might have been shown to any particular teacher or teachers, none of his or her rivals had any means of forming a judgment. All that is now proposed is that concerning, a ■matter that must have an important influence npoa the chances of promotion in the future, everything shall >c done in the light of fry. '' ""