THE PUZZLED LUNATIC.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6126, 12 March 1898, Page 2

THE PUZZLED LUNATIC.

1 Clown : " That very day that young Hamlet was born ; he that ia mad and was sent into England.' _ Hamlet: "Aye, marry, why was he sent into England?" Clown : " Why, because he was mad, and he shall recover his wits there, or if he do not, 'tis no great matter there." Hamlet: "Why?" Clown -. " 'Twill not be seen in him there : there L the men are as mad as he." I — Hamlkt, Act 5, Sc. I. t lam a good Conservative and a member of the Gettingham Conservative Club. The committee had arranged a billiard tournament among the members, and as I f wished to get my games played off, I set out one evening for the club. ' On my way there I passed a crowd of ' people standing at a street corner. At L first I thought there might be a fight or an *■ accident or something else of interest. I r saw that they were only listening to a man ! preaching. As I walked away I heard ; them singing a hymn with something ■ about " Earth is a desert drear, Heaven is : our home." 1 A man of decidedly foreign appearance 1 was standing not far off on the kerbstone. He wore a soft felt hat, and a suit of dark 1 tweed cloth, but though he was dressed much like the ordinary citizen, there were 1 certain indications about his faco and manner which suggested the native of ■ another country. 1 As I approached him he turned to me. '■■ Is that true that those people are say--1 ing ? " he afeked. 1 "I am suro Ido not know what thoy are talking about," I said. " They say that the earth is a desert. I think that this earth of yours is a wonderful place." This remark took me a little by surprise. "Of mine?" I said. "You flatter me. I assure you I do not own the earth, nor even a large portion of it." " I refer to you as a terrestrial," ho said. "It is a wonderful globe which you terrestrials inhabit." From this statement, the reador will probably have discovered, as I did, the poor man's condition of mind. 1 decided to humour his phantasy. " Are you not a Terrestrial? " I asked. "Oh, no," he said, " but during the past month I have been taking a flying visit to all the chief places on your earth. What lofty mountains ! What magnificent rivers ! What vast and glorious seas ! And thon, what splendid sott! how rich and fertile it is ! What noble fruits it produces ! What wealth of herbage ! — tho seeds are multiplied a hundredfold. And besides all this, what a treasure-house of useful minerals exists beneath the surface ! ' "I am glad you are pleased with our earth," I said, though it was with some difficulty that I kept a serious face. " Pleased ! " he said, " I am delighted with it, and that is why I was surprised when I heard yonder crowd of persons alluding to it as a desert. It is a wonderfully beautiful and fertile place; a kind of Paradise ; fit to be the abode of a race of Gods. My own moon is a barren desert compared with it." There was now no doubt as to what kind of man I was addressing. " Are you from the moon sir ?" I asked. " I am the man who resides in the moon," he said. He made this statement in that simple and matter-of-fact manner with which such poor creatures usually announce their special delusion. "You are then, in point of fact, a lunatic," I said, and I could not refrain from smiling at the aptuess of my own wit. He accepted the suggestion with the greatest composure. " I am," he said, " as I have learned that one of your names for my moon is Luna, I may be called a lunatic. But I hope lam not unduly proud of the title. I confess that your earth is the nobler planet." " You need not fear that you will seem peculiar amongst us, sir," I said, speaking still with an intention of humouring him. "We have a number of lunatics living amongst us on terms of perfect equality." "Is that so ? I was under the impression that I was the only representative from your attendant planet. But if ever you visit the moon I shall be pleased to entertain you." " Thank you," I said ; " take a cigar ? " He took one from my case. " Am I to eat it ? " he asked. I took one myself, and having Ut it, I began to smoke. " Marvellous Terrestrials," he said, " creatures whose food is fire and smoke." He tried to light his, and in doing so he nearly choked himself, aftor which he returned the cigar to me, and I disposed of it in the gutter, where it was soon annexed I by a little match-selling Arab. " My inferiority prevents me from imi- j tating you in this matter," said the j stranger. We began to walk along the street, and j he resumed his remarks. "I have visited the places where you congregate in large numbers; your towns and cities. But there is one thing that surprises and distresses me." " What is that ? " I asked. "You seem to have amongst you an enormous number of criminals." By this remark I was for a moment struck speechless, for in spite of myself I began to take tho poor man seriously. I felt that there was some truth in what he said. " Crime i 3 said to have been decreasing among us of late years," I said. " Then it must have been terrible in the past," he replied. " Have you been visiting our prisons ? " I asked. " I have. I went into several that stood very near each other in one of your largest towns. In fact, the town seemed peopled almost entirely by criminals. I saw them go into huge stone buildings as soon as the day broke, and their I watched the poor wretches labouring all day amongst the whir and rattle of wheels and rods, and the whizz of steam, while the sky above them was black with smoke. In the evening they were let out again, and I saw them go to their wretched and crowded huts for the night. But I think you treat them very harshly, even though they are criminals. They must surely have committed some crime worse than theft. Are they all murderers ?" The reader may, perhaps, imagine the amazement with which I listened to this extraordinary speech. Fortunately, I remembered that I was talking with a lunatic "What were those people doing while at work?" I asked. " I believe they were weaving some kind of fabric," he said. I acknowledge that I laughed then. "Those people are not criminals," I said. " Not criminals !" he exclaimed, " What are they?" " They are workpeople," I said. " Probably you have been watching the labours of some of our honest Lancashire or Yorkshire weavers." "Do you mean to say that your workpeople live in that wretched manner?" he asked. " That is how they live," I assented. " On such a magnificent earth, too ? " he asked. " Certainly, they are used to it, and they get their week's holiday once a year at the seaside." For some unaccountable reason I could not nelp treating his remarks in a serious manner. His madness seemed to have beneath it. a strange undercurrent of reason. " And are not those places prisons in which the people were working?" he asked. "Oh no," I said, " tney are some of our splendid factories. Those places are the 1 pride and glory of the British nation, and the backbone of much of our strength." « indeed ! " he said. . " You astound me ; 1 surely the people do not work for long 1 hours each day in such places because they 1 love to do so ? "Perhaps not," I replied; "but they must do so in order to live." "But your lovely earth— -your magnificent and fruitful earth— will it^t-sup_HH*

them without such unnatural and wearisome toil ?■" be asked " I am afraid you do not understand our customs," I said. "I am afraid I do not," he replied. "Were not those men criminals either whom I saw working for many hours by day and night before huge furnaces, with hardly any clothes upon their bodies, and with miserable and close packed houses to retire to ? " "Certainly not. They were doubtless some worthy iron founders or puddlers of South Wales or South Staffordshire; honest, industrious men." " You astonish me !" he said. " Can it be that you live under tho sway of some malignant demon who blasts the good gifts of this beautiful and fertile earth." " That is a question I would rather not discuss," I said. " Why need your workpeople live so miserably ?" he asked. " Why do they not spread themselves abroad over the land, and refuse to exist in such a manner." "They have to live," I said, "and they must take what offers. Beside that, we have heavy rents to pay, and our nation has a large expenditure to meet every year in the way of Army and Navy expenses, the Civil List, and the interest on the National Debt." " What is the National Debt ?" he asked. " It is a big debt that has been incurred by the nation in times past in connection with wars and such things. We hav/> to pay millions of money a year as interest on it." As I said this, it occurred to mo that I was no better than a simpleton to be explaining these things to a lunatic, so I determined to shake him off. " I must be going," I said, " Good evening." " Stay," he said, " I should liko to hear more of the customs and systemof govern-, ment of this nation. Is there nowhere we can go for a while ?" "There is the George Hotel," I said, "they have a good brand of champagne." " I shall be delighted to entertain you as my guest," he said. I had no particular desire for his company, but he was very polite and affable, and like most of his kind, he .eeined to be only mad on one point, which was his idea that he had come on a visit from the moon. Beside that, there was the champagne. We entered the hotel and seated ourselves at a table. He seemed to have plenty of money. " Your health, sir, and a pleasant journey to tho moon when you return," I said, holding up my glass. "Thank you." He answered me with great seriousness, and then fell to musing and murmuring about what I had told him. " Poor Terrestrials," ho said. " But you do not all work in such a manner Who were those men whom I saw living together in a big building, and wearing long gowns and cords round their waists ?" " Those," I said, " were probably monks j in some Roman Catholic monastery; men J who have fled the world, and gone to live in seclusion." " Perhaps it is no wonder they have fled from sucli a world," he said; and then continued " I saw some other monks, as I suppose them to be. They were in a large edifice by the sea and they wore clothes similar to those used by your men who rido dbout on wheels. They had little caps on their heads, of which the hair was cut close, while all over i heir clothes was a mark like that," — he imitated the Government broad-arrow with his finger on the table. " Were those men monks, too ?" I burst out laughing. "Those were not monks," I said, "they were convicts." " Convicts ! " he repeated. " What are convicts? Are they another kind of religious men who live apart from the world ?" " Those convicts are our worst criminals," I said, " and the place where you saw them is a prison ; probably Portland Prison." " Convicts ! A prison ! " he said. " You astonish me more and more. They appeared to be better fed and better cared' for than those honest workpeople whom I thought to be criminals. I verily believe that I would rather reside in your prison, than work in one of your factories, and live in one of those nasty little huts beside it." " Perhaps you would," I said ; "we pride ourselves on our prison system." " Wonderful ! Marvellous !" he ejaculated. " I say not that you ought to treat your criminals worse, but I am astonished that your workpeople cannot live better. It appears to me that amongst you terrestrials the criminal is often better treated than the honest man." "In some cases that may be so," I replied. "Surely, you are not all idiots," he exclaimed, with a look of great wonder on his face. This remark, coming from a lunatic, was rather amusing. I could perceive that to his diseased and perverted mind, our system must appear by the rule of contrary. "We do not generally regard ourselves as idiots," I said, with a smile. "I think I begin to understand," he said. " There is some evil influence which oppresses you, and which forces your workpeople to lead unpleasant lives, but you are so good-natured that you try to soften your criminals' hearts by kindness. You deny yourselves for the sake of your criminals and your national debt and the rest, just as some of your mothers sacrifice theii- comfort for their wilful children. I begin to respect you. Poor self-sacri-ficing terrestrials." " Poor lunatic," thought I, but I made no answer. The whole interview was of so odd a character, and his manner, with all his queer speeches, was so solemn and matter-of-fact that I knew not exactly what to think of it all. " Why do you not ask one of your gods to interfere on behalf of your suffering workpeople?" he asked. " Our gods ?" I asked in surprise. " Yes," he replied ; " I have visited the residence of one of your gods." It seemed to me that we were coming down upon delicate ground. I thought he might be referring, in his odd way, to a church. "What kind of a place was it?" I asked. "There was a fair expanse of green herbage and trees around it, and near it were beautiful gardens. Within the noble house were many servants, in fine dresses, going to and fro, and all the furnishing of the place was of the costliest and most splendid kind. In one of the rooms was the god, and no one approached him without doing him reverence. I used my faculty for rendering myself invisible so that I might observe him!" "He was not a god," I said, for I began to perceive what the queer stranger meant. " But he was, for I heard the servants distinctly address him as 'my lord,' " said my friend the lunatic. " He was a lord, I admit," I said, " but he was not a god. We terrestrials of this country have no such gods." " Let us say he was a lord, then, though I always thought the terms were convertible," said the queer stranger. "I approached this lord with awe, feeling for him the deepest respect on account of the marvellous goodness of character which I perceived he possessed. I esteemed it an honour to be able to gaze upon so noble and pure-minded a man." I was in no small degree puzzled by this rhapsody, and I was curious to discover what new freakish idea possessed the ?? v J? 7 lunatic friend. However, I did not think it advisable to interrupt "Having made myself visible to him in tho likeness of a man whom I had seen in the grounds outside," said the lunatic, "I TT* i! B ? i8 lol '<Vand asked perinisfftVl^ t0 g™sp his hand. I contact' X ShoUld be%nn P obled by the askei d hB Sbate hands with y™ ? " I "Not at all. On the confab, he looked,

< much astonished, and even frightened; and he ordered his servants to turn me out of the house." "I am not surprised," I said. " Neither was I, for I perceived that I was not worthy to touch a man of so wise, so pure, so self-sacrificing a character and disposition." " How did you know that he possessed such a character ? " I asked. " How did I know ? " he repeated, with a surprised look. "Surely, that was to be seen by the honour which was paid him by all who approached him. You have said you are not idiots, and, amongst rational men, only a man who has lived a very noble and pure and public-spirited life would be treated with such honour and respect." I smiled at this. As a good Conservative and a tolerant man of tho world, I am net one to enlarge on the peccadilloes of the members of our grand old British aristocracy, and I am strongly opposed to those miserable Radical newspapers which , are always trying to ferret out some disagreeable affair, and print it with a heading in big type about a " Scandal in High Life ! " or " Our Glorious Aristocracy Again ! " or something of that sort. Our nobility are men, like other men, and, having much wealth and a good deal of spare time, perhaps they occasionally make some little social blunders. And now, for a man to imagine that each member of our nobility earned his wealth and position either by the greatness of his talents or by somo extraordinary act of virtue which he had performed, was certainly as good a joke as I had heard for a good while. Of course, we know that the word " nobility " has two meanings. There is a nobility of a man's bodily or mental powers, which is one thing; and there is the nobility derived from high birth and a hereditary title, . which is a different thing altogether. The British public understands this perfectly well, and I thought of explaining it to the queer stranger. Yet what could I say ? What use is there in arguing with a madman? " I should much like to know," persisted the stranger, " whether this lord is respected merely on account of the generally noble character of his talents and disposition, or whether it is because of some great deed which lie has performed." It was impossible to help pitying the poor questioner, for he seemed so much in earnest in his absurd questioning. " It was for neither," I said. The face of the stranger bore an aspect of astonishment for a moment. Then lie smiled. " I fear you jest with me," he said. "Come; tell me of tbe noble deeds which this lord has performed, so that I may rejoice my mind by meditating upon them." His request was certainly ridiculous ; yet his seriousness forbade me to laugh. "That lord has performed no great or generous or noble deed for -which he receives that wealth and honour," I said. The stranger opened his eyes and his mouth, and he stared at nic, so that I feared he was about to have a fit. " You do not mean to tell me that he receives all that honour and wealth for no good thing which he has done ?" he said. "That is so," I replied. For several moments he was speechless. His lips opened more than once, as if he were about to speak, but words failed him. " Are you stating the truth ?" he asked at last. " I am," I said. I looked at my watch, for it was time I was going. "Aro any other men honoured in the same way among you for no virtue of their own ?" he asked. " Many a dozen, sir," I said, smiling, and preparing to rise. Still he sat staring at me in silence; then a look of pity passed over his face. " It is as I feared," he said. "What is that?" , "You terrestrials are moral maniacs," he replied; "you cannot distinguish between right and wrong." Now, I have heard of a drunken man thinking that everyone else was drunk, and, indeed, at times when I have been a Httle jolly, it has seemed as if my friends were more or less intoxicated, but for a man who was plainly and apparently a lunatic to think that all the world was deranged, was certainly a new phase of this psychological problem. I smiled as we left the hotel, but I asked him: " Why do you think we cannot distinguish between right and wrong ?" "It must be so," he said. "Do you not perceive that if many of your honest and industrious men live such meagre and cheerless lives, while such men as these lords of yours, who have done nothing to earn great benefits, are waited upon and pampered in idleness, your system is one which punishes the useful and rewards the useless, and is therefore quite antagonistic to justice. But I am forgetting that you do not know what justice is." "We know what justice is," I said. " Our lords are wealthy because they own the land." " What do you mean ? " he asked. "Surely, the whole nation claims to use the land on which it lives." " Oh, no. Pray do not think that we are savages; we are civilised, and we respect the rights of property." " You do not appear to respect the rights of men," retorted the stranger. " Oh, yes, we do. For instance, if you bought an estate of land, our law would maintain your right to that estate." " Bought land !" exclaimed the stranger. " You talk in riddles. How can a man buy land ?" "Of course he can," I said. "He buys it of the previous owner." " The first and original owner is the Deity," said the stranger. " Has anyone ever bought it of Him ?" "Pardon me, but your ideas are outrageous," I said, for, almost in spite of myself, I felt constrained to continue the argument. "In our present civilized state of society, our landlords own the land." "Do you mean that a few people among you claim to possess all the land of the nation ?" he asked in astonishment. "Of course they do ; and we have to pay them rent for the use of their land." He stood for several moments like one whose mind is sunk in thought. " I perceive now the reason why those lords are so much bowed down to," he said ; " since they own the land, they own the source of everything by whioh the nation subsists, and hence the rest of the people are practically their slaves. But it is a marvellously strange system — one which I could not have believed to exist if I had not found it in operation. You do well to call those men lords, for such indeed they are; lords of everything by which you live. But what right have a few men to own the land ? " "Their forefathers owned it," I said. " But how did their forefathers get it ? " he asked. "They fought for it; most of them," I said. "Fought for it?" he exclaimed. " Surely, you do not mean to say that they fought the Deity for the possession of the land?" "Your ideas are very extreme," I said; " these men fought the original possessors — the savages, and such like." "But how did the savages get it" he ______)_. " How ? Well ; they settled on it," I r6 " But they are dead, and you have all settled on it; therefore, by the same argument, it is for the use of you-its present ° C I U made"no reply. What could one say to such odd arguments ? "Again," he said, "you say that the forefathers of these landlords fought for it. Then why may not you fight them for it ? Are they such giants and heroes that millions cannot vanquish them ? " I laughed at this ; it seemed so ridiculous. Yet, as the face of my acquaintance maintained its look of solemn interest, I mustered what gravity I could command to provide him with an answer. "That would be robbery and spoliation I said. "It is true that most ot theland was first seized qpon "* the fames of;

slaughter and misrule. But we are civilised now." . "Do you allow yourselves to be governed by the arrangements made in the times of slaughter and misrule ?" he asked. I was somewhat nonplussed by this question, and I could only cay, " You do not quite understand the principles of our grand old British constitution." "By my moon and all the planets I do not," he said, and then added, " Surely, the land must be intended for the use and support of the people who Uve on it." " Such a person as you cannot be expected to understand our British Constitution," I replied, for, not being able to answer his questions satisfactorily, I thought my safest plan was to abuse him a little. I had learned that trick at election times when fighting for the Conservative interest. "At least I begin to understand why so many of your honest workpeople live lives more wretched than those of criminals," he said. " You have landlords who own the land, and who take large sums of money, for allowing the people to live on it. Those landlords have hosts of servants who must also be maintained, and, beside that, there are the luxuries, and the producers of those luxuries, on which for the most part the landlords expend their wealth. All these have to be supported by the people who produce the necessaries of life, and these workpeople, through the stress of the tribute which your landlords demand, and through their exclusion from some of the best lands of your country, are forced to work hard and to live wretchedly. Do I understand that?" • "You appear to have a perverted conscience," I said, with some heat, "we do not need any more insane teachers of revo--lutionary doctrines. There are enough of them already." "Pardon me," he said, "but it is you whose conscience is perverted. Surely you want justice." " We do," I replied, "and therefore we do not intend to deprive our landlords of their rights." " But your landlords' rights appear to be other men's wrongs," he retorted. " Nonsense ! The land must be owned by someone, and we may as well pay the rent to them as to anyone else." "Not so, he said. "The land is for the use and support of the people who Uve on it, and was never intended to maintain a« few in luxury and idleness, while the rest live in hardship and comparative want. The rent, as you call it, ought to be paid into the pubiic exchequer, and used for State purposes." " So you are a land nationaliser," I said. " I might have known that all such persons hailed from the moon." " If you have men who hold the opinions I have expressed," he said, "it appears after all that there are some among you who appreciate the difference between right and wrong." Suddenly it occurred to me that perhaps the person before me was not really a lunatic, but an. individual of democratic tendencies who had been trying to work off an elaborate joke at my expense, by pretending to have arrived from the moon. However, I think he got as good as he gave. " You want to wrong our landowners," I said. " A landowner has no right to exist," he retorted. " Would you murder them all ? " I asked. " No ; but I would transform them from landowners into landusers, or transfer the land to such as would use it ; and in any case the user should pay to the State the market value of the use." " That would be a grand system for bolstering up a tyrannical Government," I said. "There would be no need for a Parliament then to vote supplies." "On the contrary," he said, "such a system could not long exist, except when allied with popular representation." " But the rent would be to pay, in any case," I said. " Exactly. But by distributing it among your landowners, as you call them, and among their servants and producers of luxuries, it is wasted on persons of no use to the public or to themselves, whereas if paid to the State it would be used to reduce taxation, to construct public roads, works and railways, and to pay off your National Debt. And another result of the change would be that your landlords and their retainers would have to undertake some productive labour, whereby they would increase instead of diminish the sum of the general wealth. But am I really to understand that there are men already among you who teach these principles. . " Oh, yes, lots of tbem. We have plenty of spouting agitators who do nothing but go about the country and try to upset the minds of working men, and make them discontented with their lot." " Do you call them * spoutingagitators '?" he asked. "I do; and a good name for them." "Do they ever call your landlords robbers ? " he said with a smile. " Perhaps they do," I said. " They are quite equal to it, anyway. But I would tell youthat our landlords are not robbers. They live entirely according to the Land Laws." " And wbo made the Land Laws ? " "Our Parliaments in the past made them," I said. " May I ask of what class of men those Parliaments consisted?" " They consisted for the most part of our best men,- the nobility and gentry of this realm." " That is to say, of landlords ?" he queried. " Perhaps so." . " So your landlords made your land laws for you, did they ?" he asked. " But they were elected by the people," I said. "Are you sure of that? Perhaps you would not mind telling me when those Parliaments of landlords chiefly existed." I had grown weary of this cross-question- j ing, so I gave him a very short answer. " I suppose you know as well as I can tell you," I said. " I do," he replied. "It was before the time of the Reform Bill, when parliaments were, for the most part, rotten, and not representative of the will of the nation. And we now see these things, that, in the first place, private ownership of land is a public injustice which cannot even be supported by the fundamental principles of British law ; secondly, that the present land system is based upon the wild happenings of times of violence and misrule, and has been made more oppressive and tyrannical by laws passed by parliaments of landlords, during times of political bribery and corruption ; and, thirdly, that the result of these unjust and oppressive land laws is seen, on the one hand, in the idleness and luxury of the landlords, and, on the other hand, in the laborious, wearisome and cheerless lives of so many millions of the workers. Is that true or is it not ?" " Perhaps it is and perhaps it is not," ' I said. " But I have no more time to talk with you, I am due to play a game of billiards at the Conservative Club, and I can't waste my time over such nonsense as this." I turned away and left him, feeling vexed with myself for having spent so long in talking to a man who was either a lunatic or something worse. What became of him afterwards I do not know, though 1 heard that there were some strange characters hovering about here in connection with a strike. But I thought I would write this down, just to let people know what is going on under the surface.

Explosives are generally said to be useful for drawing down rain. It seemß that Nature is reversed in Austria, however, where a vine-owner is recently said to have successfully applied them to ward off approaching storms from his vines. The district in question is Windisch-Freistritz, in the Bacher Mountains, where very _estructive hail-storms prevail, and. the enterprising grower planted a battery of mortars on each of six projecting peaks covering his land. When a black cloud came up all the batteries were fired simultaneously by signal, whereupon the cloud opened like a funnel and expanded until it disappeared. __________■_____________-_____ L