DUNEDIN NOTES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4893, 21 September 1901, Page 3

DUNEDIN NOTES.

[Own Cobbespondent.]

There are certain men, known as " newspaper chaps," who are seriously agitating for the Minister of Justice to take in hand the eccentricities of Mr F. Mallard, J.P., with the object of relegating that gentleman to the — not cold shades of opposition— virtnes and peace of private life. Now, to this I most strenuously and serionsly object. I regard Mr Mallard as one of oar most precions institutions. I view him with the same awe as fcbab with which I regard the CargiU's monamenfc, the J)r Stuart big-feet statue, or the Otago Harbor at low tide on a warm day when there is a hot sun. To remove Mr Mallard from the J.P. ("jolly peculiar") bench would be to shatter one of my most cherished convictions and rob me and many others of a source of undiluted joy. Certainly some very weighty reasons ought to be forthcoming before such a revolutionary step is decided upon. At present the objections to Mr Mallard are ridiculously frivolous. His critics say that he brings justice — that is, J.P. justice — into contempt; that he makes the Court, wben he presides, an objeot of derision and cbaC bis QQUdUCfc 18 unbecoming, undignified, erratic, and absurd. That is all. And I affirm that this is not sufficient. I maintain that the best- of all medicine is a hearty laugh and that the man who can create one is entitled to my thanks. Mr Mallard, J.P., fills the bill. He just makes you scream. He sits np in the seat of authority with spectacles astride his nose, lecturing the drunks, admonishiog the truant children, and dismissing cases that ought not to be dismissed, in a way that no low comedian in a melodrama — not even the comic man in the Ward Dramatic Co. — could beat. And he takes himself so seriously. He knows a lot— few men are better read— but he doesn't know how to say it. He used to write letters to the papers but the papers have had to give him best. That is, they print one letter and burn five. Then he took to the Bench, and I appeal to any unprejudiced person to say whether I am wrong in affirming that on the Bench he is better — infinitely better — than a three-act farce P He certainly gets reported noib. Such are the facts, and I leave them just where they are, confident that no on* will differ from me when I say that it would be a national — nay, an international — crime to remove him from a post that he adorns and where he reflects so much light npon his own intellectual peculiarities and ungrudgingly yields such, an abundance of innocent mirth. Dismiss himP Bather than that I would willingly read one of Mr Chisholm's patriotic speeches twice a day for ten years. Mr Scobie Mackenzie's death was not unexpected. A friend told me that it was a matter 61 either a day or a week, but that the end was certain. This, was on the 10th at midday, and the death was announced on the 15th. Personally, I liked " Soobie." ' I believed in his politics, and I regarded him as a clean, honest, intelligent man. Besides which, judged from the world's standpoint, he was a failure. He had never been in office and he was never likely to be. So that a certain class— Mr Geo. Fisher for example— patronised and sneered at him— iv his absence (see "Hansard.") But being honest and clean and intelligent he was, in New 1 Zealand politics, bound to be a failure*

These men always are. That's one reason why I like them. I only met " Scobie " once and we had*a little chat together. It was just prior to the lasb general eleotion when, according to Mr Geo. Fisher, Mr Mackenzie became a greater failure than ever. We were talking about " tickling bbc mob " and I, in my usual stupid way, asked him how he had the patience to be friendly and pleasant with men palpably ignorant of the A B C of a question. Was it, I asked, worth the candle to pander to their whims and selfishness P "If you only knew," he said, "how I loathed (bis own words) this sorb of thing," He had just come away from some of it. And so he musb have. Imagine a man ot refined tastes having to submit to the heckling of some uproarions patriot in the back row I Bnfc " Scobie " was exceedingly good ib dealing wzfch the back row man. He could, and often did, dress him down deliciously. There is no public man, not even Sir Robert Sboub or Mr Seddon, who could draw the audience that plain, unadorned, never in office, Scobie Mackenzie did. When he spoke, the Agricultural Hall couldn't hold the people, and for nearly two hours he wonld keep them interested and amused with stuff that in another man's bands would be as heavy as lead.

And, then, the receptions he would get ! Turn up the files of nearly* two years ago when tbe great first patriotic meeting in New Zealand was held in the Agricultural Hall and when bishops, judges, parsons, and M.H.R.'s spoke. Who bad the greatest, warmest welcome P Not the recently-returned senior member, nor any of the other orators, bub the plain citizen whose genial way endeared him to all. In fact, so prolonged was the applanso ho then received that he had bo beg that the time it took should nob be taken off, his ten minutes allowance. And now he has gone. Passed away in the prime of his life and vigor without fuss or oatentation, Wo flowers, do public procession. Everything quiet and simple and modest. Everything, in fact, typical of the man as the man really was. .The community can ill spare such citizens.

The police have, at lasb, got hold of the gentleman who has been paying visits to decent citizens' houses when they were not ab home. Some people affirmed that there was nob an epidemic of burglary, bub then some people did nob know. They never do. With these anything short of a bludgeon does no good. They want information that can be felt. Eight or nine householders thoroughly believed in the reality of the epujtemuj, TtoU' pins, and chains, and brooches, and gold-beaded canes, and such like trash hod been carefully collected, hammered into bits, knocked out of all recognition, and then passed by way of Mr Burglar into the hands of the police, where they are now awaiting their owners. The theif, or, rather — as this term may bo libellous — the snapperup of trifles, is a man over 50, well up bo the tricks of his trade, and as £20 was found upon him, in addition to a bunch of skeleton keys, has evidently been doing a lucrative business. He is now in a fair way to do something else. Probably several years, I think I have remarked on several occasions that in Dunedin we do our business in our own particular way. What may be considered infamous in, say, '1 imbuctoo, is not so considered here. If, for example, a man and a woman geb insanely drunk for a week together and reduce themselves to a state of frenzy, during which time the mother bites her child, the legal father kicks him in tbe eye, and both turn him out in the street in his shirl during the mghfc, I say if they do <3o these things here we don't punish them. Far from ib. We hire a lawyer who raises a legal quibble and we pay a magistrate who says it is only an isolated case and we dismiss the charming couple to their homes. Also, I presume, we let them have the child to play with, Ob, we are a wonderful people and please don't, in your wrath, forget it. The grand opera company are doing very well, bub there is room for more. The packed and jammed business hasn't matured, and there was a long, vacant row of six shilling stalls even on tbe opening night. So do not worry. If you come to town and can borrow 6s the management will find you a scab for any nighb without much trouble. I warned you six weeks ago that something was going to happen to the manager of the city tramways, Ib has. He leaves the Council's service.