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Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 10, Issue 631, 28 July 1866, Page 3

The election of Mayor for the City Corporation of Dunedin has taken place, and Mr. Mason lias been elected by a large majority, Mr. Grant, of the * Saturday Review,’ standing second. Mason 617 Grant 231 Ross 16 Majority for Mason 336

NEXT-BOOR NEIGHBOURS. (From ‘Saturday Review.’) Nature, it is said, usually. confers upon Siamese twins the same tastes and the same predilections. One brother likes what the other brother likes, and feels what the other brother feeb. The union of a common wall is as indissoluble as the bond of flesh and blood ; but there is unhappily no providential arrangement, in the case of the former tie, which makes it palatable and endurable. A lease for years is not like nature. Interest in a common chimney and common drainage does not give one the capacity for enjoying concerted music through a wall or appreciating the various effects made by the juvenile members of an unseen family to acquire a masteiy over polka music and the scales. Music which is said to soothe savage beasts would be anything but soothing to a Siamese twin. Perhaps the greatest instance of human misery which the imagination can conceive would be the spectacle of Mr. Babbage united irrevocably to a Siamese partner who was fond of the. consertina or the French horn. . . . It is

possible to indicate to ladies and gentlemen of whom you know nothing, in the language of the poet, that “ sounds heard are sweet,” but “ those unheard are sweeter” ; but it is scarcely possible to interfere with the relaxations of friends with whom you dined yesterday, and who are going to dine with you to-morrow. It is true that familiar intimacy with the musicians might save one from some few trifling evils. Among the disadvantages of next-door music, ought, perhaps, to be ranked its startling incongruities. By the morning post you have heard, perhaps,-of the death of a near relation. The blinds are drawn down, and you are preparing to spend the day in quiet and propriety, when suddenly “ Lesbia hath a beaming eye” comes pealing through the wall. This is a misfortion for which there is no cure, and the only thing to be done is to bear it with equanimity. Music, meanwhile, is by no means the worst of the intramural visitations to which next-door neighbours are exposed. It is bad enough, but children are much worse. Babies ought to be a great comfort to the'ix parents, to make up for the misery they entail upon their next door neighbour. A good healthy baby can make itself heard through any number of feet of brick wall, and that innocent portion of the lnt mail 1 race which is always amply revenging itßelf on society for the unkindness of Herod, cannot be silenced by any| expostulation. No vindictive feeling of which the luimail breast is capable comes up perhaps to the bitter burning hatred which the most charitable of men feels to a baby whose bedroom is only separated from his own by a London partition. At such a crisis all the instructions of the Catechism vanish away into nothing. It may be just possible to love your neighbour, but it is not possible to love yopr neighbour’s baby, especially between four and six o’clock in the morning. It is a curious question, and that one would like to see answered from statistics, whether Scotchmen like the sound of babies as much as they do that of bagpipes. There is more variety in the bagpipe ; but on the other hand, it-isnot, strictly speaking, one of nature’s noises, and not so suggestive of domestic happiness. Yet a bagpipe, on the other side oi the wall, one is inclined to think, would be the more cheerful of the two. There are limits to bagpipes. They play chief! 31 between sunrise and sunset, and usually in the open air. Nobody could object to a baby on a distant hill, or a Highland gathering, or a national ceremony, especially if it was heard only at fixed hours and at stated intervals In London 110 regulation of the kind is feasible, and while next-door music only disturbs quiet conversation and repose, babies, like Macbeth, murder sleep itself. While such sufferings are inficted and endured from house to house, it is die to talk of the nuisance of hurdy gurdies and street music.

Jbife is too short, and the world is too crowded, to permit of next door neighbours being united by any real tie. In the country, neighbours have at any rate common duties, and, to a certain extent, common interests. In a large metropolis they have neither. Business and bustle take up the greater portion of the day, and one virtue after another which is characteristic of a less crowded society must of necessity disappear. Hospitality, itself no longer means, with most of us, What it did a hundred years.; ago, or what. it still means in less populated'regions. It might and. does, under altered . circumstances,;entail a relationship of host and guest, to violate the conventionalities of which would' be a crime. It no longer, now-a-days, implies more than the barest aud most naked acquaintance. One is at liberty to dislike and abuse those wht.se hospitality one has received, for the simple reason that one generally knows far more of one’s host’s dinners than of one’s host himself. In a few months one might pa3S him in the street without recognising, or being recognised in turn. The obligation, if any, which we have contracted towards him under his roof is easily discharged by the exchange of a similar courtesy ; and men and women who have dined at each other s houses go on their way again with as little ceremony as if they had only met at a table d’hote. One cause of this is that men are too busy, as a rule, to meet each other, except over the dinner-table. If they do not meet in this way, they will never meet at all ; and the casual acquaintance formed at a dinner-table only lasts a couple of hours. The relation of neighbourhood, like the relation of hospitality, no longer is what it was. Once, to be a good neighbour was one of the virtues inculcated from childhood upon the Englishman. There iB hardly such a thing in modem times as a good neighbour. It is hardly possible that there should be. Railways and large towns have put an end to local ties. lhc whole duty of next door neighbours is probably Bummed up in the maxim to let each other alone, and to abstain from annoying each other when the chance occurs. Mutual convenience will usually suggest some such compromise, but there is little beyond convenience at the bottom, even if such a compromise is made. The metropolis in particular is a vast pool, on the top of which both brazen and earthen vessels float, uncTfind themselves from time to time in juxtaposition. All that they can expect from each other is that mutual forbearance without which passers in the street would be perpetually jostling. Musical neighbours are a sad tax on such forbearance ; but there are few next-door neighbours who would feel called upon to abate their own pleasures, even if they were suddenly made conscious what a nuisance those simple pleasures were to those about them. ______

It is said that an attempt is being made to pass spurious silver coin in the suburbs of Dunedin.

INTERCOLONIAL EXHIBITION. According to the Melbourne £ Herald,’ the Intercolonial Exhibition promises well. The experience and earnestness of the members of the Commission, under the able guidance of their chairman, Sir Edmund Barry, are producing the good fruit that might be fairly expected as their natural result. Favourable replies are received from all quarters, accompanied with applications, for space from intending exhibitors. And there can be little doubt that the building which is being erected to serve the purposes of the Exhibition will be well filled with samples of the industry and skill of the Australian colonists in agriculture, manufactures, the arts, and handicrafts, as well as with specimens of raw material of great economic value and social importance. In the report submitted to the Commissioners at their meeting on Monday last, it .was announced that the space already applied for by intending exhibitors extended to upwards of 22,000 superficial feet, including floor, table, and wall accommodation. The number of applicants was 152. But this was exclusive of any applications from public bodies. The products for the display of which these applications have been made are comprised in the following classes, namely—mineral, animal, agricultural and vegetable, manufactures and useful arts, ornamental art and machinery,/ Thi3 is a goodly beginning. The number above given forms about one fourth of w.hat is expected ,to be the total of the exhibitors. But, of course, upon this point nothing very definite can be said at pre■sent ; and we only refer to it as indicating the alacrity with which the community in this and the adjoining colonies has responded to the proposal to open an exhibition here in Melbourne. As the first of a series of Intercolonial Industrial Shows to be held at the chief cities of the different members of the Australian group in succession, the project might naturally be expected to command pretty general assent. But the zeal and cmpressement evinced in all quarters are something more than might have been looked for.