OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 2834, 11 September 1890, Page 4

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

(FROM OUK OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Syhsky, August 13. " Wk air a great people, sir,and we must be cracked up." This was what Charles Dickens considered the dominant note in the tune of self-glorification, which his American hosts insisted on drumming into his ears. And he cracked them up accordingly in such a fashion that they have hardly forgiven him for it to this day. Well, Australians can " blow" a bit too, and the City Fathers of Sydney are by no means deficient in what I may call the national gift. In order to justify themselves in their own good opinion, they considered it necessary that Sydney should have the largest Town Hall in the world. So the hall was ordered, regardless of expense, just in the same manner as the iiouvitm riche ordered the music teacher to procure a "capacity" for his daughter. The hall was built, and we began to talk and write about the vast importance of having a place of meeting for the citizens, where hitherto mute and inglorious Gracchi could inveigh against the wickedness and luxury of the few, and administer a little dexteroun flattery to the superlative merits and virtues of the many. Well, we have got our hall, and a nrible huilding it is—the biggest in the world ! Let every other alderman of every other puny city, from London downwards, hide its diminished head, Hut, unfortunately, it is so big that not a Gracchus among us can make himself heard, in it. Even n trained speaker like Charles Clark finds his voice reverberating back to him and the main thread of his itteranco cut up by the echo of what he said .some short time airo. Gracchus, if ho has frond lungs, and nothing wrong with his larynx, would have a better chance in the open air. " All out-doors " would surely be almost as roomy as " iho hiirKCßt town ball in the world." But the biggest town hall wasnot distinction enon-jh for our glory-loving iddermen. They muat also have the biggest organ in the world. And, as by some means or other, they were able to revol in the command of unlimited wealth, they have been able to achieve their desires in this regard also. They got the biggest organ in the world, and moreover secured the " best " organist (no pun intended) to come and play on it. But here again a trifling disproportion asserted itnelf. Their intentions woie good, but they did not know, us the boy said about the loaded gun. The biggest town hall is of course to be compared only with town hulls. But the biggest orifitn had to be bitfffer than instruments which have filled edifices of greater size than ever a Sydney alderman ever dreamed of suitable for a Sydney Town Hall. Jt had to be bigger than the instruments which would till the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, or the Paris Exposition. But this w.is a very small consideration as compared with securing the biggest. If they had been farmers selecting pumpkins for an agricultural show, they could hardly have displayed a more heroic determination to subordinate all other considerations to the predominant desire for size. So the biggest organ, like the " biggest capacity " before mentioned, was duly ordered ami duly erected, and great high jinks have the Mayor and his* friends, ami the aldermen and" their friends, been having over the opening of it. I ii'ii not quite certain, by the way, whether Gracchus was remembered 'in the invitations But any way the rate-payer* who were omitted have had a opportunity of admiring the noble edifice and the in■•ipiriii" "music from the outside, and ot b'"ing refreshed and exhilarated by glimpses ami snatches of the ,'inry and mr-lody within—oppnrr.uni-tif:="-.v !::.-■-. I ;ieed hardly say thr>y

. .VI n-rv.T 1i..: i:a.! if t!i-- lmildin.ar had ii.io I>.-nn built nor the melody provided. There was just a chance that "this outside iiudienee might have got more music than they bargained for. For when tho liOft trombone —:t pipe with u ealibru somet'lins like a main sewer—was tnrnnd. the piiint and uneonsidered trifles began to fall in i-howiTs from tho ceiling, and timid people began to speculate whether

the roof was not going to be blown off. Speaking seriouMy the organ w as much too big for the hall an the hull for the municipal requirements of the city. All ideas of fitness and proportion seem to have been ignored in order to ewitiro the vulgar distinctness of size and costliness Still there is an imprrssiveness about the mere magnitude of them which may bavo a salti'orv cffnrl,, and if these "few remnrks " deter any alderman who may read them from tho ambition of outdoing Sydney in tlio matter of town lulls and organs. I don't know whether tho caution is needed, but in the days of flourishing municipal balances it ought not to come amiss—l mean, of courne, through balances which are not on (ho wr-.ng side of the ledger. " They should take him by the throat and stranglo him." Comforting for tho person to be strangled, wasn't it ? The speaker was no irresponsible park loafer, or stump orator, but a full-blown member of Parliament, and he was addressing employees of the State— namely, the Railway nnd Tramway Service Association. Tho "English aristocrat," whoso ruspiratory processes formed tho subject of his thorough-going advice, was Mr Eddy, tho Chief Commissioner for Railway. If this is tho epirit of the lawmakers, who can wonder at outbreaks almost as objectionable among those who are called upon to be subject to the laws ? Mr Willis, whoso fiery oratory I have sampled in tho first sentence of this paragraph, has since explained that his meaning was metaphorical, that he did not mean that his audience, or any odo or two of them should literally or actually seizo their superior officer by tho throat and choke him, but that his office should bo done away with. Arguments of this character, however, would be more fittingly addressed to Parliament, who have tho power to deal with it considering that the safely of the travelling mainly depen-'s on the fHelity with which Mr Willis andienue obey the instructions of the roan whom he called upon thorn metaphorically to strangle, and that he also told them that if a certain very innocent course of action were carried out by the Commissioners it would bo the sacred duty of those employees to "stop every engine from ruining, ,, I think we may safely set Mr Willis down as a man who would be much less dangerous out of the House than it. However, now that he has found out by experience the necessity of pleading for a leuient construction of his own public and responsible utterances perhaps he may be induced to take a less prejudiced area of the action of the Commissioners. They are placed in a very different position, and, in tho teeth of bitter oppoisiton from interested quarters, appear to be doing the best they know how for the department under their control.