The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1890.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 41, 11 October 1890, Page 10

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1890.

The impression left after hearing the last concert of the Orchestral Union was one of regret that the exceptional capacity of the place in the domain of instrumental music should be so imperfectly developed at present. It is scarcely too much to assert that, were a national orchestra to be organised in New Zealand, a large proportion of its personnel might very reasonably be selected from the instrumentalists of Auckland, while with strong organisation and good sound drilling the Auckland orchestra would have little to fear by contrast with those of any of the other New Zealand towns. In the department of the reeds it shows a strength and excellence which, were these equalled by the other sections of the body, would put the whole beyond comparison. At the recent concert the performance of the quintette for flute, clarionet, oboe, bassoon, and horn was sufficient proof of the capabilities of the performers on these lines. In all performances, unfortunately, that susceptibility of manipulation and responsiveness to the spirit of the conductor, whereby alone light and shade is produced, appear to be wanting, though in this respect the Orchestral I nion compares very favourably with the Choral Society, where the instrumental accompaniments are fast degenerating into a ‘ scratch ’ performance, pure ami simple.

Nothing is more certain than that in musical performances, as in rowing, assiduous practising together is the secret of excellence, even when the performers are skilful professionals. Much more must frequent co-operation be necessary where most are amateurs. As a London paper recently remarked, ■the quality which makes excellence in a conductor is that of inspiring confidence in the elements he directs. If he is liked and looked up to, the performers attend regularly and play themselves together so that he can at length imbue them with the spirit which he seeks to interpret. iVhen the interest is only of a languid sort and attendance fitful, no sort of finish can reasonably be expected, especially when the periods for rehearsal are so short in proportion to the adaptability of the participants. When persons who have lived in small towns on the Continent of Europe reflect upon the really good-class al fresco performances given every evening during the summer season there, the backwardness of instrumental music in our colonial towns, with their more indulgent climate, seems inexplicable.

It has not taken Bishop Julius long to discover that the bump of veneration is more imperfectly developed on the cranium of Young New Zealand than appears to him exactly seemly. The performances of their representatives in Parliament have also in all probability struck the good bishop as being well up to the sample of the constituencies whose rising aspirations they are supposed to express, for in the matter of struggling to their legs and in holding the floor against all-comers the young New Zealand party has shown itself a rising one indeed. The indications of limited experience everywhere are excessive hope and selfsufliciency, ami a general cock-sureness of ideas which is only corrected by the gradually absorbed knowledge of years. Young communities, in the stage on which New Zealand is just entering, which Australia lias already reached, ami which the I'nited States of America is in places beginning to quit, is a transitory one, such as individuals experience. Keverence for the antique was, until a generation ago, a characteristic of European society everywhere. In the days of our grandparents the smallest innovations in even the practical affairs of life were regarded as somewhat savouring of revolution. ‘ Well, my father did it afore me, and ’is father did it afore *ini, so I reckon it’ll do for me,’ was

supposed to be a regular ‘floorer’ to the proselytising radical who was endeavouring to enlighten the bucolic mind. But even in Europe the hide bound body of society is breaking free from the shackles of custom which have constrained it. With the wonderful discoveries of science and the enlarged intellectual horizon which travel, cheap literature, and photography create, the old sentiment of stupid wonder or exaggerated reverence is slowly decaying. Respect for persons or things, merely because our ancestors respected them, is not now the watch-word of the coming youth even of England, and certainly not of the youth of her offspring. Still, if institutions became antiquated and rejected, there is a culture of the mind and of the eye, in the realms of science, architecture, art, and music which can only be obtained in places where the spirits of men scintillate in huge masses, and the results of their efforts are constantly accessible. With so much of free, open life under a lovely sky, and amid aspects of nature more beautiful, varied, and imposing than any other country of the same size can show, it is not surprising that Young New Zealand should display a tendency to self-complacency. But of the artificial aspects of the manysided intellect of man no one can have a reasonable appreciation without living among the visible manifestations of it, and insensibly absorbing the spirit of culture, taste, and judgment which the great centres of population develop simultaneously with much that is squalid and repellant.

A certain member of the Legislative Council has been pouring forth the vials of his wrath upon the class of insurance men. That gentleman must have kept an office of some sort upon the ground floor near the receipt of custom, and so deliberately tempted Providence and its insurance agent. Anybody sticking out his sign and opening his door in such dangerous neighbourhoods should be careful to seek the seclusion of at least one story as a protection against the insurance man's kind inquiries after his bodily welfare. It is hard to conceive of what additional enormity that muchabused individual has been guilty to excite such phrases as ‘pests of society,’ ‘disgraceful class of persons,’ in which the said honourable has indulged with reference to them. His expression also that the class of insurance agents is composed of those who have failed in every other walk in life, is another gratuitous insult to men who are doing their best to earn a subsistence by honest methods.

Any stick, however, is good enough with which to beat an animal you dislike, but it settles nothing regarding the merits or demerits of the abused object. Indeed, a long experience of life excites a doubt whether our estimate of others is ever anything but the reflection of our own likes and dislikes. How often in making the acquaintance of a person who has been energetically abused or sneered at by a friend on wdiose judgment you thought you could rely do you find him (or her) possessing many qualities which you can honestly admire. People are abused on account of their supposed inferiority of calling, or on account of their pecularities begotten by ill-health or reserve, or because of their social unimportance, and the smaller the community the more intense is the feeling expressed. As Macaulay says, it is those who are useful or agreeable to us and who do not thwart us in our plans to whom we consistently present the same faces. Directly you tread upon your neighbour’s corns what fearful grimaces he makes at you. No doubt the insurance man is a horrible nuisance, hut his motives are prompted by the spirit of legitimate business ; and even if his calling were indeed shameful, according to our ‘ highsniffing ’ notions, the necessity of earning a livelihood would justify it all.

It is common enough to hear the justice of our American cousins ridiculed. The fact that there is a curious indifference shown in the matter of homicide by the people of the I'nited States, and that married persons are rather prone to invoking the sword of Justitia to cut the connubial knot, is apt to create an absurdly unfavourable impression regarding the ordinary course of society there, which is in the main even and commonplace enough. But if American laws are sometimes badly administered, owing to the officials being the nominees of a political party or the ‘bosses’ of that party, the wiitten laws themselves are the embodiment of consideration for the poor and the weak, for the debtor, the widow, the orphan, and the woman.

In the celebrated Blytlre case, which has been recently exciting San Franscisco, and become the subject of much comment in England, a magnificent property in the very centre of the city of the Holden Gate, and valued at almost a million sterling, has been adjudged by the Californian law to a poor English girl of seventeen as against one hundred and ninety-three other claimants. She too, was not the lawful child of Blythe, but as required by the Californian law, he had recognised and acknowledged her as hisoffspring during his lifetime. Dur English law still boasts of excluding natural children fiom inheritance in their fathers’ patrimony, and boasts still further that he is not able to give them the stamp of legitimacy even by subsequently marrying their mother. There are persons who adduce this as an evidence of the fine moral tone of the English institutions, and who consider that the existence of the contrary rule elsewhere is merely a sign of degradation. If the general sense of mankind does not ultimately abolish the right of inheritance, it will at least demand a rectification of the above anomaly in the institutions of our race.

From the point of view of their own interests men are decidedly correct in opposing the admission of women to the ranks of the callings in which they themselves are engaged. The question is not to be decided by an appeal to sentiment, but by a careful consideration of the workings of the world. As far as Society generally is concerned it is a matter of indifference whether a woman or a man does any particular work, provided the work is sufficiently well done. It is not a question of the survival of the fittest at all. There is no reason to believe that in any of the callings hitherto confined to men the work has not been sufficiently well done. The average man has hitherto been quite equal to the average work required to be done by men. With the exceptionally distinguished exponents of any science, art, profession, or trade we are not concerned, such persons, whether they be male or female, always commanding their own price, which is a fancy one.

The consequence of a number of average women workers coming down into the arena of competition with the average men workers must necessarily operate so as to intensify the struggle for existence, and make the chances of men getting employment less. It is, however, inevitable. Before society realizes the fact that there is not remunerative labour enough for every adult of working age things will grow worse instead of better. The capable man who is crowded out by the overstress is just as deserving of sympathy as the woman ; and it is no reason to give that he has greater physical strength, for it is in his skill and not in his strength that his adaptability consists. Does he go down into the ranks of unskilled brute labour he finds the market overstocked, and competitors who are more fit than he for the work by reason of their longer seasoning to physical exertion.

The revolutionary spirit is abroad everywhere. A young lady of the Nihilist persuasion has written to the editor of the daily papers crying out for deliverance from Mrs Grundy —for freedom ‘to live her own life and not that of her great great grandmother.’ She also boasts that she has a ‘ human heart, a real, live flesh and blood chronometer, that beats in harmony with the brightest and best of the sons of the morning.’ How is 'that for high? But after all is it any new thing, the possession of this quality ? We have officiated at early morning functions, and seen countless damsels in airy attire gyrating around with their live flesh and blood chronometers beating in harmony with the brightest and best of the sons of the morning. As ‘ one of the brightest and best’ we have repeatedly taken observations of the palpitations of that chronometer, and hope to do so many times again until we drift into what the above fair correspondent designates as ‘ the sons of the smoky chimney order.’

The only bitterness to it all is that on subsequently meeting the fair New Zealand girl who has been taking observations on the pulsations of your live flesh and blood chronometer beating in harmony with hers at 4 a.m., she calls it all back by passing you in the street with a scarcely discernible recognition. What’s the use of being one of the brightest and best of the sons of the morning if you are to be one of the flattest and worstofthesonsof the afternoon ? Is this frigidity of recognition, varying from a half-nod to the faintest of smiles or the merest twinkling of the eyes, a set off to the delirium of the early morning hours ? Or are the emotions of the lady too deep for verification at a distance ?

As for young ladies living the lives of their great great grandmothers nowadays, we know all about that. We have good reason for believing that our female progenitors never verified the pulsations of a man’s chronometer except he was their affiance. We got it from our mother, who got it from her’s, who got it from her’s, and the joint testimony of this cloud of credible witnesses is convincing, for they could not be suspected of speaking in any way wide of the mark. Nowadays it takesa regiment of chaperones encompassing a girl in hollow square to prevent her giving them the slip at a church bazaar ; so that, like the English legislators with the Irish agitators, the chaperones are getting rather siek of the whole business. Beautiful in its decay, too, is this practice of chaperoning, especially when the chaperone is a young married woman or widow who is far too eager to do a flutter on her own account to take need of the ramblings of her flock. In such a case there are countless men who in the cause of friendship would ‘ bell the cat ’ for the other fellows. Such survivals of chaperoning require no apology for their existence, and are both ornamental and useful to all concerned.