The Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1891.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 47, 21 November 1891, Page 608

The Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1891.

What were life without its hobbies? A hobby may be de fined as a distraction systematically followed outside one’s work. There are some fortunate persons truly whose hobby is their work. These are the people who look sourly upon public holidays, and wonder for what mankind wants relaxation. When old and young are ascending the tramcars, or hieing them down to the railway or the waterfront in pursuit of the delights of flood or field, the hobbyist of this kind may be seen seeking, as usual, the seclusion of his office, and scowling upon the happy crowd of pleasureseekers. This hobbyist is not, as a rule, long-lived, for the bow that is always bent snaps prematurely ; but when he goes he does so with the sense of having had the fun lie liked best, so he is not, perhaps, to be commiserated. There is again the hobbyist whose professional calling is not of a monotonous or drudging character, and who has never experienced the necessity of overcoming the sense of tedium before it became in some sort second-nature to him. Such callings, however, lie out of the usual beaten tracks of life, and the fortunate possessor of one is rarely encountered.

The most ordinary form of hobby is the liking for some person or animal. Those who devote themselves to an art or a science are not very numerous. Among women they are very rare. The average man may have a passing craze for some sport or out door game, but when the active period of life is past, he settles down to something of a more sedentary kind. If he does not become an enthusiast for bowls, or draughts, or develop into that most hopeless and unsociable of hobbyists the chess maniac, he probably keeps an animal of some sort. A woman’s hobby in the animal line is usually children, and in default of these, her house, while here and there exists a misguided female who awakes upon her piano sounds producing echoes of remarkably strong flavour in the neighbourhood around. But there are everywhere, especially in the vicinity of towns and about the suburbs, persons whose altruistic sympathies lead them strongly towards the cultivation of the society of dogs and fowls.

The neighbour who has a large and noisy family, or who obliterates the recollection of the day’s labours upon the cornet, or who salutes the rising-morn with the strains of five-fingered exercises, is hard to bear. All these hobbies, however, are comparatively diurnal, and do not push persecution so far as to deprive us of our blessed slumber. It is when our neighbour institutes a poultry-yard, or imports a do" <>r even two, that we become sensible of the nuisance his fads are capable of causing us ; for our neighbours’ fowls ami dogs are ever on the alert to rob us of our sleep. Why they should not have the same effect upon him and Ids family it is difficult to understand ; but there is this peculiarity that when our neighbours’ fowls, dogs, cats, or offspring lift up their voices they have a curiously soothing effect upon his ears, while they rack and tortme ours. Things, we are told, are not what they seem, neither are things what they are heard, for the crowing of the big Shanghai rooster has a vastly different import according to the side of the wall from which it rises. In the one case the sleeper murmurs sweetly as if an angel voice had called him in his dreams, while in the other the slumberer awakes with a stait as if aroused by Michael’s clarion, and swearing an oath or two essays to sleep again.

Mr Christie Murray says that the horse is the divinity of the Australasians and the race course is their temple. In this they only present in an aggravated form the ancestral weakness, for however much the church may figure in the rural landscape of England, the love of horseflesh has been

quite as conspicuous in English peopleas theirloveof religion. Seveie moralists are inclined to regard this disproportionate propensity to admire pre eminence in athletics or field-sports as a symptom of deterioration, more especially when combined with betting. A little reflection, however, will show that the prevailing taste for these i ecreations is the natural outcome of colonial life as it at present exists, and that while it is never likely to become wholly extinct, will assume less striking proportions as society in these parts becomes denser and more integrate. J ust now the tone of life in the colonies is semi rural, despite the rapid growth of such towns as Melbourne and Sydney, and it is the dashing and free spirit of station life which animates the present generation. This, however, is a passing phase of taste which will become toned down as other interests develop in competition with it, and localities differentiate in the nature of their ideals.

As for the betting which attends sporting gatherings of every kind in the colonies, that may be taken as an indication of the enthusiasm with which the sport is regarded rather than an evidence of natural depravity in the habitues. The zest of life lies in uncertainty, however much people may grumble at it, and the element of the unknown gives the interest to any contest on which money has been laid. That people should bet is not in itself bad provided that they keep well within the limit of their means. Betting, like every other gratification, becomes an indulgence and injurious, when it has a tendency to get beyond control and leads to the neglect of our social or domestic duties. It is doubtful, too, whether the passion for betting has a tendency to become often confirmed in individuals, despite the great amount of it theie is takes place in the aggregate, for the sporting phase of mind is a passing one peculiar to a certain period of life, and later on subsides insensibly into other interests. If people are blessed with an excess of money above their common needs, they invariably expend it in some passing pleasure, unless they have been terrified by some insurance agent into taking out a policy against old age. Even then there are seasons when the premiums have not devoured everything, and it is a question of dissipating the remainder. Some do it in one way and some do it in another, and the foolish way of dissipating spare cash is invariably the method selected by one’s neighbour, for other people’s hobbies ever strike us as ridiculous and in some cases even as immoral when we can succeed in making a decent apology for our own.

It is to be hoped that the latest news of the sea-serpent is not an absolute canard, for if it be true that the monster has at last yielded up the ghost upon the Australian shore, we have got upon firm ground at last. Never before also has testimony of so unimpeachable a nature appeared in connection with the reports. Sea-captains and sailors in plenty have deposed, stated, affirmed, and sworn as only sea faring men alone can of the reality of such an apparition, but in vain. In these matters the temptation of the traveller to relapse into the mythical after having once experienced the pleasure of making the credulous open their mouths is too great, and where down-right expressions of disbelief were withheld plausible explanations have been invented to proveto the spectator himself that he was mistaken. Even did the tar invoke the testimony of the migrating and-lubber that only made things worse, for what capacity of correct vision can a landsman have who has endured all the woes of sea-sickness, and but barely straightened up his sea legs with excessive draughts of good ship whisky ?

But now cometh a real live bishop, led by the spirit of truth, across Australia’s golden strand one sunny morning in November, and there stretched before him lies the body of the monster who has so often revealed himself in vain. If everything here below is predestined, must we not recognise the hand of a superintendent providence in this ? Possibly that sea-serpent, feeling that his days were numbered, and seeing the episcopal gaiters in the offing under the influence of some occult power crept up in order to give an infallible sign to an evil and incredulous generation. Possibly he may have intended nothing so conclusive as to sacrifice himself upon the spot in the interests of truth, but the bishop, feeling that his veracity was at stake, made his own position as a witness secure by hitting the playful joker on the tail and keeping him there. Al) is specula-

tion, and even now it does not do to make too sure. Bishops ere this have seen visions and dreamed unpleasant dreams after a prolonged curtain lecture from Mrs Bishop or an absorbing study of the Apocalypse or John Bunyan. The most we can hope for the Bishop's sake and our own is that he invoked the assistance, not of the saints, but of the local photographer, and that we shall shortly be vouchsafed a representation of Bis Sea Serpentine Highness. Then will the ghosts of all the discredited old sea-captains and mariners rise up and call him blessed.

The process of exorcising the book-demon fiom the shores of New Zealand is clearly not a simple one, when the aid of the legislature has to be invoked, and the importation of a statute expressly designed to give protection to weakminded persons who cannot resist the onslaught of the shameless canvasser, is one more straw showing the growing tendency to socialism in our midst. Books of the bogie-moral order peculiar to fifty or sixty years ago are now nearly extinct, but persons in the prime of life can recollect the terrible endings which in them were wont to overtake unfortunate children for very trivial offences. In those days the modern bogie-man against whom New Zealand society has at last risen had not appeared, or else he might have subserved a useful purpose in the hands of the traetarian moralist.

No person who has escaped the clutches of the omnivorous book-agent can conceive the extent to which it is possible for the indiscretion of a moment to rise periodically in everthreatening guise and poison the fountains of happiness. How many luckless men, the targets of solicitors and mendicants of all sorts, have daily sought their offices in fear and trembling, with the guilt of that subscription to the ‘ Picturesque Atlas ’ upon their minds ! How at each click of the door-handle have they looked up affrightedly as might Faust when in expectation of Mephistopheles to exact the price of his soul, and breathed afresh when they saw that it was only some Little Sister of the Poor or other comparatively harmless tormentor. For six long years the ‘ Picturesque Atlas ’ fiend put his victims upon the rack, and at this human nature turned. The cries of timid and exasperated housewives, whom the ghostly apparition of the book-vendor has terrified in the midst of their cooking, have been heard in heaven, and letribution long delayed has finally fallen. Let us hope that the accumulated wisdom of our legislators will prove a match for the devilish ingenuity and impudence of the aforesaid demon, and that it will not be necessary to invoke the assistance of the Maxim and Gatling guns which we have laid up as a last resort against aggression.