ETCHINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 7, 18 February 1893, Page 158

ETCHINGS FROM THE EMPIRE CITY

BY TBG RUT6GRATIG IDGGR.

There are persons in this city who think the Wellington Pont is—like Gladstone or myself Post and —an authority on an y and every subject the Pulpit. un( j er the sun. One perplexed individual (who has resided for a year in this land of squalls, in which it seems to be always a March afternoon) asks the editor * Which are the summer months in Wellington ’’—one of the most recondite questions ever submitted even to the Post irentleman, who, however, replied in the usual guardedly editorial manner, without committing himself to anything definite, by referring his correspondent to the calendar. I dare say there are summer months in the calendar. But there arn’t any summer months up Willis-street, nor yet along the Tinakori Road. Another gentleman would be greatly obliged if the Post would inform him what were the maiden names of two ladies who may have been married twenty years ago and who, probably, have quite forgotten their maiden names themselves by this time. A commercial traveller would esteem it a favour to be told by the Post where he can go, on Sunday, to hear a good plain sermon. Naturally enough, the leading journal hesitated about indicating the particular steeple the bagman was in search of—especially as there doesn’t happen to be in the city any such steeple. If anyone wants a plain sermon, he can get it : awfully plain : drearily plain : plain as a willow pattern plate, and quite as common and as inartistic. But a good sermon, or even a good plain sermon, is quite another thing. We had, in former days in the colonies, and I believe also at Home, more pulpit eloquence than we have now. Perhaps ministers feel that a great proportion in number, and I think I might say the nearly whole of the intelligence, of the audience, is incredulous : sceptical : utterly aweary of the old old story. That, anyhow, was the opinion of the Rev. Charles Clarke even a decade ago ; and congregations are not what they were ten years ago in matters of belief—they believe less now than they did then. I heard the Rev. Charles preach before this truth dawned upon him : before, in fact, he became the exponent of Dickens ; and indeed I happened to be present at his first Melbourne sermon in the Baptist Chape) in Collins street, when he assumed charge, (for no long period as it turned out) of that enormous and most cultivated congregationThere was not one vacant place in the building on that summer morning : all the best reading people, thinking people, wealthy people, most fashionable people of the Victorian capital were assembled together: the very air was pervaded by sweet rustle of silks, and a most delicious scent of opoponax and piety—and the Rev. Charles, looking like a clerical Hamlet, and sparkling with brilliants, stepped forth. I remember the young man’s sermon perfectly well, even now. Very little of theology was there in it; but ever so much of what we like so infinitely better ! He drew beautiful word pictures of spring, and of summer (but not in torrid regions) and touched the red leaves and sheaves of autumn with the pencil of an artist—but he took care to leave winter just where she ought to be—out in the cold ! These sort of preachers—these preachers, who can fill churches, however vast, with a melodious voice, and with eloquence from which all trace of anything suggestive of an unpleasant Hereafter is rubbed out —are rare; and the Post knows very well—although it would never do to say so—that we have no such divine amongst us at present. Yet one admires the Post in spite of its occasional evasiveness, for it speaks out very plainly on occasion, and never pretends to believe that untenable theories hold water, or even milk and water. It is truly consoling to observe that even so influential a journal can be desperately hard up, sometimes, like ordinary folk. Such is always its condition when it feels called upon to attack the Government. Something about a rifle range, or the female franchise, or a hospital subsidy, is the length of its tether, in this direction. Latterly, indeed, the Post has become decidedly Liberal ; amt one of these mornings it may perhaps follow the frequent example of its great London prototype, and veer quite round, without any ex-

planation whatever—the only proper way for a journal to veer round. A Clean fc an our a S°> met a Victorian squatter, just arrived, who had not seen Wellington for a decade, and who was greatly surprised at the alterations that had in the meantime taken place in the city. ‘And I understand,’ he said, ‘the country is quite clean ?’ * Oh, bless you, yes,’ I remarked : *it has always been so : it has been clean from the very commencement ; Stafford or Weld or Grey, or Atkinson or Stout or Ballance—all the same : always, anyhow, clean !’ A confused look stole over the face of the pastoralist, who was all the time thinking of sheep. All at once he began to think, not of sheep, but of men who weren’t at all like sheep, and who, moreover, were not at all clean. When I thought he had got a proper hold of a fair number of these men, and that several prominent public individuals were then passing in review before him, I told him that the bottom had fallen out of Victoria because the men he was thinking of weren’t clean ; and that New Zealand was prosperous because our public leaders had invariably been pure and clean. However, he did not seem to care to hear more on this rather delicate subject, and presently he recurred again to sheep. He had heard of the Cheviot purchase, and seemed sorry that that splendid property was to pass away from so many sheep, to a lesser number of men. Nothing so jars the feelings of a squatter as to see anything in the way of the cutting up or the subdivision of runs.

The The health of the Premier is said to fluctuate a good deal, while, on the whole, improving considerably. I understand that the malady from which he suffers is simply chronic indigestion, or gastritis— an ailment not readily giving way to treatment, and most distressing and depressing while it holds possession. There are countless persons here who would be intensely pleased to grasp Mr Ballance by the hand, to look him in the face, and to feel sure, and to say so, that he was again in good health. These persons have the sense to know that sickness likes to be left alone ; that the greatest kindness one can show an invalid is not to worry him, even with attention. Sometimes this is not remembered. On Saturday afternoon a man who said he wanted a passage to Lyttelton, forced himself into the Premier’s residence at Tinakori Road, and demanded to see Mr Ballance. The Post tells the rest of the story as follows: —‘ As there was no messenger available on the premises, Mrs Ballance, not knowing how to dispose of the man, who made himself quite at home, sent him to the residence of a Government officer. The man went there, and without more ado marched into that gentleman’s drawingroom, to the blank dismay of the official’s wife, seated himself comfortably, knocked out the ashes of his pipe on to the carpet, and had a quiet smoke while the male members of the household were being hunted up. On the arrival of the official himself he sent the man on to an officer of the Labour Bureau, and when he got to the residence of the latter, without a word of explanation, he marched straight for the drawing room, where he made himself comfortable, to the alarm of an invalid lady. Finally he was persuaded to go away from there, and has not been heard of since.’ A man to be a Cabinet Minister should set out, in the first instance, with a frame of iron. Even then what he has to do, and to suffer tells upon him. I noticed, lately, that the Poif expressed a very decided opinion to the effect that £BOO a year didn t count for much in the way of remuneration for the labours and endurances of a Minister of the Crown. Why he There is a youth in this city who filed his filed schedule the other day, and why he did so nobody can understand. The Chief Justice, who presided yesterday, in Court, when the young man came up for discharge, said he gave it np, as quite beyond legal grasp of intellect. The insolvent went, of course, to the Po*f, with an explanation, but the Posf only made the puzzle denser by the following notice • The matter you re-

fer to is a purely personal one. On the facts stated we do not see that anything unusual or improper has been done. You should have employed a solicitor to appear for you. Magistrates cannot be supposed to attend to telegrams.’ He says there is nothing of human nature in the Post. I assured him that a man who expected to find human nature in a newspaper would find anything else there except what he expected ; but that I would submit his explanation to the Graphic and perhaps that journal (whose circulation in Wellington alone is very great) might see that something more than a • purely personal matter’ was involved in it. At all events he wrote as follows. ‘Ou the 15th June, 1892, I got a summons to appear at a place called Notown, in the other Island, at 11 a.m., on the 16th May, 1892. The “16th May ” had been partly obscured by a faint line and June inserted after May, but this didn’t mend matters a bit as nobody could get to Notown under double the time, as there is the Pacific and the Southern Alps between here and there. I telegraphed to the Clerk of the Court to say that I did not owe the money claimed in the suit, that I was entitled by law to defend the case, if I so desired ; that Ido so desire; and that yet not being an angel, or Union Company express boat, I couldn’t be there notwithstanding. I heard no more of the matter for many months, but going home one afternoon I found a strange-looking man in my house, and I found, then, that a judgment had been obtained behind my back for this debt which I did not owe—and I don't think anybody did owe it. Everybody told me that I had anyhow better settle the claim, and therefore I filed in preference, for if all the world were to say these proceedings were right and in order (as the Post says) I would still say that they were altogether wrong and highly disorderly. And although His Honor the Chief Justice seemed to think I had acted unwisely, and although everybody else tells me the same, I would take precisely the same course in the morning again, under similar circumstances. Furthermore, although the Chief Justice seemed to intimate that I could not obtain discharge from the Court until this debt (which I do not owe) is paid, I am quite prepared to go into the next world without a certificate, sooner than pay it, and see what Justice will say to the matter there ?’ The curious part of this queer case is that the victim to this remarkable set of circumstances doesn’t owe a shilling in the city where he has resided for a year and a half past, and owes nothing to speak of anywhere else !