The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1892.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 13, 1 April 1893, Page 294

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES’ JOURNAL. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1892.

ALL Fools’ Day is far too important a date to be passed by in silence. Surely, not even the wisest

of us can pretend that the anniversary is one in which he has no concern, for all must confess to have played the fool more than once in our lives. Then, welcome, hilarious season, consecrated from antiquity to folly ! We will not be so arrogant as to think we have a right to forget thee—we who have seen the first of many Aprils. In truth, we cannot afford to forget thee, thou harbonrest such a host of pleasing recollections. The innovating age would fain banish thee with good Bishop Valentine’s Day to the limbo of useless puerile anniversaries, but, while we continue to tread the surface of the planet thou shall not want for friends. It seems to us but yesterday that the first of April was as remarkable a day as any in the calender, except Christmas. Then, and then only, was licence granted us to indulge a talent for practical joking, which was marvellously sweet to exercise, but which has since decayed for want of encouragement. Then, and then only, were we permitted to laugh with impunity at the ridicule we had been the means of drawing down on those older and wiser than ourselves. We cannot do such things now, for we have little rehsh in these degenerate times for recreations that used to delight our ancestors it is said, on the plains of Shinar, and for many a century afterwards tickled the fancy of their descendants. But we can look with pleasure—yes, even though there is a shade of envy mixed with it—on the young generation who derive exquisite amusement from sending their friends on bootless errands, while we ourselves speculate oh the origin of this curious custom, which is not confined to Europe, but is found, so we are told, in full force even among the Hindoos.

Several theories as to how the observance arose have been offered, but none as yet have been satisfactory to our mind. It would certainly not be very difficult to assume that, by the celebration of this festival, our ancestors intended to convey some recondite allegory of life. We might then set to work to find a hidden significance in customs which now appear meaningless. Probably our ancestors, who were shrewd folk in their way, originally attached some deeper meaning to All Fools’ Day than we do now. Perhaps, for instance, they intended to convey the lesson, which we all learn as we get older, that to be wise all the year round is not within the power of man, and that much of our lite is passed in running fruitless errands. At least whether they meant to teach such a lesson or not, no one will deny the truth of it. Have we not all known some poor unfortunates whose advent even into the world was an April errand? Have we not met with scores in New Zealand whose journey to the colony deserved no other name ? Often, in the case of the latter, it was the folly of well meaning friends that sent these misguided ones on the fool's errand, from which they can never return. The senders were not to blame. They were not even guilty of a joke as April senders are. They were only the victims of another of those popular delusions which exist in the Old Country regarding the colonies.

We had one of these under our consideration last week. Suppose we examine this one. The transportation of British criminals to Australasian shores came to a very desirable end some fifty years ago. No longer do rogues and vagabonds figure, as it were, in the published imports of New South Wales and Tasmania, and the few who manage to smuggle themselves into these colonies are narrowly watched as dangerous, if not contraband, by the law. Vet, though the Home authorities have abandoned the convenient practice of shooting their moral refuse in remote corners of the empire, there seems to exist among certain classes of the enlightened British public, an idea that the proper method of getting rid of the contents of the family

ash-bin is to empty it in the colonies. Curiously enough, in conjunction with this idea, there would almost seem to exist another — equally strong and equally erroneous — to the effect that the colonies exercise some reforming influence on the wicked, and some strengthening influence on the mentally or mor illy weak. For a long time the West Indies enjoyed this reputation almost alone. The good-for nothing Jack, who had been plucked at his exams four times running, and Fred, who had developed a cosmopolitan taste for liquor, were, in the novels always, and in real life pretty often, sent to join Mr Bob Allen and Mr Dick Swiveller on the salubrious shores of Jamaica. But Jamaica afforded to Jack and Fred other opportunities more in accordance with their tastes than that of reformation. Unfortunately, that most innocent article of consumption, sugar, is half-brother to rum : and raw rum, so dangerous as an acquaintance, and especially fatal in the tropics as a fiiend, proved too often the ruin of Jack and his companion. The colonization of the Australias seems to have opened to the British paterfamilias a new and large field for his scapegrace sons. Here, thought the perplexed parent, lies a country, far enough from his father’s house to make it impossible for the prodigal to return thither, and yet holding out to him a promise of something better than herding swine and eating husks : a countiy, indeed, where, if he but reform, he may live to make his relatives proud of him, and where, should be continue his evil courses, he will be too far off to involve them in his disgrace. The fond British mother, who wept on the suggestion of Tom being banished to the swamps of South America, dries her tears when it is decided that her unredeemed pledge shall depart for the genial Britain of the South. With a lighter heart she prepares the dear boy’s outfit, omitting nothing which her total inexperience of colonial life can suggest. Dreams of Tom, a new Tom, a Tom reformed through the action of some mysterious agency, which, poor soul, she would seem to believe is inherent in Southern latitudes, are her constant solace. She sees, with fond imagination, her boy working as he has never worked before, and developing in full blossom those qualities which she had always maintained, against the world, he possessed.

Meanwhile Tom is infected with something of his mother’s enthusiasm. He, too, has his dreams, and the prospect of their realisation in some measure condoles him for the loss of his present forbidden pleasures. Australasia looms before him a gigantic playground, a veritable Tom Tiddler’s ground, where gold can be had for the picking up, where work is almost a synonym for play, and where life is passed under the easiest conditions. Tom, who is at bottom really a good fellow, no doubt leaves his father’s roof fully resolved to turn over a new leaf. Very probably he has promised reformation more than once before, only to break his word, but he feels that the vow is being taken under new and more auspicious circumstances. He believes for he has by no means lost faith in himself—that he has reached the turning point in his career. Alas ! it would require a stronger character than Tom has hitherto displayed to resist the temptations that assail him at the very outset of his journey. All confident, he sets out on what the future may prove to have been an April fool’s errand. Let us, since we have followed Tom’s fortunes so far, follow them a little further, for have we not chosen him to exemplify the fool’s errantry on which so many a young lad is sent from the Old Country to the new. Tom’s friends, if they have never made a lengthy voyage on an Australian liner, know nothing of the dangers that beset a friendless young man there. But those who have travelled much between England and the South Pacific do. They know that these oceanic steamers are very much the reverse of floating Bethels, and that the companies who manage them are not missionary syndicates, who are as careful for the moral as for the material welfare of their passengers. The amiable Tom is not long in making new friends. Very often these are of a class that he would have done well to avoid. But what can he do? He cannot repulse the fiiendly advances of such jovial fellows, and soon finds himself inextricably mixed up in their set. The enforced idleness on the sea, suggests many way of passing the time that are by no means the best a young man could resort to. Tom weakly yields to allurements of doubtful character, one after another, even although his conscience pricks him all the time he is doing so. The salutary restraint, which the better partof his fellow passengers might exert is not exercised by them, and consequently Tom’s faltering will sufleis from the wantof such avowed disapproval. Folks areleniently inclined on ship-board, and the young mau is no son of

theirs. When our hero reaches his destination, he makes one more effort we will suppose to shake himself free of bis congenial companions, that is to say, if he has not altogether forgotten the parting admonitions of hie anxious relatives.

This is no easy matter, however. Those friends whom be made on the voyage are the only friends—if we can call them such—that he has when he is landed in the colony. Poor Tom, if he enters colonial life in their company, be enters it very often under perilous auspices. Not that they may not be decent enough fellows, though a little fast. But they are dangerous companions for Tom, who, when in their society, forgets his own weakness. They may have strong heads and robust wills, both of which we aie supposing are lacking in Tom. To make a long story short, the outcome too often is that our friend falls back into the grip of old habits, and recklessly abandons himself to their guidance. Then for the first time it dawns on him with bitter clearness that the journey to the colonies has been—for him, at least—an April errand. His little capital is soon spent, and then he turns in search of work. But work for such as Tom is not easily procurable, even in the colonies. In the meantime he must live, and his outfit is called into requisition. In a very short time that wardrobe of his, so thoughtfully chosen and consecrated with a mother’s tears, lies, a degraded parcel, in a niche of Mr Levy’s shop. And his moral outfit! Where is it? The quarterly remittance, which we will suppose has been for warded to him, is in the hands of the rapacious moneylender, and probably spent before it is received. All of a sudden Tom disappears from the city, and his well-known figure is absent from bis favourite haunts. He has gone into the country ; perhaps in order to find work ; perhaps—for people of that class have many a bitter struggle—Tom’s conscience has had one of its periodical awakenings, and he again in his heart vows reformation. But the public house and the billiard room are found in the country as well as in the city. In every little township of a few houses, Tom is pretty certain to find one of them a hotel. He is also pretty certain to enter it, and once there, we can imagine how ail his good resolutions fall to the ground like a house of cards. Ten chances to one when Tom has progressed thus far on the downward road he will never return. His career, from that time forth, might be stereotyped to serve for a similar period in the case of scores of others like Tom, who ‘ loaf 1 at street corners, earn a scanty livelihood on the gumfields, or haunt the bars of second-class hotels.

But why should we make the suppositious Tom the scapegoat of all this misery ? Surely, in our own experience, we have met these Ishmaels of society ? I can easily call to mind a dozen such. There was poor H . What was mortal of him lies within sound of the Kaipara’s thunder. I recollect him when, in all the glory of maslierdom, he first came to Auckland. He lies forgotten by all now, even by his tailor. I think I see him still, high-seated behind his tandem, proud as Phaethon, whirling out to Newmarket; and in many other scenes, down to that which ended his strange eventful history, I have seen him play his part. Long alter he had withdrawn from the town, I have stumbled on him in the hotel of some small country town. He had ceased by that time to play a leading role and was not above being grateful for a glass of beer. He had ceased, too, you might say, to be a remittance man. The hotelkeepers usually drew bis money. But he still retained all nis old amiability and could crack a joke at his own expense. The last time I saw him—curiously enough it was the first of April, and that, perhaps, accounts for his fate being my theme at this particular season —was at Helensville. Never, never, shall I forget that scene. The dimly-lighted parlour of the hotel, smelling of stale beer, tobacco, and keiosene ; James, the billiard marker and oddman, accompanying on a rattletrap of a piano, and poor H ,in character, trolling out to a well-known air in ‘Patience’ doggerel that, as far as I can remember, ran something like this : When I go up to town My lawyer pays me down My weekly remittance, A beggarly pittance. Exactly nalf-a-crown. 1 try to spin it out, And never hang about < lie public-nouse door With a dozen more— Except they' mean to shout. A poor remittance ma n; A beggarly pittance man ; ii'ho has worn out the patience Of friends and relations. And lives as best he can. l)t course you'll see it's clear. One can’t stand pints of beer On a limited screw Amounting to Just six pounds ten a year. One can't affect the swell. For people know, too well, A belltopper played out.; And trousers, when frayed out. Are things which always tell. By fossicking round the shops I got these paten t-tops; These togs which embellish My limbs look quite swellish But hush ! They're only slops. My watch I cannot get. It went to square a debt; My ring must stop Where it is—in pop — 1 can’t redeem it yet. and bo on through half a dozen verses. Poor H ! thou hadst made too great a fool of thyself before for me to wonder to see thee on a first of April singing comic songs for the delectation of drunken loafers in an up-countr hotel.