Topics of the Week

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XX, 19 May 1894, Page 458

Topics of the Week

A PICTURE of Knox Church, where the body of the late Dr. Stuart lay until this (Wednesday) morning, will bear a special and melancholy interest now that the great preacher and noble man who made it the most notable church in New Zealand has gone to his wel[ deserved rest and reward. It was in 1859 that Dr. Stuart was selected by the Otago Presbyterian Commissioners to begin the formation of a second Presbyterian church in Dunedin. In January, 1860 he arrived in the colony and took np the position of minister of Knox Church in that city, which pnlpit he filled until the time of his death. From time to time, although constantly pressed with the increasing cares of a large congregation, Dr. Stuart has occupied almost innumerable public positions in connection with various commissions and other matters. Amongst his recent positions, in addition to his responsible duties as senior minister of Knox Church, were those of Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Otago Boys’ and Girls’ High School, Chairman of the Otago Presbyterian Church Trustees, and also Chancellor of the University of Otago. He rendered valuable services to the cause of education in Otago, and it is largely owing to his energy and ability that Dunedin possesses a University and professorial staff of which she may well be proud.

As a preacher he was fervent and decisive, and he was also a lecturer of great ability. He had a strong voice and spoke with a marked Scotch accent. The principal talisman of bis success lay in the magnetic influence of his character, by which he seemed to attract all classes towards him. His knowledge of men and tact in dealing with them were extraordinary, and as he had the gift of being able to ‘ pour oil on troubled waters,’ dissenstions were practically unknown amongst his people. In private life Dr. Stuart was frank, genial, and warm-hearted. Unostentatious and simple in bis style of living, his personality and force of character were nevertheless so strong that he impressed all who met him with the remarakable individuality of his nature. His wife, a very aimable and excellent lady, died in 1862, just two years after her arrival in Dunedin. Of his three sons two are now dead and the third resides in Australia. Dr. Stuart was of commanding appearance, being tall and massive. It had been truly said of him that he was at once the most prominent, public, and popular man in his province.

The Ztmaru Herold, in a recent issue, devotes a thoughtful leader to one of our cartoons and the lesson to be derived from it. • The great merit of the pictnre (says the article) is the large amount of truth which the artist has succeeded in putting into his drawing. It is a lesson in black and white, which makes one laugh at the absurdities portrayed, whilst not forgetting their more serious meaning.’ The editor goes on to describe the cartoon, which will be remembered. • Here we have (he says) a background of innumerable small human figures over whose beads wave banners inscribed with such words as “ Misery,” “ Drink,’ •• Poverty,” •• Crime.” A rope fence keeps the crowd from advancing to the front, and the barrier is rendered more effectual by the efforts of two or three men (probably Government Inspectors) who are pushing back the foremost. The centre of the picture is occupied by a huge hand mill, inscribed “The legislative sausage machine.” Into the hopper or basin at the top the Premier is cramming Parliamentary Bills mixed with an assortment of the small figures before referred to, which he is picking up from the by the hair of their heads. On the other side of the

machine stands Sir Robert Stout, who is busily engaged in turning the handle. The Graphic’s cartoon is true m its main idea. There is the crowd —society—with all its wants and miseries; and there are Sir Robert Stout and the Premier stuffing the classes and the masses into the machine and turning them out cribbed, cabined, and confined by legislative bonds into what the operators trust will be “ Utopia (unlimited).” The work, of course, is not complete ; nay, it has scarcely been commenced. But the promises are large, and with a good Parliamentary majority the opportunity for action will not be wanting.’ For the benefit of those of our readers interested in matters evangelical a portrait is given of the great Scotch evangelist, Rev. John McNeil, who arrives by the next mail steamer, and who will preach and lecture throughout the colony. Mr McNeil is one of the celebrated preachers of the world, and is a man of undoubted power. In a recent speech he said he had never yet satisfied his own ideal of preaching. As a matter of fact he never had preached, but was always going to, and hoped to do so someday. He was brought up in the ordinary Presbyterian way, and trained for the ministry. In the beginning of his mission work during his student days he took written sermons with him, but was continually tempted to speak when delivering

the sermon. Speaking seemed to him more natural, but reading was imposed by cnstom. He was continually tempted during the discourse to lift his head and say the thing from his heart. His plan was to write so that his thoughts should be plain to his own mind, and the illustrations which were, mostly and railways, of which he knew something, could be filled in as the occasion demanded.’ Mr McNeil is accompanied by Mr T..H. I; Burke, whose expressive singing is highly spoken of.

The idea that God is an Englishman, vith a preference for Englishmen and a yearning to spend all his time in meddling with English affairs, is rapidly going the way of all the other crude blasphemies with which ignorant barbarism has disfigured rational conceptions of Deity. It lingers in England, of conrse ; it will die bard, no doubt (says the Bulletin), but its doom is nevertheless sealed. * No man wirh a sense of humour ever founded a religion ;’ and the obtrusive professors of piety are just as dense as the founders. No one seems to have been struck with the grotesque indecency of Queen Victoria’s action in calling upon the * Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ’ to help her as minor assistants at the knighting of a hard-swearing ex-Republican But this lately happened in England. And when Justice Stephen sentenced burglars Montgomery and Williams to death for hurting a constable’s head, he either omitted the customary shibboleth * May God have mercy on your soul,’ or the papers omitted to report it. Nine times out of ten the Judge doesn’t believe that criminals have a soul, and doesn’t care what becomes of the soul, if there is a soul; and the hypocrisy of inviting the Creator and Ruler of the Universe to save the soul of the man whom, arrogating to yourself the functions of God Almighty, yon are cold-bloodedly butchering, is indeed revolting hypocrisy.

A handsome booklet of Auckland views has been for warded by Messrs Wildman and Lyell. There are some twenty-seven views in a new and very fine photo process from negatives from Mr Utting, who is a very clever photographer and decidedly one of the rising young sunartists in the colony. The book does credit both to the publishing firm and to Mr Utting. The views are beautifully clear and the printing is excellent. The price of the book is extremely moderate. How easy it is to lose things ! Still you would imagine that it would be next to impossible to mislay a king—or an elephant. And yet instances of both have occurred recently. One morning the Belgians woke up to find their monarch missing. For two days the editorial puzzle was to find King Leopold. But, just as the anxiety and uncertainty seemed likely to tell upon the Belgian Constitution, he was discovered enjoying himself quietly at Montreux, which is really an excellent place to get change—for a sovereign. Moreover, at Market Harborougb, England, a couple of elephants, tired of being hitched to a circus waggon, broke loose and deserted. For some time—as I gather from a rather confused newspaper account—they eluded observation, either because they took the traces with them, or because the Market Harborougb people are somewhat unobservant. Finally, however—l still rely on the English provincial paper—they were tracked to a private garden. A minute search was instituted among the cabbages, and the elephants were ultimately discovered.

Signor Tosti, the well-known composer, is (so a private correspondent informs us) likely to visit this part of the world at no distant date, but whether the visit will be private or professional is not revealed. Signor Tosti had the good fortune soon after he came to England to become acquainted with the late Duchess of Cambridge, and he sang to her almost every day up to the date of her death. In an * interview ’ in the Woman at Home we are told that the sufferings of the late Duchess were not to be relieved by medicines, but music, which she loved, never failed to calm and soothe ner. Signor Tosti has in his possession a portrait of Her Royal Highness with this inscription : * A mon cher Tosti, qui par sou talent sait alleger les souffrances de ma vieillesse.’ With the exception of • Goodbye,’ which the late Duchess admired especially, she preferred those compositions of Signor Tosti, written to Italian words and strictly in the Italian style, to others which are more English in their chaiacter.

Every bride who marrieth nowadays is gripped with the notion of a pretty wedding. It is not enough to have made captive an eligible universal provider, but she also longs to lead the cotillon of smart weddings by having bouquets, bridesmaids, and banquet as picturesquely presented as it is possible to make them. * Harlequin bridesmaids,’ Lilipntian court pages, and other flights of the matron-in embryo’s fancy have, however, been improved upon by some recent American wedding functions, where the six, eight, or ten bridesmaids, as the case may be, followed their white-robed leader up the aisle, singing together that wonderful morsel of Wagnerian melody, ‘The Bridal Chorus,’ from Lohengrin. This idea strikes me as charming, and one which might be adopted here with advantage, if only to lighten the intense dreariness and formality of the ordinary tying-up process among our sober selves. New papers and new clubs are the order of the day. Rumour has it. that Mr Harry Furniss has retired from Punch, and is about to start a paper*on his own.’ No fewer than three sixpenny weekly papers are on the tapis, and expect to be on the bookstalls in a very short time. In spite of this, shops, stalls, and tables are groaning under a grievbus load of literature, and newspaper men agree that the past year has been a disastrous one for journalistic enterprise generally. It is a grave question whether there is room for many more papers. In clubland, the Baths Club is the latest topic of discussion. It will open in June next, and the cost of the premises, which are in Dover-street, is said to amount to nearly £70.000. The general committee includes such well known sportsmen as Lords Ampthill and Hawke, the Hon. Alfred Lyttelton, and Mr A. J. Webbe. The aim of the club is to supply its members with facilities for swimming and gymnastics at all times of the year, and on three days a week the baths, swimming pond, and gymnasium will be reserved exclusively for lady members. The scheme is a good and healthy one, and deserves all success. Mrs Gladstone’s vacant place in the House of Com mons has been occupied as quickly as that of her illustrious husband. The corner seat so long associated with her presence in the little railed-off pen at the end of the Ladies’ Gallery—always reserved by the Speaker for ladies of some importance—was last week occupied once or twice by a scarcely less interesting personage, the future Home Secretary-ess, who, in company with the Countess Spencer, sat out the first couple of hours of the debate. Miss Tennant has been styled the English Basbkirtseff, and even if she is only half as clever as she is said to be, she ought to be able to give us a * human document ’ worth studying.

Smoking is undoubtedly bad for children whatever it may be for men, and we sympathise with the good women of Dunedin who have banded themselves together to put down thej smoking habit in yonng boys. Nevertheless, we are not hopeful that any great measure of success will attend their efforts. Smoking is one of those things all boys take to as they take measles or mumps, and while many get over it and never smoke after they leave the school, where it is a punishable offence, others, of course, grow gradually to like it, and never relinquish the habit till death doth them part. But the average boy does not like smoking when be begins; he does it because he gets • tanned ’ for it if he is caught by his father or schoolmaster, and because it is one of the fashionable things to do amongst his set. The colonial youth can in these days of cheap cigarettes start operations on tobacco—in primis. We of a former generation probably enjoyed our brown paper infinitely more. Leaves, too, dried and crumbled, were considered a fair smoke, but the real and correct thing was unquestionably a bit of cane. In

the writer’s schoolboy days there was a tradition that excessive cane smoking would produce jaundice. Consequently it was not advisable to do too much at a time. This supposed or veritable fact was usually casually mentioned by youthful smokers after a short period of laborious putting, and the cane was passed, and indeed pressed, on with sometimes suspicious generosity. Still, most of us enjoyed those stolen smokes thoroughly, not for the flavour, of course—that was revolting, though we declared otherwise —but because there was no more rigid law in the school calendar than that which forbade it. And this is precisely why the anti smoking league of Dunedin will do more harm than good. How they intend to set about the work of prevention we know not, but if, as presumably it is, by making parents and schoolmasters take a more serious view of smoking and punishing it more severely, they will be merely blowing the smoulder into a blaze. A woman has started what she expects to make a national crusade against universal suffrage. Every one is familiar with the names of women who for years have de-

voted their lives to securing the passage of laws permitting them to vote. Thousands upon thousands of women have signed petitions demanding such laws. Dr. Marie L. De Vessey is the first woman to come forward and make an active fight against woman suffrage. During the universal suffrage agitation ten or twelve years ago Mrs De Vessey came forward as an opponent, but she did not make herself especially prominent. About a month ago she made up her mind that the time had come for her to fight again. Now, the spectacle of a woman making a public fight against the granting of the privilege, or the right, as they prefer to call it, of their sex to vote is something entirely unique. Dr. De Vessey has set forth in writing her ideas upon woman suffrage in a manner which will make some women boil with rage. She says :—

* Let us take the entire situation in, concerning woman and universal suffrage. Would not universal suffrage give woman many more responsibilities than to-day lurk in her

range or circumstances ’ Would not the real merit of woman be depreciated by giving her the ballot with which to exercise the rights of State. Would not woman be made more masculine, wherein her more feminine nature and the pure, simple love would vanish from her bosom ’ Would not she grow more avaricious, vain and domineering, thereby losing the case of refined beauty which truly belongs to woman ? Look at this question ; weigh the subject seriously. By woman taking the cause, under circumstances in hand, her responsibilities increase ; man virtually loses the lustre which his God-like spirit creates within him to make him the finish in the temple of science. Woman should not grow so eagerly ambitions as to annihilate her dignity, the principle which virtually belongs to her life, in doing her duty, as to desire to take out of the temple all of the finish, which most undoubtedly will cause a decline as soon as it is placed in execution by woman's universal suffrage. Do you not see right here that man would be robbed of his caste which God—Almighty God —has most truly vested in him ! If there was not to be distinction, for what purpose

were the sexes created ? There is something beyond this life in meekness, in sobriety, in love. Let woman be ever so competent, let man be man, that his full strength of character may be appreciated as such. Let woman be woman, since in the beauty of the earth her works are displayed. Let women ever and forever revere man, and not make God - Almighty God—so small, since He, in the image of God, is man. ’ 1 hen Dr. De Vessey says : • Most decidedly man is the masterpiece in all the universal works in creation.’ That ought to make many women pull their hair, whether they believe in woman suffrage or not.