Topics of the Week

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue V, 3 August 1895, Page 138

Topics of the Week

IN another column of this paper is reprinted an extract from the Sydney Bulletin, in which the writer gives his opinions on Auckland. Taken as a whole those remarks are decidedly uncomplimentary to the Northern Capital, and will therefore probably be read with some enjoyment in Wellington. The antagonism between Auckland and Wellington is, by the way, one of the things I have never been able to understand. Liverpool and Manchester in the Old Country are, to be sure, on the same jealous sort of terms, but in their case not unnaturally, since Manchester has made a big bid for a large section of the shipping trade which makes Liverpool great. But even though Wellington has succeeded in annexing several head offices, these, and even the transference of the seat of Government to the Empire City, scarcely seem to sufficiently account for the spirit of antagonism to each other which appears so frequently in each city. It was quite inevitable Wellington must be the head quarters of not only the Government, but of the larger colonial banks and mercantile houses.

However, to get back to the Bulletin correspondent’s opinion of Auckland, where on earth did he go to meet all those Scotch people he talks about ? There are in Auckland but a sprinkling of Scotch citizens compared with the legions which swarm in the southermost towns of the colony. Then, as to the charge that the only amusements are mockeries called ‘high-class concerts,’ where people pay 6d to iBd to hear Scotch persons rasp out Scotch music, where in the name of wonder did the correspondent hear that concert, and when ? Scotch concerts by Scotch artists, attended by Scotch audiences, would be an almost petrifying novelty in Auckland. The charge about the restaurants is absolutely and completely true. There are some excellent eatinghouses in Auckland where one may enjoy a certain amount of rough and ready plain fare, of good quality, at an extremely moderate figure, but there is not in Auckland a restaurant where it is possible to ‘ dine ’ or to ask a friend to dine. Aucklanders presumably believe in plain living and high thinking, but if properly started, a really good restaurant where it is possible to dine rather than merely to • feed ’ would probably pay all the same, and this remark applies with equal force to Wellington, where there is also not one single absolutely first-class restaurant. As to bars, the Bulletin correspondent must have been taken round Auckland by someone who didn’t know the ‘ropes.’ The writer is not particularly well acquainted with the bar-land of the city of Auckland, but he has distinct recollections of several bars infinitely superior to the average Sydney or Melbourne affair. The telephone service is just about as efficient as that of Sydney, which is not saying over much, and as regards morality, or rather lack of it, Auckland cannot compete with Sydney or Melbourne. In short, the writer of the paragraph must have been bilious when he visited the Hauraki Gulf.

EVERYONE will be glad to hear that the common practice of asking witnesses and others questions in Court is to be put a stop to, for that, I take it, will be the resultof the Hon. Mr Jennings’ motion in the Council last week. The fear of facing a bullying, grossly impertinent, and often insulting lawyer has kept many a heartless fraud out of court, and has prevented many hardly-used persons from seeking legal satisfaction for their wrongs. This has been specially the case with women, but where the lawyer is unscrupulous and brutal

there are comparatively few men who would care to face the ordeal of the witness box. At present a man, who perhaps at some early age has been guilty of an indiscretion, may years after be required to go into Court as a witness, and as things are at present he is pretty certain to be taunted, perhaps ruined, by the raking up of the forgotten unfortunate past. Such a condition of affairs is intolerable, and Mr Jennings deserves thanks for his efforts to put an end to it. IT had never struck me that the question of hair or no hair, and of all hair and no moustache or beard, and vice versa was of any great interest or moment. My eyes were opened by the perusal of a lengthy article in one of the foremost journals of the day. The writer asserts that there does not appear to be a living scientist who can tell why the hair goes white before the beard with some people, while with others it is exactly opposite. It is pointed out that sandy-haired people go grey all at once—that is to say, the hair and moustache and beard whiten simultaneously, but with dark men it is an 1 even money chance ’ which goes first. Very frequently one meets an old gentleman with silvery locks and raven black or iron grey moustache. 1 Dye,’ say the sapient, sententiously, and, of course, occasionally it is artificial, but as a rule it is just one of the quaint fashions which Nature —true woman—loves to be ever changing. ‘ But science,’ says one writer with some asperity, ‘ ought to be able to afford some explanation of the phenomena. The theory once advanced, for the earlier whitening of the beard, that the greybeard has used his jaws more than his brains, is more nearly witty than scientific. Bearing in mind the theory of muscular exercise and development, the dictum might have a scientific basis, but it is generally agreed that the hair on the human body is rather of parasitic than of inevitable and natural growth, and that a soft and mellowed soil might be better suited to its development.

‘ But jesting aside, there must be some scientific reason for three or four things which we cannot have failed to notice. What causes baldness ? Why does the hair turn gray or white sooner in one place than another ? Why does one man’s head turn silver white, while another’s remains only grizzled ? Why are there so many more bald-headed men than women ? Why, of two brothers, should one be equipped with a full, strong, permanent head of hair, and the other become bald almost before reaching years of manhood ? These questions may not be vital to the human family, but they are certainly of interest, and they should be capable of scientific answer and solution. A head of hair is a crown of glory, whether to man or woman, and there ought to be formulated definite scientific rules under which the hair may be preserved in its natural state. To make hair grow on a bald head is deemed practically impossible, but to preserve the hair in a healthy scalp or on healthy cheeks and chin and to make it retain the most of its natural colour should not be impossible. We have specialists in every other department, why not encourage the education and development of specialists in the department of crinosity ? There should at least be money in the business of hair preservation.’

AN enterprising parson in the Old Country has set the world talking on electrical possibilities by having his church connected with the hospitals and gaol of Birmingham, in which grimy city his parish is situated. Almost everyone will remember that when telephones were first introduced to the public the comic papers burlesqued the invention by supposing all sorts of what were then looked upon as impossible improvements aud developments of the invention, and one of these was that of having one’s private house connected with the concert hall, the theatre, and on Sunday the church. Now. as it is not altogether unusual. the thing that was jokingly suggested as an almost absurd impossibility has become a solid fact, and people and papers are discussing the advisability and practicability of having telephone connection with all places likely to prove pleasant or interesting. It has been suggested more than once that the phonograph should be used instead of Hansard reporters for the recording of parliamentary debates. Now it is urged that rooms should be filled with loud-speaking telephones connected with the House, and that on paying a certain fee one might sit in an arm-chair in such a room and listen to the impassioned eloquence of a Seddon, a Russell, a

Hee Hem, or an Earnshaw. One fears that so far as New Zealanders are concerned the fee would have to be moderate, extremely moderate. The rooms would probably become the haunt of persons suffering from insommnia, for whom no doubt they would be regarded as a specific. One extremely happy suggestion with regard to the perfected telephone system is that churches should get their singing and music on tap, so to phrase it. It is pointed out that one central church choir might be subscribed for by a syndicate of say forty or fifty churches, or even four or five. On the number of the syndicate and its wealth would, of course, depend the amount ‘ turned on,’ but certainly each individual church would have better singing. What there was of it would be equal to the best. At election times, too —from which may we be delivered for a month or so —the candidate would be able to address his constituents in twenty halls simultaneously. Probably in a year or so the kintoscope will likewise be so greatly improved that not only will one be able to sit in the arm chair and turn the music of the opera on, but see the action as well.

IT seems quite natural that a startling case of somnambulism should be reported from Sleepy Hollow. Writing from Nelson, a correspondent states that a prominent resident of that beautiful township was nearly scared out of his life the other morning. He was returning home at four o'clock, after a dance—a Masonic function or some other festivity. He was absolutely, and • even painfully sober, for the morning air would assuredly have been more tempered to a man with a fair share of whisky as cargo. As it was the citizen felt desperately cold, and decided to warm himself by running home. He was just preparing to start, when coming towards him he saw the figure of a woman clothed in white and waving a torch. ‘ Distilled almost to jelly by the act of fear,’ and with every inclination to run but no power, the Nelsonian waited with gasping breath and knees which smote together. When the figure passed, however, he saw it was not as he had naturally imagined, a ghost, but a somnambulist. Being frightened to wake her up, he followed her for a considerable distance, when she suddenly and quite unaccountably disappeared. Such is the story as told by my correspondent. I should have thought it a hoax save that something very like its skeleton appears in the local paper. I fear my Nelson scribbler’s note contains what Pooh Bah called corroborative detail, but since there is nothing offensive in it, it may perhaps be allowed to pass.

THE general public will probably view with considerable satisfaction the move being made by Christchurch hotelkeepers to render it illegal for hotels to be bound to brewers. Tied houses are the curse of the liquor trade, and if instead of attempting to legislate ahead of public wants or desires the prohibitionists would lend their assistance to the obtaining of a law which would set the hotelkeeper free from the brewer, they would be doing really good service to the cause of temperance. As affairs now stand the hotels throughout New Zealand, with scarce as many exceptions as one could count on one’s fingers, belong to great brewers and wine merchants. This means that the hotelkeeper is forced to keep only those brands and classes of liquor which give his employer—for that is what it comes to—the largest revenue. Of course in the towns, or those portions of the towns where there is brisk competition, the public protects itself to some extent, for if it is dissatisfied with one place it goes to another. But in the country, or in certain portions of the city, there may be no convenient opposition. It is probably merely a choice as to the relative badness of the liquor sold. Of course the extreme section of the temperance party refuse to see why the law should protect a man from bad liquor. ‘All liquor is bad,’ they say, ‘and to make laws which would guarantee the qualitv would not only be absurd in our idea, since the best is bad, but would be worse than absurd in that if the liquor were better the temptation to drink oftener and more would be greater.’ This is not bad reasoning looked at from their point of view, but it is really unsound. If liquor were good there would be less vice and drunkenness and misery, and this is after all the ultimate desire of the temperance party. Prohibition is only the means to the end, though this fact has been somewhat overlooked in late years.

Cavour Cigars. Smoke Cavour Cigars. Frossard’s Cavour Cigars, 8 for 1/3 —‘Ad. 3.)