TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XVI, 19 October 1895, Page 481

TOPICS OF THE WEEK.

IT is perhaps needless to point out here that the Graphic of this week undergoes a development of considerable importance. A very large proportion of the space previously devoted to literary articles of miscellaneous character is now devoted to mining news. The reasons for the change are set forth at large in the commencement of the introductory article. I have no wish to repeat what has there been so ably said by mv colleague. I have here only to hope that the efforts made in the Graphic to supply its readers with full and complete mining news and notes will be appreciated. The gentleman who has l>een given charge of this branch of our work is probably the most experienced and trusty mining journalist in the colony. Absolute reliability and scrupulous exactness are the characteristics which have gained for his mining notes the wide spread respect and popularity in which they are held. He will at all times give prompt attention to queries by correspondence on any subject in connection with the mines except advice as to buying and selling of shares. This, for sufficiently obvious reasons, he declines to do.

MOST of us have, I fancy, accepted Pope’s celebrated dictum, * a little learning is a dangerous thing,’ as a remarkably wise and truthful epigram. Lately, however, I came across a writer who thought otherwise, and really there is not a little to be said in favour of his argument. The writer asserts that the saying is neither wise nor brilliant, and that whether the dictum be regarded subjectively or objectively ; whether the danger of having a little learning be attributed to its possessor or to those for whose benefit it is displayed, the assertion is equally silly and nonsensical. It assumes that everyone must be a complete master of all branches of knowledge, and that a partial or cursory acquaintance with the infinite variety of subjects which we class under the head of learning is ‘a dangerous thing.’ The experience of the world is, the writer goes on, and lately contradicts Pope’s statement. The Latin poet who declared that no man can be wise under all conditions was a better philosopher than the recluse of Twickenham, and when Shakespeare is credited with small Latin and less Greek, and Sir Isaac Newton declares that all he knew was no more than a child picking up a few pebbles from the ocean shore, it is not hard to see that Pope was more interested in the grace of his versification and in the epigramatic structure of his couplet than in its verity.

' IT is true,’ continues our dogmatic friend, ‘ that the tendency of the age, especially in the learned professions, is in the direction of specialization. We have doctors who confine themselves to a single branch of their profession, lawyers who refuse to go into court except upon special cases, writers who devote themselves to the discussion of a limited range of topics, and even preachers who, instead of preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ deem it their duty to feed their flock with dissertations upon sociology and kindred topics. But we cannot all be doctors, lawyers, writers or preachers, and Alexander Pope’s apothegm was meant for mankind in general and not for specialists in any particular profession.

‘ How easy, then, is it to see how grossly he was mistaken. If we accept his dictum as a basis of education, the whole fabric of the common school system goes to pieces at once. We could not teach a child to read and spell and write English without insisting upon his studying Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Maeso-Gothic and a dozen other known or partially known languages. His study of the multiplication table would involve a knowledge of the higher mathematics, until he could calculate eclipses and the orbits of comets and resolve the most intricate mathematical functions into their original and component factors’

‘ Everyday observation and experience furnish a complete answer to the poet’s couplet. The man who is best liked, who succeeds the best in business, and who gets the most out of life, is the man who knows a little of a great many things—the man who has not drunk deep, but has tasted, the Pierian spring-and who has the moral courage and the good sense to say “I don’t know,” when he does not know. The man who knows it all is usually either, a humbug or is selfdeceived, mistaking crude and general impressions for actual knowledge. Of course, if one wants information ou a particular subject he goes to an expert and picks his brains, but there is this to be observed, that the wisest men in specialized fields make no pretence to universality of knowledge and learning. The most of us may be well satisfied with a little learning, and need not think

for a moment that there is any danger in such learning either to ourselves or anybody else, unless we pretend to more learning than we possess, in which case we may expect a shock to our vanity, which, while not mortal, will be found decidedly mortifying and uncomfortable. Let us adhere to and cultivate our little learning, if it be the best we can do, for it is incomparably and infinitely superior to no learning at all.

A COUPLE of travellers from New Zealand have been enjoying themselves largely at the expense of certain trustful Londoners. They arrived in London at the beginning of the present season and took a furnished house in Kensington, and another at Maidenhead on the Thames. They announced that they had come Home in connection with important business negotiations, presumably mining. They lived in very smart style — six servants, a carriage and pair, a dog cart, a steam launch, and a tandem bicycle. They entertained on a lavish scale, and for a considerable time ‘all went merry as a marriage bell.’ Then one fine morning the lady and gentleman went off on the tandem bicycle before breakfast and never returned to thatorany othermeal. Whenthe tradespeoplecompared notes they found that the colonial millionaires, as they had called themselves owed the butcher /’i 14, the baker /’37, the grocer Z'63, the milkman /18, the fruiterer and the wine merchant Z'252 ; while there were a number of small bills for flowers and smaller table luxuries. What the London dressmakers’ bills were had not transpired when the mail left, but my correspondent opines that from the reports of one or two tailors, etc., to whom he has spoken, they will foot up to four or five hundred pounds. The strange part of the story is that the whole swindle was worked on a capital of about / 150. Credit was gained by paying the first fortnight’s bills with ostentatious promptitude. The servants were all ‘ had ’ ; not one of them received a penny wages, save the lady’s maid, who disappeared with her master and mistress. It appears this worthy was the sister of of the missus. To her much of the success of the swindle was without doubt due. She talked of places in Canterbury, of sheepruns in Napier, and of the lovely limes the family had in Wellington, where they had a house for three months of the year. It is supposed, says my correspondent, that the trio are now on their way back to New Zealand, for all efforts to trace them here have proved futile. They have, it is said, worked the same game several times before, posing alternately as Americans, Australians, etc.

WE colonials have much to be grateful for. Residence in New Zealand means that one must do without a certain number of advantages and pleasures obtainable at Home, but on the other hand there are disagreeables which we avoid. One of these is that peculiarly offensive type of effeminate masher who appears to be increasing so alarmingly at Home just at present. An Aucklander visiting London writes me that no colonial can possibly imagine the lengths to which some of the young men about town go in the matter of effeminate luxuries. They sleep in silk, bath in tepid perfumed water, and are dressed three or four times a day by their valets. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘ the majority of young chaps one meets are not like this, but there are an alarming number of them, and I have met one or two wherever I have been as yet. The latest thingisasmall mirror, which is carried about everywhere and consulted in the most public places. A new glove has indeed been brought out which has a mirror about the size of half a crown let into the palm. The device has, so says a paper here,’ he writes, ‘ achieved an enormous success. I myself have seen heaps of the gloves exposed for sale. Isn’t it sickening ? I think even masher C would have stuck at this, don’t you ?’ All readers will, I am sure, agree with my correspondent that it is sickening. Masher C., who is, by the way, a capital fellow, an excellent shot, a capital boxer, and a good rider, was at one time an Auckland notability, owing to his fondness for new clothes, but he was never effeminate. His collars were and are (he manages a bank now) marvels, ‘ poems in starch,’ as someone once called them, but he would never have carried a mirror, and was quite free from such outrageous effeminacy in any shape or form.

ON the first page of this issue there appears an article on silly seasons which we extracted from the Spectator. The silly season this year seems altogether unusually silly, but there is one subject being discussed which has, I venture to think, some interest for colonials. It concerns bathing—should men and women bathe together ? Personally I think yes,and have always wished to see the American an Continental system introduced into this colony. Bathing partieson a hot summer afternoon are a most delightful form of innocent amusement, and I feel certain that if the custom of mixed bathing were once introduced it would at once be-

come enormously popular. And as has been pointed out by Labby (speaking on this subject in Tn<M), if some people like to bathe solely with their own sex, and some with the opposite sex why cannot the authorities at watering places meet this by having three divisions, one for men, one for women, and one for men and women ? This would meet all tastes. Some correspondents protest against the sea being converted into parade grounds, and they urge that bathing should be conducted in a healthy fashion, and for a legitimate purpose. But why not make a parade ground, if people like to pass a considerable time dabbling about in water and not out of their depth ? Others protest against women with nude limbs being in close proximity to men. But legs and arms are both equally limbs. If a woman shows her arms, why not her legs? Who thinks it indecent for a peasant woman to walk along a road with short petticoats and no shoes or stockings? All this is conventional. A Turkish woman, who would be horrified at the idea of showing her face, thinksnothingof pulling back her wide trousers to scratch one of her legs. If bathing with legs bare up to the knees were to become the habit, no one would think more of it than of bare arms at an evening party. Those who concealed them would be supposed to have some reason for doing so apart from modesty.

Exactly so. The foregoing entirely expresses my own ideas. Sea-bathing is a very healthy pastime, but owing to the conventionalities at present in existence it is one which can only be enjoyed at certain hours of the day. If a reasonable number of people could only break through these conventionalites afternoon bathing parties would soon rival tennis and other summer pastimes.