SESSION AND SOCIETY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XVI, 19 October 1895, Page 482

SESSION AND SOCIETY.

CHIT-CHAT FROM THE CAPITAL. (BY OUR PARLIAMENTARY FLANEUR.) ONE more old colonist gone—this time a venerable and interesting figure. Mr Moir was for many years the best-known Presbyterian minister, and though for the last eighteen years he has been on the shelf, his vigorous intellect and cultivated tastes have always saved him from the reproach of senility. Mr Moir was eighty-seven years of age at his death. His arrival in Wellington forty two years ago was at the end of a voyage from England seventeen weeks’ long. Think of that, ye impatient correspondents, who grumble if the ’Frisco mail takes thirty-five days in reaching us from London. Mr Moir was one of the good old-fashioned parsons who knew their classics. Like Sydney Smith’s bishop, he was ‘a grave man full of Greek.’ Only last year he read through the Septuagint in the original—not a bad bit of reading for one in his eighty-seventh year. By such studies did he beguile old age. The story is told of him that hearing a brother divine bewailing the labour and sorrow of the latter years of man’s life, he offered to send him Cicero’s essay on old age, to show him how pleasant that time of life might become if wisely and philosophically used. General Booth is amongst us and is taking Wellington by storm. Sir Robert Stout is his host ; the Premier is proud to act as his chairman ; the leader of the Opposition makes one of the General’s audience. Whether we shall see these and other notables figuring in Salvation Army uniform and doing good work on the instruments of the band I cannot say. My own opinion is that Mr Seddon would be a capital hand with the drum, while Sir Robert on the cornet ought to attract universal attention. The leader of the Opposition is, of course, a captain already, and his erect and military figure would cause him to adorn and dignify any rank in the army which General Booth might confer upon him. I suppose most of your readers have seen the General and heard him lecture. Of course a man of his brains, magnetic force, history, and unique position cannot help being interesting. As he stands with his hands behind his back, his spare form bent slightly forward, and his keen, nervous features occasionally twitching General Booth seizes upon the feelings of his audience mainly by virtue of his own obvious and intense earnestness. Of course he is fluent, and despite his north of England accent, a not unpleasant speaker. But I am bound to say that a careful attention to his exposition of the way to solve the social problem and banish worklessness and poverty from our midst leaves me still amongst the doubters. He is a great philanthropist, and has done and will do much to abate human crime and misery, but will philanthropy, however earnest, do more than somewhat reduce these horrors ?

People are still giving afternoon teas. I wonder they are not tired of giving, and even more that the other people are not tired of accepting. Bishop and Mrs Wallis gave a large tea last Tuesday. In their case it was unavoidable on account of the Synod. A Synod expects to be asked to afternoon tea. It has rather a gloomy effect taken en masse, but it thoroughly enjoys a little dissipation. Then it appears that the only way to entertain General Booth is by means of a tea, so all Wellington is bidden to meet the General at Sir Robert Stout’s on Friday. The combination of Sir Robert Stout and General Booth is a little piquant, and much relished bv those who stand midway between the extremes. Labour Day can hardly be called a social event, but to the great majority of Wellington people, perhaps it has been the event of the year. I grieve to relate that a nor’wester of more than usual spitefulness and violence tore its way through the ranks of the procession, drowned the speeches, and oppressed the sports. A sad little sight was to be seen from the surrounding heights of the town in the shape of a steam-launch laden with pleasure-seekers and wallowing in a heavy sea on its way round the harbour. Notwithstanding this discouragement the young man in the tobacconist’s told me this morning that it had been a ‘ grand ’ day, so it is to be supposed that the demonstration was a great success in the eyes of those most concerned. Government House being empty while His Excellency and Lady Glasgow visit Hawke’s Bay, Wellington is given over to Synod, Session, and Salvation Army for this week. When these three amusements fail us we shall all go to sleep. Now that Dean has confessed the newspapers fail to excite us.

A wonderful recreation ground is being created out of an inaccessible mountain top at the back of the town. Odds and ends of humanity are employed in great numbers cutting off the summit and throwing it into the gully, behind which, it is surmised, they mean eventually to fill up. They will thus form a great plateau, which will be laid down in grass, and will command the most heavenly view in Wellington. A cricket match played there would be ideal. The only doubt is whether a big hit might not carry the ball, in a favouring wind, over the edge of the plateau into space, or into the harbour, or at any rate plump into the city in the middle of Lambton Quay.