TOPICS WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue VIII, 20 August 1898, Page 226

TOPICS WEEK.

OUR HIDDEN TREASURES.

WHAT a satisfaction it would be to millions of people if the Bill dealing - with unclaimed moneys, which our Legislative! Council has been worrying lately, were the law of all lands. The measure provides that all financial institutions, as well as every person, or firm, carrying on business as traders within the colony and acting as agents or private bankers for individuals or companies, shall furnish periodically full particulars of any unclaimed moneys that may be lying in their possession. The enormous advantage of such a law is obvious. So long as they are not compelled to divulge the information, few holders of unclaimed money, I fancy, will be in a hurry to announce to the world at large that they hold it; and, indeed, such conduct would probably be judged quixotic under the modern business moral code. The result of this concealment must, of course, be that, hundreds and thousands of people are deprived of what is theirs by right. For instance, take yourself and myself. We may both have earnestly and hopefully perused that particularly fascinating publication, ‘List of Heirs in Chancery,’ and found that, our names were not written in that volume, which to many has proved a veritable book of life. But that by no means proves that we are not heirs to wealth untold. In the coffers of some bank in the Old Country, or stone obscure business house, or on the credit-balance of some individual who has no right to it there may be lying tens of thousands of golden sovereigns which some forgotten ancestor of ours deposited there and which his descendants have never claimed. I am perfectly certain that there are several such sums, really my property, distributed in different parts of the world, for my ancestors were farfaring men, with a faculty for accumulating gear, but with no faculty for making proper arrangements for its disposal after they left, this earthly sphere for another. There is, I admit, a certain satisfaction in cherishing this conviction that I am really a wealthy man if all were known; but still I am not philosopher enough to believe it would not be greater if I could put my lingers on the coin itself. I cannot hope, however, to do this under the present condition of affairs. I have no notion even in which hemisphere these auriferous deposits of mine lie concealed, let alone the name of the city, the firm or individual in whose keeping they are. And it is very certain 1 lune neither the time nor the wealth to go hunting after my treasure. But if this Bill were the law of all lands the position would be quite altered. Then by investing a few shillings on the published information I could at once discover the whereabouts of my treasure and take steps to secure it.

There is only one thing about this proposed law’that I take objection to, and that is the provision inserted by the Council in Committee by which the Publie Trust Office, the Government Life Insurance and the Postoffiee Savings Bank are exempt from the necessity of divulging particulars of the unclaimed moneys in their possession. Why, one would like to know, is such an institution as the Savings Bank, for instance,to have the right to keep us in the dark in a matter like this? Such a proceedingon the part of a Government institution is suspicious and might certainly be construed 1 to have been done with felonious intent. Does it mean that if I should suffer a sudden loss of my bank book and my memory at the same time the Savings Bank would take care never to remind me of that little nest-egg I have deposited in its keeping but would lie low and say nothing? Surely such conduct, however much it might augment the possibilities of a surplus, should be beneath the honour and dignity of a Government like ours.

GLORY

ONE of the most prominent features of the war has been the insatiable thirst for glory displayed by the Americans. Not Spanish warships, or Spanish territory, or Spanish gold, or Spanish blood have the sons and daughters of the Western Republic greatly coveted. These were after all but secondary things in their eyes, as I take it. But what they have coveted and still covet with an avidity nothing will entirely satisfy, is glory. Tacitus or some equally knowing ancient has observed that even among the wise the desire for glory is the last of all human passions to be laid aside; and all history justifies the observation. But one would rather have anticipated that in these modern days among a practical people like the Americans, a more utilitarian view of war would have prevailed. If we are • to believe some reports it has prevailed in some quarters; unscrupulous and unpatriotic individuals have, it is to be suspected, used the war as a means to line their own pockets. But among the great mass of the people there have been no such mercenary motives. Glory has been what , they have been feeding on, and they find the stuff so aimbrosial, not to say intoxicating, that, like Oliver, they cannot get enough of it. This being their frame of mind, would it be wonderful if our cousins looked forward to the close of the war with, a certain degree of dissatisfaction; that must especially be the feeling in that section of the army which has not yet had the chance of smelling powder at the front. It must be aggravating - to these gentlemen to think in what a subordinate position they will be when the lucky fellows who have been in Cuba or Manila, or chasing Spanish ships on the high seas, come home with victorious banners flying and the band playing. They may well ask ‘Where will they come in?’ It is quite certain they wall be compelled to take a very back seat while on their comrades are showered laudation and thanks and kisses and all things nice. Secretary Alger was said to have foreseen this little difficulty, and it is alleged that regardless of peace prospects he hurried American troops to Puerto Rico in order that as many as possible should share in the glory of the American conquests. Such a

proceeding may appear to you to savour a little of comic opera, but you can’t deny the advantages of it. One obvious effect of it will be to produce as plentiful a crop of colonels and majors and generals as the Civil War did. When the war is over and done, war medals and promotion will. I fancy, be dealt out with no niggard hand—silver is cheap and it costs nothing to give a man an honorary colonelcy—and military heroes and generals will be as common as Dickens found them thirty years ago. I had a notion that I would go by the States when I took my trip to the Paris Exhibition the year after next, but I don’t think I could face the military element that the war will have brought into existence. I shall even be afraid of American magazines now. It is pretty bad already, but when these thousands of heroes lay down their swords and take up their pens to write their memoirs—good heavens' what may we not expect. It may be Spain’s turn to complain now, but it will be Europe’s turn a little later on. Alas, how we shall curse that Spanish war in years to come!

A CUB PROTESTS.

IN a recent issue I took occasion to comment regretfully on the conspicuous absence at most of our dances—public and private —of the adult male specimen and the far too conspicuous presence of the immature specimen—the boy, in fact, and the boy in that rather offensive stage of his development which begins about the 17th year and does not always end at the 21st. I ventured to say that this sort of arrangement was a bad thing for the girls, who would naturally prefer the grown-up animal to the mere cub, and a worse thing for the boys— a worse thing for many reasons. We all know how at that particular stage the young masculine mind is apt to be overwhelmed and devoured by a sense of its own importance, and a corresponding vanity and conceit; and all know, too, that if the young creature is not to become a nuisance and a bore this mania of his must be repressed by every known species of ridicule and snub.

But to place him as the prominent figure in a ball-room, to surround him with young ladies who make believe he is not a mere cub, but a. full-grown animal —who listen to his inane talk with apparent enthusiasm and ignore with a beautiful hyprocisy his not infrequent violations of good breeding —why that, 1 say, is not the way to cure a cub of his mania, but to stamp him as a cub for ever. I am sorry that these observations of mine have not commended themselves to the class for which they were intended. It appears that some in that class are seriously offended, and one of them, who I suppose may be taken as a fair representative of the breed, has written me 11 long letter in which he gives indignant vent to what he calls his outraged feelings. I cannot give his letter in full, for it is long and somewhat confused, but I will give two or three nice quotations from it, which will serve to explain sufficiently his attitude and his argument. ‘I suppose,’ he says at the outset, ‘that I urn one of those cubs you refer to in your paper, for I attend most of the dances that are a-going, and though I am very young I manage to make myself perfectly nt home wherever 1 go.’ Precisely so, my dear young friend; but

do you not know that one of the strongest objections I have to you is that you make yourself too much at home wherever you go? Has it never occurred to you that those free and easy ways of yours and that too frequent repetition of newly-coined words might be invariably resented by many who did not. show it, and set it down to the account of native ignorance and vulgarity? I beseech you to meditate on this fact, and to believe that superabundance of ‘cheek’ or ‘side,’ orwhatever else you may call it in your vernacular, is not the best or the most fitting thing for a youth of your tender years. My young correspondent goes on to say: ‘You are all wrong about us and the girls when you say that they don’t like our ways and manners. They do like them, and as to slang of which you don’t approve, they have quite as much of it as we have—yes, and can swear like troopers too when they have a mind to.’ I scarcely like quoting the end of that sentence: is it not libellous? Not that I believe there is an atom of truth in it. Nor can I believe the first part of the sentence either; or if there is any foundation for it, then I have indeed been deceived by Portia and her friends. They never gave me. to understand that their tastes lay in that quarter. I fear that with respect to this matter and with respect to many others, the immature judgment of the cub is at fault. It is just possible, however, that some of the fair sex may be partly responsible for his mistake. Fortunately, or unfortunately —perhaps by reason of her sympathy and tender-heartedness — the young girl has a strong tendency to adapt herself to the company she meets, and when necessity arises can enter into the feelings of the cub community and occasionally, alas! affect their way of thinking and their mode of speech. Failing the ripe gooseberry, she will smilingly accept the unripe and even go the length of protesting that it is not at all sour, but the sweetest thing she has tasted. Who would venture to find fault with such amiable hypocrisy? But it is hypocrisy for all that, and I trust my young friends may so understand it; for it is good for them to know that if they are made much of by the girls it is slimply because the girls can find nothing better to hand.

THE CLUB AS AN AID TO ROMANCE.

A recent writer on the subject claims that marriages of convenience show a decided tendency to become things of the past, and he leads it to be inferred that one of the chief factors in bringing about this beneficial state of things is the club — the man’s club, and the woman’s club, and the man and woman’s club combined. There was a time when the word ‘club’ sounded hateful in a woman’s ear. I do not refer to the woman of savagedom, or to the woman of the savage circles of civilised society, for both of whom the dub represents a

hard-hitting instrument in the hands of tyrant- man to keep them in that fitting state of subjection into which they were Ixirn. No, the woman to whom I refer is the woman of the middle and upper classes of society. She has been wont to look upon the club—a different species of club from

the club of the savage—as a dangerous rival, irresistibly luring her nien-folk away from their natural duty of looking after her comfort and pleasure; or, as an impenetrable screen behind which these same men folks of hers retreirted when they had done, or were doing, or were going to do, things which they knew she would disapprove of. On these counts, and a few others, woman hated the club and thought she did well to hate the club. But now this is all ehanged. Woman has now a club of her own, has discovered for herself its irresistible attractions and no longer grudges man his club. She can, indeed, dispense with his society much more easily than she was wont to do, for the woman of to-d'ay has learned in a remarkable degree’ to look after her own comfort and entertainment, and she is rather apt now, instead of regarding the man’s club as a dangerous rival, to look upon it as a friendly coadjutor that helps to keep man from wasting his time and hers by her side. To the bachelor woman especially is the club a Wonderful boon. The bachelor woman used to be formerly known as the lone spinster, whose spinsterhood was almost invariably assumed not to be a matter of choice, since its conditions seemed so very unattractive, whether the lone spinster worked for her living or had had that living secured to her by the kindly providence of relatives, and lived in solitary affluence and ennui. But it is just as easy to conceive that the bachelor woman is a bachelor woman by choice as it is to conceive the same thing of the bachelor man. She, like him, has comfortable chambers of her own, from which, unharassed by household cares, she sallies forth on her business or pleasure, or, when she feels lonely, adjourns to her club close by for chatty or silent company. It has become a matter of almost proverbial difficulty to lure the bachelor man inside the gates of matrimony. away from his chambers and his clubs and the unchallenged freedom of his goings out and comings in; and the same difficulty, in regard to the similarly-eircumstaneed bachelor woman, is now beginning to be clearly recognised. In both cases the lure has to be very strong to be successful. What kind of lure then is likely to succeed with those masculine and feminine bachelors? They Won’t marry for a home—their chambers supply that without the attendant worries of household management. They won’t marry for company, their respective clubs supply that in much richer variety than the society of one man or woman can do. Therefore, the only thing', in my opinion, that can induce them to give up their more or less careless freedom and put mutual restrictions upon themselves, can be nothing less than love, real, strong, old-fashioned love of the kind warranted to wear as long as their hearts. And, coming to this sensible and sentimental conclusion, I would like to point out to the reader the moral of my foregoing desultory remarks, which is that the much misunderstood club, by lessening for both sexes the spurious attractions to matrimony, really does valuable service in making true and strong mutual affection the only basis of marriage.

THE GENTLE ART OF WINNING VOTES.

MANY a politician has found success in the exercise of his social rather than his political talents. A well paid compliment has secured a vote when the most elaborate exposition of a political point has utterly failed. Politicians as a class understand this perfectly, and though a candidate for Parliament may take great pains to explain his policy on the platform to the body of electors, he knows right well that a word skilfully placed in the private ear of the elector, a more than usually conciliatory smile, or an extra warmth in the hand shake, is of infinitely greater value in a political campaign. We have all heard many amusing stories of the wiles practised by candidates for parliamentary honours in commending themselves to the good graces of the constituents. Nothing is more common, for instance, than for the wouldbe member to discover in the lady of the house a beauty and grace and youthfulness no eye had ever before detected; or in the son and heir or youngest olive branch the most tinmistnkenble signs of pre-eminent genius; and to display in the family

as a whole a depth of disinterested affection and regard that is simply incredible. It has remained for a New South Wales man, however, to develop the social side of electioneering tactics to an extent few would venture on. This gentleman, it is said, in canvassing his constituency has been careful to attend every funeral, and to ■bethe first tocongratula.te every happy father. I presume this means that one hour of the day he is to be found following with downcast head and streaming eyes the remains of the dustman’s widow’s second cousin’s grandmother to her long last home, while a little later he may be discovered shaking hands with the proud parent whose latest born is vociferously announcing its entry into the world in the next room. Such zeal in

carrying out the Christian injunction to weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice, may tinder certain circumstances be commendable enough, but in an instance like the one we are quoting it is open to grave suspicion. Can we suppose for one instant that the most exemplary and perfect candidate that ever lived could honestly feel such a sympathy with the sorrows and joys of each member of his constituency as this gentleman displayed? It is not credible, especially in a politician. These tears for the dead must have been crocodile tears, and that absorbing interest in the .newly born feigned. And I can scarcely believe that in most constituencies they would effect their object. However, it is equally unlikely that many candidates will seek to follow the example of the New South Wales gentleman. I should not advise them to try. Attending every funeral, or, as it were, being in. at the death, may be a permissible bit of diplomacy in electioneering; but to be first, in at the birth is quite another affair, and would involve on the part of candidates an acquaintance with the household affairs of the voters, which is out of the question.

BENCH AND BAR.

HAVE 1 not from this lowly judgment seat of mine inveighed against the irreverence so common in the colony? Bear me witness, constant reader of this valuable publication, have I not complained of the want of respect which in this country juniors display towards their elders, and inferiors to their superiors? And now from a higher judgment seat than this — from the Supreme Court. Bench itself—comes a double endorsement of my indictment. Last week Mr Justice Edwards protested against the manner in which counsel treat the Bench, and Mr Justice Conolly followed suit. In the first case, the judge referred to the light way in which the lawyers arrange the business of the Court, without dreaming of consulting the convenience of the Bench, ns a very gross piece of presumption that would never have been tolerated in his day, and he said pretty plainly that he was not going to allow it to occur again if he could help it. Let us trust sincerely that he will keep his word and that other judges will imitate the example he sets. I had no idea that the spirit of irreverence and disrespect had so deeply infected the social organism as these plaints from the Supreme Court show. 1 knew, of course, that children here did not care a brass

farthing for what their parents or elders said; that servants thought it below them to defer to their masters-, •and even that the spiritual authority of clergymen over their flocks was largely a fiction which the flocks hardly pretended to countenance. But I had always imagined that under the shadow of the judgment seat authority could still command reverence and respect and deferential consideration. Even there it appears its power is shaken, and unless our judges make a stand now and eheck the rising tide of disrespect it must eventually sweep them from the Bench. It would be well for our judges to combine together, and instead of sitting long-suf-feringly on the Bench, sit on the presumptuous counsel. All attempts at familiarity or facetiousness on the part of the Bar should be sternly discountenanced, and when the junior counsel makes a pun he should be committed for contempt of Court. How otherwise is the dignity of the Bench to be upheld? Our judges might do worse than take a leaf out of Lord Thurlow’s book who, indifferent lawyer as h« was, still could assume a dignity that was withering to the presumptions. Everyone can recall the story of the unfortunate usher at the Court who, remarking a shadow of good-natured condescension on his lordship’s face, timidly ventured to say, ‘lt’s a fine day, my lord.’ ‘Go to the devil you and your day too,’ was the calmly contemptuous reply.