TOPICS WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXIV, 10 December 1898, Page 742

TOPICS WEEK.

I SING OF EXHIBITIONS. IFEEL I ought to say something about the Auckland Exhibition, which was opened by the Governor last week, but I confess I have the greatest difficulty in knowing just what to say. The newspapers have used up all the ordinary generalities available for such things, and to go into details in the space of a paragraph would be out of the question. No subject, it is said, is altogether incapable of original or even poetic treatment; and that may be so; but, I maintain that to say original and poetical things about "stacks of merchandise and machinery would tax the faculty of the most fluent and universal genius. The fact that there was no ode at the opening of this exhibition speaks for itself. Even the

muse of Tomlinson, of Auckland, which on previous occasions of note ascended the highest heaven of invention. was silent. I can imagine that gifted bard in the serene solitude of his chamber, or on the breezy top of Mount Eden beneath the waning stars, endeavouring in vain to hammer out a song in honour of the Exhibition. '1 he late poet laureate achieved the task in the case of the great international exhibition, but with no very wonderful success; and that genial satirist Thackeray gives us the reduetio ad absurdum of the prop-

osition that it is possible to wax poetic over such matters in that famous description of the Crystal I’alaee by the Molony of Killbally Molony. On a smaller scale the Auckland show presents much the same features as did ‘the palace made o’ windows,’ for if we can hardly say that There’s staym Ingynes That stand in lines Enormous and amazing That squeal in sport Like whales in sport Or elephants a-grazing. To a certainty There's carts and gigs And pins for pigs, There's dll biers and there's harrows. And ploughs like toys For little boys, And illiglnt wheelbarrows. And lash ins more Of things in store, Hut thim one can't remlmber; Nor could disclose Did he compose From now till next Novimber! Probably a somewhat shorter period would suffice to exhaust even in rhyme the catalogue of exhibits in Auckland; but, 1 do not feel equal to undertaking the task, and I scarcely think that if I t,.d undertake it the recital would greatly further the interests of the Exhibition; but if the Executive Committee think otherwise, and believe that in place of one of the classic subjects chosen for the bigconcerts a categorical account of the contents of the exhibits arranged in oratorio, cantata, or opera form would prove a draw, I am willing to supply the words at so much a line if some of our musicians will furnish the music. That in these advertising days the thing might easily be a great financial success 1 have little doubt. 1 think I know some merchants who would give much for a pretty lyric in laudation of their tea, and even agents for machinery might recognise the advantage of a tuneful refrain sung by five hundred voices, setting forth the superiority over all others in the market of their patent double-action pumps.

THE FLOWERS OF THE GARDEN

SOME five of those Legislative Councillors who were appointed to the lipper House for a term of seven years will shortly have to lay down their honours and retire from that Eden, for their time is about to expire and they must go forth. One can imagine that it is with no slight feeling of regret that these gentlemen will descend from their eminence and mingle with the common crowd. It is all very true to argue that they knew the end must come; but do you suppose that would make them any the more prepared for it? We all know that we must die, but how few of us are resigned and ready to go hence when the summons comes. Seven years seems a short enough period when you are looking back on it, but when the seasons lie before you in one long shining vista the period seems interminable. What one of these twelve who are now about to say a long farewell to all their greatness troubled himself seven years ago about this final day? If it ever cost any of them an uneasy thought there was always the comforting reflection that seven years is a long time, and that no one knows what changes may take place in such a period. The associations of the Legislative Council are of a kind to deaden the sense of temporary tenure in the minds of the short term men. They are thrown much in contact with gentlemen who are life habitants of that happy place, and whose whole complexion of thought is in harmony with the idea of permananey. Beside these happy individuals the short term men are as the flowers of a season beside the oak tree. but. all the same, it is hard for them to remember this and not to regard themselves as being quite as fixed ornaments of that delightful garden as the others. Consequently what a wrench it must be to them to find themselves, just when they had struck root deep in the kindly legislative soil and were beginning to come into full bearing, to find themselves, I say, rudely plucked up by the root and east over the garden wall. Any one of them would naturally hope that some kindly in-

terixxsing voice might, at least in his ease, be heard praying the woodman to 'spare that tree.’ Physiologists tell us that our bodies undergo an entire change in the course of every seven years. Probably our minds, to some extent, obey the same law. Just see then how grievously this must act in the ease of these retiring legislative councilors. On this hypothesis they have only become perfectly reconciled to the dignity and ease of their position when they are called on to vacate it. There is a refinement of cruelty in this arrangement that was certainly never intended. How much easier it would have been for these poor men to sever the connection hail it only been of two or three years’ standing. But now' that the very fibres of their natures are interwoven with the legislative soil, what a shock to their whole system must it be to have them torn away. Just when he thinks, ■good easy man, full surely his greatness is a ripening’ to feel the relentless fingers of the gardener tightening on his stem—ugh, what a terrible ordeal!

THE FEMALE VOICE. I 11 AVE been led to deduct. from a deliberate consideration of the criticisms passed upon individual members of the fair sex by their male relatives, that a woman’s chief medium of transgression is her tongue. In making this deduction I don't lay claim to any startling originality, for 1 rather fancy it was made, some two thousand years ago or more, by the writer of the Book of Proverbs; also by other philosophical observers of womankind before, and since that date until now the cheapest gibe that can be flung at a woman bears some reference to her tongue. Of course. I should be doing gross injustice to the critical faculties of woman’s male relatives if I were to allow it to be understood that the latter hold that she only errs through her tongue. Far from it. They see only too clearly that woman, as exemplified in their sisters and their cousins and their aunts, is lamentably full of faults and

failings; they see that just as clearly, indeed, as they see that she might have been made quite an admirable creation, if the making of her had been in their hands instead of in Heaven’s. Still, they are open-minded enough to profess their willingness to put up with her as Heaven has made, if only Heaven had seen fit to leave her unendowed with a tongue. That poor tongue of woman’s! To hear man talk about it you might conclude that he hadn't one of his own, even while his very talk was betraying him. What endless accusations of iniquity has not he heaped upon that particular portion of woman’s anatomy? It was, of course, man who gave forth the oracular injunction to seek the woman when any mischief is done, and he claims that when the wjunan is found her tongue will be proved to be the first cause of all the trouble. Poor, little crimson morsel! Catching a glimpse of you. caged behind two dainty rows of pearly teeth, it is hard for one to believe that you have on occasion set great nations at loggerheads, given whole cities up to the flames and, brought about the slaughter of many men: or. even to come down to more ordinary enormities, that you have upset the peace of innocent households and driven man to seek refuge in his club and the inebriating cup. Little desire have I to condone such grievous offences, and. in so far as you can be held guilty of those, little ton-

gue of woman, I go with the rest of my sex and say all manner of hard things about you. But there is a point at which 1 make a stand, for 1 will not, like the rest of my sex, wantonly assail your mere harmless activity. It has, indeed, been too long the habit of man to make of the harmless activity of woman’s tongue a byword and a reproach to her, and to assume, by implication, that he possesses a reticence of speech which should be counted to him as a virtue

—that he. forsooth, never indulges in unnecessary or ill-timed conversation. This bad habit of man’s I have always believed to be unjustified by actual facts, and I was gratified the other day to find this belief of mine borne out by the statement of an authority in one of the great postal departments in London, in reference to the employees in St. Martin-le-Grand’s. According to this weighty and unprejudiced authority, it is found that, though the men employed in the post office work faster than the women, they make up for it by their practice of wasting time by talking in office hours—a practice to which the women are not in the least addicted. Now, as the men and women employed in the London Post Office may be considered a fair sample of the men and women to be met with outside those busy precincts, I think that woman is henceforth justified in maintaining that the reproach of an over-active tongue should rest upon man rather than upon her. Therefore. O ye ladies, when masculine arrogance and ignorance ventures again to jeeringly cast the old unmerited reproach upon your shoulders, hurl it back again, barbed with the well-accredited item of information concerning the employees at St. Martin-le-Grand, which 1 have chivalrously placed in your hands as a weapon of defence.

STATUE OR HOLIDAY. THE movement for the erection of a statue to the late Sir George Grey does not seem to move very briskly, and to accelerate it a memorial day is to be appointed. If it had been decided to have an annual memorial day. alias holiday, in place of a statue, the scheme would no doubt have met with most enthusiastic support. In the eye of the average individual who is not very greatly swayed by such aesthetic or sentimental considerations as may be associated with a statue the thing is rather a useless expenditure of money. A memorial hospital, or library, or park, or soup kitchen, he can appreciate; but a statue —‘well, who gets any good out of a statue?’ would be his involuntary query. In this colony especially those who have advocated this method of doing- honour to the dead or the living have had hard work to arouse public sympathy in their views or endeavours, and it is partly for that reason that we can show so wonderfully few specimens of commemorative statuary. Witness with what infinite pains that bronze image of Her Gracious Majesty was recently secured for Auckland. If the Egyptian monarchs or the Roman emperors had experienced one hundredth part of the difficulty in getting their pyramids and colossal columns erect-

cd that there has been in getting that statue on its feet—when it does get on them—the monuments of antiquity would have been greatly reduced in number. The genius of the New Zealander does not lean statue-wise, and the race is not likely to leave many memorials behind it in that form. The great probability is that our efforts to perpetuate the memory of our great

men will take the shape of instituting an annual publie holiday in their honour. This method, besides costing the public nothing, is without doubt productive of much more pleasure for them than a statue can possibly afford. Indeed, it is so cheap and so delightful that my fear is lest when the custom gets hold it should be abused, and lead eventually, not merely to a ridiculous multiplication of holidays, but what would be worse, to the elevation of very second-rate individuals to the pantheon of great men. You can just imagine a foolish, pleasure loving populace wishing for yet one more holiday, and fixing-, for instance, on the late Mr Bung, whose only virtue was that he made himself rich out of the swipes he sold the same populace, and setting aside a day in Ins honour. St. George, St. Patrick, and St. Andrew are mythical individuals, but they grace a memorial day better than most of the men who might get one if this new system of conferring distinction came into vogue. Statues to ‘nobodies' are bad enough, but memorial days to ‘uobodies’ are worse still; and much as I appreciate the generosity of Sir Geo. Grey to Auckland, and the ability and foresight which characterised certain actions in his career. I fear that to make the new departure in his case would not be pitching the standard high enough to begin with if we mean that it is not to rapidly degenerate.

THE PERFECT POLICEMAX. THE Police Department is apparently not satisfied with the general efficiency of the members of the force, so it has been resolved to establish a school in Wellington for policemen, in which the latter may lie thoroughly instructed in every branch of the profession. I have not heard what the precise course of study will be at this institution, but 1 sincerely trust, now that the education of our policemen has at last been taken in hand that it will be ihoroughly carried out. Policemen are born and made. The thirst to exercise authority over our fellows is early dev< loped in every one* of us, and the policeman, humble instrument of the law though he is, being the most prominent embodiment of authority presented to our youthful eyes is generally an object of early reverence and envy. What boy is there that has not vowed he would be a policeman when he grew up? But alas, as we grow up a closer acquaintance with the office and those who till it damps our enthusiasm, and there are only a few who seek to realise their youthful dreams in this respect. Of the trivial minority which does strive and succeeds in realising them, not every member bv any means Is a born

policeman. Most of them want a great deal of hard licking and the best of them not a little to put them into proper shape. As hitherto we have never possessed in this colony any adequate licking machinery we do not know what a perfect policeman is. Would that I could enumerate the virtues of his ideal character. He is indeed a terror to evil doers and a praise to them that do well. He is a fountain of never-failing courtesies, a tower of strength, an ever present help in time of trouble. Neither gold nor silver, nor the wine when it is red, nor the culinary seductions of amorous cooks can deflect the unbending rectitude of his mind. He is the faithful servant of the law, but the slave of duty. Something approaching this type we may perhaps look for when the Wellington academy for policemen has had time to make its influence felt in the rising generation of ‘bobbies.’