TOPICS of the WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXVI, 24 December 1898, Page 806

TOPICS of the WEEK.

CHRISTMAS FARE. C 1 HRISTMAS greetings, Christmas J poems, Christmas articles, Christmas humour, Christmas pathos —they al! belong to the category of things that defy the finger of change. Year after year, century after century, they make their appearance in due season wearing the same dear old familiar faces. The fashion of the age alters and changes and every year attires itself in different garments from its predecessors, but you can always count on the family characteristics asserting themselves when the year draws near its end. And in nothing does this atavism assert itself more strongly than in Christmas literature. Lt is questionable whether anyone could think or say anything original about Christmas. But even if some genius arose who could, he would hardly have the temerity to do it. It would be considered not only heterodox, but rank sacrilege to attempt such a thing, .lust fancy anyone attempting to make a new- kind of Christmas plum pudding. Well, all honest Christmas literature is concocted on precisely the same plan. The mirth, the fun, the folly of the season, the tales, and the stories, are composed of precisely the same ingredients as they were years ago, and in much the same proportions. Not even the entire change in our surroundings ran reverse the order of things. Look at us here.

‘We change our skies above us, But not our hearts that roam’ sings the poet; and do you think we would tolerate a change in our Christmas literature simply because we live at the other side of the world from that on which the race lived up until a century or so ago? The idea is preposterous. Some irreverent- folk here arc in the habit of substituting strawberries and cream for plum-pudding on Christmas day. I am told. 1 wonder tin* berries do not choke these rash radicals who set at nought the hallowed customs of their ancestors. Let mt* have my Christmas plum-pudding though I sweat and suffer for it. Such innovations can surely never be general: even their occasional appearance is indicative of a decadence of the race that I don't at all like. I regret that I cannot prevent it in the culinary department, but-, in so far as 1 have the power. I shall resist any tendency of the same kind invading Christmas literature. Give me the old literary plum-pudding made after the old receipt, with plenty of tin* same old sauce of philanthronv poured over it. A bit too rich for you is it my pessimistic friend! or too pronounced for vour literary palate, my fastidious little master! Well I’m sorrv for you. but my digestion is still sound, and 1 can enjoy the

good old Christmas faro just as heartily as when I was a boy. or. for that matter, ns my grandfather did when he was one. Bring out the old

yarns, the old songs, and, above all, the old jokes. I am in the humour to listen to them all, to be filled and to be thrilled, and to be killed with them. Eire away, lam ready to laugh or to cry as you wish, or as the senti-

ment demands. I am the sport of the season. But remember, a plague on him who would innovate, the impertinent puppy! Here, join hands all round, and 1 pledge you, the good old shibboleth, A MERRY CHRISTMAS.

OCR NEW SANTA CLAUS. IT has been most happily ordered by the kindest of fates that the arrangements for the distribution of the Old Age Pensions should be in active operation at this season of the year. True, those entitled to pensions will not have them actually to spend this Christmas and New Year's Day. but is not the full assurance that they are going to get them a little later on enough to let a flood of happiness into the lives of hundreds? Besides, it is possible that one may enjoy in advance the actual benefit of the pension. If any prospective pensioner would like to have a little of the money that is coming to him advanced for purposes of Christmas jollity—for example, to drink the health of the Premier and the Liberal party —there are no doubt many gentlemen

in New Zealand prepared to negotiate a little loan. The remittance man finds little difficulty in raising a few pounds on the strength of his allowance due six weeks hence, and why should not a free and independent pensioner enjoy similar privileges. Happy, happy sexagenarians! How we poor wretches wearily struggling along through the thirties and the forties and the fifties envy you your good hick. We have nothing of that kind to brighten our Christmas. Alas! how long ago it is since we knew what it was to get a Christmas present. Most of us only know now what it is to give them; and though it may be more blessed to give than to receive, it is certainly much more expensive. Dear me! dear me! It seems centuries since I had a visit from good old Santa Claus. I never think of hanging my stocking up now’, for the fart is—whisper it low, so that the children won't hear—l'm Santa (’laus myself. But oh, you lucky rascals of sexagenarians. you are having your Santa (’laus experiences all over again. Now’, tell me, doesn't it just bring back flu* old days to you —those arrangements they are making about the pensions, I mean—the old days when in your little night-shirt you toddled to the fireside and reached down your stocking to see what Santa Claus had deposited in it. Did you

ever think these forty-fifty years that you would meet the kind old man again? But he means to pay you a visit this Christmas eve. so hang out your stockings "in the faith of little children,’ and see what the King will send yon. Oh. eyes grown dim with sorrow, what do you behold? Oh, trembling hands, crooked with labour, what do you grasp? There’s something rustling in your old sock this Christinas morning. Feels like a bank note, doesn’t it? Well, if it isn’t that it’s something just as good—it’s your pension certificate. Rest from your labours and be happy! But where’s Santa Claus, to thank him? you ask. Bless you. he has been here and gone some time ago; a broad-shouldered sort of a man like as he is in the pictures, but if anything broader and taller; and now I come to think of it, judging, of course, by a- back view. I should not be surprised if it were Dick Seddon in disguise.

THE CZAR’S CHRISTMAS CARD. WHY did not the Czar postpone the announcement of his proposals for a general disarmament until now? If he wished to make the very most of it, he was undoubtedly a trifle previous. Think how much more in harmony with the fitness of things it would have been to have delivered his message at this time, when all the civilized world is celebrating the great festival of peace. At such a moment it would have surely had by far the best chance of a warm response. Then, for very shame, the nations could not. have turned a deaf ear or a cynical eye to the royal peacemaker. For the purposes of artistic and dramatic effect, now would have been the time for such a word. If the proposal had emanated from Kaiser William he would have recognised that in a trice. I can fancy the way that original young man would have made the most of the theatrical possibilities of the position. For instance, how much more appropriate to the occasion would it have been if, instead of a bare invitation of the kind that was issued, the Czar had sent this Christmas to all the neighbouring powers a gorgeous Christmas card embodying his proposals. What a scope for the artist’s imagination would there be in the pictorial illustration of such a token. A nundred devices suggest themselves. How strikingly effective would have been, for example, a representation of the nations of the earth assembled in wonder on the ground, while instead of a Milton's ‘helmed Cherubim and sworded Seraphim, in glittering ranks with arms displayed,’ the cohorts of Russia descended bearing the n< w message, which was the old ‘Peace on earth, goodwill towards men.’ If William had been stage manager that is probably how he would have fixed the matter up. Now, this may' serin to be treating the whole thing very frivolously, but who ean say that the nations showed any very marked desire to treat it seriously, or, at any rate, to give it that open arms welcome which such a proposal might be expected to provoke. Perhaps the Kaiser's attitude towards it at the opening of the Reichstag the other day presented the most comical aspects. He said he approved of the Czar's proposals for a conference, and almost in the same breath he asked the assembly for an increase of ha f

a million men in the peace footing of the tierman army. Is there not something Imlieriously incongruous about the position, just as much as there would be in the sight of His Imperial Majesty humming hymns of peace while he ground his sabre to a fine cutting edge.

THE HOLIDAYS.

GIVE the boys a holiday!’ was the famous reply of the dying philosopher and teacher when asked what funeral honours he desired; and for centuries afterwards the day of his death was a holiday in all the schools of Lainpsacus. There is no case on record of a modern schoolmaster showing such kindly solicitude for his pupils on his death-bed; and I am afraid that the hard-hearted education boards and school committees of today would not be inclined to pay much regard to such a. touchingly simple and unselfish will and testament. At the same time I am quite sure that that last pearl of wisdom which fell from the lips of the teacher of Socrates has not been without its effect on our system of education. Probably if we could trace the origin of the school holiday back through the mists of antiquity we might find it associated with those memorable words of happy omen, sweetest music to every youthful ear, ‘Give the boys a holiday.’ If that is indeed the ease one cannot but deeply regret that the ancient philosophers had not laid down with more axiomatic precision the necessity of holidays for grown-up people. While it is universally recognised that the youngsters should have long bouts of recreation and idleness—they are having six or eight weeks’ spell now — the claims of their elders are set aside in the most unfair way. I don’t grudge the children their glorious heritage by any means, but 1 do think a little more attention should be paid to the needs of adult humanity in this matter. The day here and the afternoon there which we get, what are they at the most? The savage and the careless schoolboy, who lives for the hour, can enjoy them to the full, but to the high strung products of civilisation like you and me, beings whose minds are constantly looking before and after, they are eminently unsatisfactory. Just consider it. The furnaces of the brain take some time to burn out —a matter of forty-eight hours at any rate. The intermission of a single day of leisure is only equivalent to banking the fires. Or at best, it takes the first half of the holiday to forget your work and the second half is spoiled by the shadow of the coming labour. Of course one has to be content with these snippets of holiday when there is nothing better agoing, but how much better would it not be if we could each and all get a full meal as the school-children do. Then we would know what a holiday means, indeed. Just fancy how delightful it would be this Christmas for those poor mortals who have never since their schooldays (lone more than get a sip now and again at the eup of leisure, to be able to drink it to the very lees. If I had a six weeks’ holiday I—but the thought is a dangerous one to harbour when the chances of its realisation are so very remote.

AN UNCATALOGUED EXHIBIT. IT was rumoured last week that one of the cleverest, rhings in the Auckland Exhibition which no one appeared to have seen was the work of a. quite unknown gentleman who accomplished it in a moment of abstraction. The authorities have with niueh forethought stationed detectives in the building to protect the wares of the exhibitors and the personal I property of the visitors from the clutch of some light-fingered gentry who also are visitors to the place. The unknown gentleman, so the story went, ehose as a most proper subject on whom to exercise his ingenuity and dexterity one of those same detectives, and, much to the loss of that officer's professional prestige in the eyes of the public, was reported to have been entirely successful in his performance. The tale turned out to be false, much to the disgust of many good people, it would seem. For an incident of this kind is just what the public enjoy vastly; and, indeed, there is something extremely comical in the thieteateher being himself caught in this way. Surely there is room for that academy for policemen of which we were speaking the other week, everybody said. But after all, the occurrence. had it actually occurred, would not have been by any means so conclusive of the detective’s incapacity for his business as one might imagine. On the other hand, his misfortune might be explained as the result of his utter carelessness of himself in his watchful solicitude for the safety of the public. It is not the easiest thing in the world to look after the pockets

of ii few hundreds of people and your own at the same time. Apropos of this, Hermann the conjurer user to tell a story of a seance which he gave before some native tribes in South America. Among his audience was oue fellow who was to all appearances utterly thunderstruck by the wizard's dexterity. He sat open-eyed and openmouthed, with a look of stupefaction in his face which highly flattered the prestidigitateur until the latter discovered at the close of the performance- that his dusky admirer had relieved him of a handsome gold chronometer and chain which he wore in his pocket. 1 could imagine that detectives’ pockets are by no means the most difficult to pick, and if I were going in for the business I am not so sure that I would not prefer them to any other, ladies’ pockets excepted. Of course, it is always recognised that

ladies’ pockets are the ideal of thieves, and the ease with which they can be entered by the latter is only equalled by the difficulty the owners themselves invariably experience in coming at them. Every man who has sat next to a lady in church or at an entertainment knows what that means. Eor my own part, repeated experiences of her distressful attempts to find her handkerchief have not inured me to tiie ordeal of sitting by her while she is searching for it. I can never help thinking when the familiar performance commences that the poor girl or old lady is about to take a fit or go into hysterics, and the vision of the part I'may be called on to perform, patting her hands, throwing water over her, or even cutting her- stay laces makes me suffer agonies of discomfort.