TOPICS WEEK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXVII, 31 December 1898, Page 838

TOPICS WEEK.

HAIL 1899! IDON "f care bow many old years yon may have been privileged to say good-bye to. or how many new years yon may have welcomed in the course of your time, these partings and greetings can never grow commonplace. Do you fancy the centenarian sheds no tear at ‘he death-bed of 1898 simply because he has stood beside the death-bed of a hundred of old '9B's predecessors; or that his heart is not tired with fresh hope and expectation when he heirs the light footsteps of the new year on the threshold. Perhaps it is all mere sentiment that leads us to invest with so much importance the last day of December and the first day of January. Indeed, it ean be nothing else, for the epochs of our lives are in no sense coincident with the changes of the season. The day star of hope does not rise simultaneously in all our hearts when the merry bells ring in the New Year. It may come in any month or on any day; and. alas, to some, it never comes at all. however anxiously they wait anil watch the dark horizon of their lives. We all know that this is the ease, but yet the influence of an old mythology, an ancient superstition. a foolish astrology and the resistless force of a thousand dear associations give the New Year of the calendar a rich significance in our eyes which we would not willingly lose sight of. If our matter-of-fact friends will only let us alone we ean deceive ourselves and amuse ourselves most pleasantly with weaving foolish fancies around the season. And we ean do it better perhaps this season

than we have been able to do on any former occasion: for the year that i • are waiting to welcome is the last of his line, the last of the glorious house of •eighteen hundred.’ A twelvemonths hence when he departs there will be a new writing on the tablets of time, and the two figures that have

been so familiar to us and to our fathers will grow stranger and stranger and come to wear quite another meaning. It is something novel to think that we in all probability shall see the death of the century and be able to speak of last century as a period in which we played our part, indeed, many of us will really be 'men and women of last century.’ Doesn’t it make one feel quite archaic? and of course quite, unjustly so, for the baby that is born any time in 1899 will, in 190(1, be a child" of last century. Oh, 1899. what do you hold in store for us? Surely as the last of your race you will leave us something good by which to remember you and your forebears. Think of it, if you should prove unkind, what men will say, not only of you, but of your 99 ancestors. For their sake, for the honour of your house, leave a good reputation behind you. The twentieth century may be a much greater one than the nineteenth has been, but we cannot easily imagine that it will be such an enormous advance on this as this was on the eighteenth century. For the nineteenth century has opened to us a new world. Invention and discovery have revealed to us realms never dreamt of. Reluctant Nature has laid bare her secrets, engines of strange potency have been given into men’s hands. We have broken the new ground for the twentieth century and its chief business will only be to till it. 1 feel no little pride and satisfaction in the thought that 1 am a nineteenth century man. and I am afraid that 1 will never be able to look on anyone who comes into the world later than December 31, 1899. as other than a parvenu. Indeed, I feel sad to think of the poor little children who, through no fault of their own, are destined to just miss the grand opportunity of belonging to the nineteenth century. It will handicap them in the race for life, for of course the immense majority of their seniors being brought up according to the older order will be less favourably disposed towards the new.

THE FESTIVE TIME.

WE are now in the heart of what is supposed to be the merriest and the happiest and the kindliest, season of the whole long year, and most of us feel in honour bound to be loyal to the sentiment of the time. Even if our immediate circumstances may give excuse for a frown we honestly strive to laugh instead, and to belie with our lips the trouble and

vexation of spirit with which we are oppressed. And if we are inclined to be mean in our judgments of others and ’near’ in our charity we feel constrained at this season to be more broad and generous. But most of the mirth and kindness abroad at this time is spontaneous, not forced. Pessimists and men and women with disordered livers and ill-regulated nerves will tell you. to be sure, that it is a xery miserable hole of a. world this; and there are times when you think the same thing yourself. Cast your eyes round you. however, and you will not find in" all that's going on very conclusive evidence for the pessimist's contention. On the whole, looked at from the outside at any rate, and especially at this season, and in this clime, it seems a particularly happy world. And taken all in all how decent and innocent is our mirth. Compare our holiday making and our Christmas celebration with that our grandfathers were used to or even with the same celebrations in other

lands. Nowadays we have little of that habitual over-eating* and overdrinking which used to he and in some places still is looked upon as indispensable to the season. It is not considered incumbent on us to get tipsy in order to testify to the genuineness of our good will towards our fellow-men, or to shout wild Bacchanalian songs to show that we appreciate peace on earth. Don't think I would have us pose as Puritans or as better in the gross than other men. Probably if the Bishop of Ballarat, who was recently lashing the vices of Australian town and country life, turned his critical eye on us he might find more flaws in the social fabric than we dream of. Perhaps he might find that, as in the case of the \ustralians. ‘our mirth was too little distinguishable from frivolity and our amusements drifted stubbornly towards folly.’ But I think he would admit that on the whole we are fairly well behaved holiday-makers and that we do not take our pleasures either sadly or madly, but manage to strike the happy mean very successfully.

ON PICNICS.

A CORRESPONDENT—sex doubtC*- ful — asks me whether I think picnics are more conducive to matrimony than dances: and which kind of picnics I consider the best, viewed from the above standpoint. The relative merits of picnics and dances as matrimonial agencies were discussed by me about this time last year, I think, and 1 would refer mv interrogator to what I then said, for my opinion. As for the other matter I confess I have never given much or any thought to it; but now 1 come to consider it. I can see that looked at with an eye to their marriage potentialities there may be a very- great difference in picnics. Roughly. I recognise four kinds of picnics, the picnic on or by the sea. the bush picnic, the river picnic, and the hill picnic. There is also the picnic in the backgarden, but that is a kind of pseudopicnic. To determine in which one of these four fancy is more particularly bred than in any of the others—which I take it is what my correspondent wants me to tell—is altogether too hard a task. There are advantages and disadvantages connected with all. I myself am not partial to short picnic trips on the sea. Long voyages in large steamers are said to be fruitful in engagements, and attachments of a tender kind, but a day's outing in a boat with the alternative risks of your being made as green as a fresh lobster by sea sickness, or as red as a boiled one by the sun. is quite another thing. It is invariably safer to make an early adjournment to the shore; and if you are wise you will choose a beach not too easy of access, but necessitating the ladies being carried ashore by the gentlemen. An open sandy beach is not the best from the point of view’ we are taking. Rocks, rude and rugged, are much preferable, for not only do they afford excuses for tender chivalry and solicitude on the part of the gentlemen which a lady eould not very well accept under other circumstances, but there are such delightful private nooks to be found among them. Where is the Puritanic gentleman who has never suggested to the lady of his fancy a walk round the most inaccessible part of the coast, just that he might have the exquisite pleasure of lifting her over a greater gulf than usual, or of assisting her to scale an especially steep rock, or of standing—oh bliss, oh rapture —open armed when she nt last was persuaded to jump from the eminence into your bosom? You don’t get much of that sort of thing in a bush picnic; but then you have superior chances of tete a tetes. and if you know your business well you will choose a bush with lots of supplejack and bush lawyers and undergrowth. These are not so good as the rocks perhaps, but there is a lot to be made out of them. Then you ean get lost in the bushlikes the babes in the wood—a glorious predicament, which is indeed the crowning advantage of these sylvan picnics. Then again there is the inevitable crush in the train or brake, often better than the picnic itself. River picnics I have always found very tame affairs, and hill picnics entail too much exertion. The hitter are

all right at the start, but have you not noticed that on going up a hill a spirit of emulation is engendered in the young men as to which of them will get to the summit first; and that is inimical to the growth of the tender passion between the sexes. So we come to the. conclusion that the seaside and the bush are the liest places for a picnic.

INVISIBLE ATTIRE

IN a recent account of a wedding in the South the bride was described as wearing ‘an invisible green dress' for the honeymoon trip. Marvellous as are the products of the modern loom, one can scarcely imagine that the description was entirely correct. Thefirst adjective must only have reference to the quality of greenness in the costume. and not to the costume itself. Though science has realised many of our fairy tales it has not yet spun the cloak that shrouded in invisibility the person of its wearer. Nor if supply follows demand in such matters as elsewhere are we at all likely to get that wonderful garment. It is true that with many ladies the first purpose of clothing seems to be to conceal their natural form beyond all possibility of recognition, but an invisible frock or hat or jacket is the very last thing they wish. Their ideal of any kind of garment is that it should be as strikingly visible as pos-

sible. Even in the caseof a newly-made bride it is extremely doubtful whether her natural modesty or her devotion to her lord are ever so strong as to make her hanker after an invisible garment in which to hide her blushes or to screen her from the inquisitive glances of the outside world. It is very questionable indeed whether it would pay any manufacturer to turn out invisible fabrics for brides or for women generally. On the other hand there might be a demand for the same class of goods in men’s clothing. Bridegrooms would be especially heavy purchasers. A man at his wedding and for some time after it always looks as if he wished to heaven that he were invisible. He dreads the publicity he is subjected to. If it were not for that I don't doubt that a great many more people would get married than now is the case. Now an invisible suit in which he could go to the altar would be the very thing; and it would have another big advantage, for it would obviate the necessity for the honeymoon trip. Why do people go on a honeymoon trip if it is not to be away from the gaze of their friends? With invisible clothing there would be no necessity for them going away at all. They might pass their time in the very midst- of their friends and enjoy all that is going on without the latter being made aware of their existence except when an imprudently loud kiss or whispered nothing from a blank corner of the room revealed the fact that the unseen lovers were there.