Minor Matters.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue X, 8 September 1900, Page 437

Minor Matters.

The Car. This unique yarn comes in from an outer suburb, and is a rival to Hie story of the eireus proprietor’s wife who, finding that, her husband hail taken refuge from her pot stick amongst his lions, stood outside the cage, crying “Come out. yon coward!’’ There had been trouble on the ground after a closely contested football match, necessitating the interference of an armed policeman, and this conversation was overheard by a disinterested spectator. The speakers were the centre of a knot of local barraekers. “It was jist about time 1) was dealt wiff,” said one small larrikin;

“we’ve bad it up agin him fer a long time.’’ “Yes,” replied another, “an’ there was B , what used to umpire here last season, we’ve been waitin’ to deal it out to him. What’s become of him, anyhow?” “What, didn’t ver know? He’s gone to the war.” “To tight the Boers?” “Yes." “Well I’m blowed! He must ’a. done that to give us the slip—the cur!” •fr ♦ ♦ The Women of the Free State. In a contribution to “The Sphinx,” Captain 11. S. Walker, K.E., one of Liverpool University College men in Africa, relates something of what he saw in the Orange lliver Colony. He says: — Picture to yourself an arid waste over which you wander for an hour or two, and at last espy a single-storied house, with squalid outhouses, a few dirty niggers working about or locking at you, a dirty pond, the merest trickle of a stream, perhaps half-a-dozen trees, a few dilapidated wire fences, and some chickens and ducks running about outside the fron door, and you have a fair idea of a Erec State farm. You ride up to this farm and timidly ask if they understand English, your own knowledge of Cape Dutch being most meagre. In 99 cases out of 100 you will be surprised to get an answer in the affirmative, and in nine out of ten the answer is given in an injured tone as much as to say, “Do yen mean to insult me?” The farmer's wife will, if you manage to make peace, sell you anything she has, at a very good price it is true, and should you he fortunate you may make the acquaintance of some of 1 er daughters, both young and old. You will then have your eves opened. In the most 'fluent English—fat- better English, indeed, than you hear spoken in Northern Cape Colony—they will taunt you with the injustice of the war, the number of Voethangers (locusts —the burghers apply- this word to our infantry, who resemble a swarm of locusts when crossing- the veldt) it takes to tackle one Boe;-, and so on, and they make no secret of their hatred -for the English, Mr Ch and,-er lain ih particular, and no wonder. Should you be lucky enough to be of Seditish origin, yon can get a better insight into their life, etc. They pity the Scotch, whom they look upon as a dbwn-trodden race, as they themselves may become, and therein is a bond of union; their first spiritual teachers, too. were. Scotchmen, and a great many of them have Scotch blood as well as Dutch in their veins. Having attraefod their sympathy—they are genuinely sorry for you having- to fight, when, of- course, you do not want to—you will find them most agreeable company. Their ideas are thoroughly English, their pur nils essentially English, th. ir mode "o ‘ li- i: g

ially Knglisli, th. iv mode o ' L-i: g is still; lio\v?v_i’r„ rather Dutch. They all play erk-kpt, tennis, eronuet, hockey—every yvoinan can ride, and tide well, a goo 1 many are good game shots, and at.JUoenifontein there is a

nourishing' ladies’ golf club. Besides Butch and English, a very large preportion speak . German, French, or Italian, and some the whole of the e; they know our English authors as •..•.■ll as we know them ourselves, and notwithstanding,; they have probably never left _ theri'. own country. In every farm yqfi will 'find a very fair piano, and aj.deast one of the daughters will play really well, and probably another, sings; in the towns, of course, you will find more thoroughly trained voices, indeed several of the London Acgdemy of Music gold medals have found their way to the Orange Free State: and last, but by no means least, of their virtues, they

are thorough ladies, and yet do not consider it beneath their dignity, should necessity arise, to don on apron and cook or serve a dinner, or wash and repair clothes. From the above account 1 hope to ha-ve made it clear that the women, at any rate, in the Free State, are of a type most dear to English people, and it is to be hop. d that this similarity of tastes will facilitate the making- of peace, whenever this war is ended.

4? 4* 4* What is Bribery? In New Zealand we have become so accustomed to the limitation of electioneering expenses to £ (?) that we are rather amused at the opposition which was offered to the proposal to do the same thing in Victoria. A certain Mr. Best introduced legislation, the principle of which the Legislative Assembly has since tacitly approved, to provide for the purity of elections by enacting that not more than £ 100 shall be spent upon an election by any candidate. The following short catechism is suggested as a schedule to the Bill by a Victorian weekly: What is bribery? Bribery is any price paid to the elector for his vote, or any inducement held out to him of personal advantage by voting for a particular candidate. When public servants combine and demand as the price of their votes certain concessions with regard to their salaries, is it bribery to accept their terms? —Certainly not; that ts a due regard for the interests of the public servants. If a candidate promise to do his best, to secure for employees of the State Gd per day extra, is that bribery?—No; that is a proper tenderness towards the lower-paid public servants. It has the true deinocratic ring-.

If a candidate affirm that the district has been shame fully neglected, ami he will see that new public offices are erected and more public money spent in the district, is that bribery?

- Of course not. It shows that he is a good local man. If a candidate promise to use every endeavour to have a railway constructed in the district which he knows will not pay, is that bribery?— No; that is developing the country and looking forward to the interests of The future.

If a candidate say to a voter, “Come and have a drink,” is that bribery*— Yes, of the most flagrant description, threatening the whole social fabric. Then money paid out of the candidate’s own pocket to secure the good graces of an elector is?—Bribery. But money paid out of the public purse to secure the good will of many electors is?—Public spirit. 4* 4* 4* It Seemed “Go into one of our gilded whisky dens,” exclaimed a lady orator on a suburban platform, eng-aged in painting lurid pictures of women’s w-rongs, in order to secure woman’s rights. “Go •into one of our whisky dens, and what, what will you most likely find there?” “Well, miss,” said the bad man in front who had come to see the fun, “Whisky, most likely.’ 4* 4* 4* The DivoL’ce Suit of 1902. In August, 1902, a suit will be brought before the Chief Justice, in which John* Smith •will ask for a divorce from his wife, Amelia Smith, on the ground that she has deprived him of his due and natural share of quarelling. The ruling of Justice Madden, C.J., in the case Tinworth v. Tinworth (Victoria), August, 1900 (‘Argus Law Reports”), will be relied on:—“No two human beings had ever lived together or ever would live together without quarrelling under the influence of temporary disturbances. Law ami morality mean that married people should endure that.” The following will be the judgment of the Chief .Justice (says a writer in an Australian contemporary) in granting a decree nisi:

“In this case it has been sulli iviitly shown that the parties have lived together in an utterly unnatural and totally unprecedented condition of domestic peace. Thai bring so, I have no course open to me but to dissolve a tie which has failed to provoke in tho

parties that proper condition of healthy irritability whieh has been one of the indispensable concomitants of marriage in all ages, and the absence of which, owing to an undue complacency on the part of either of the parties, renders the marriage condition utterly intolerable to that party who. supplying a due quantum of egotistical querulousness to the domestic economy, has not met with that response whieh is necessary to the regular and orderly production of marital antagonisms. That being so. 1 feel that the well-known principle of jurisprudence applies, which states that little fleas have lesser fieas upon their bucks to bite or irritate them, and that still more diminutive fieas have even more minute saltatory organisms, so that in the due order of a beneficent Providence no sentient being is shut out from a participation in that healthy substratum of annoyance and friction which keeps its saltatory muscles in due exercise. Tine being' so, how can we then repel the conclusion that man, representing as he does the highest form of organic life, requires in a higher degree his due proportion of ileus, if I may so put it, upon his back to bite him, as it were? That being so, how else is man to secure tin' necessary amount of ‘biting,' except it be in lhe marriage relation, which has been ordained that each party in turn may supply a fair contribution of inflammatory' matter ami a due meed of resignal ion and forbearance? So flagrantly has that obligation been violated in this ease that it is proved upon the most indubitable testimony- and, indeed, it is not denied—that there has been no quarrel during the whole currency of the marriage, in spite of the noble and unwearying efforts of the petitioner to produce one. I east no shadow of doubt upon the sincerity of the promise held out on behalf of'the. respondent that if these proceedings be postponed she will do her best to quarrel at least once a month in future. Putting' aside the notorious fact that a monthly quarrel is an altotogether too attenuated allowance lor a married man under normal conditions, I do not hesitate to say that these promises of reformation come too late, and J cannot take upon myself the responsibility of denying the petitioner the relief to which he is entitled upon the strength of tardy promises of quarrels in the future, so wrung' from a person who has shown herself in the past to be temperamentally and psychologically unfitted for lhe marriage relation. That being , so, 1 have no hesitation whatever in g-ranting a rule nisi for the dissolution of the marriage. That being so the husband will have the possession of the children, as lie is the better fitted to train them in that condition of chronic irritability necessary to those who would hope to continue the race under normal conditions." 4? •t Bought Sermons. More than a hundred years ago letters were sent. postage unpaid, to the clergy, offering at a shilling each, “a collection of practical discourses, consisting of one hundred and fifty, in single sermons, such as have been greatly admired, and are little, known. They will be engraved in a masterly running- hand, printed on white writing paper, and made to resemble manuscript a.s near as possible, with the letters so large, and the lines at such a distance, as Io be read by every eye. Calculated io assist the younger clergy in the pulpit, till such time as convenience shall make them masters of a proper collection of their own writing."’ To this announcement were appended the significant words “.Secrecy may lie depended on." -I- -I- -t Stretching p. Shoe With Oats. "Ever fry to stretch a shoe with oats?" asked a suburban friend of "The Suunterer" lhe other day. "No; who ever heard of such a thing. Why, what do you mean?"’ returned "The Saunterer.” “Well, you know, T bought a nice new pair of shoes last week. 1 put them on the day I got them, and walked about until night, and the right one almost killed me. That night I thought of a brilliant, scheme. We had just got in some oats for the horse, and one of the bags got wet. I noticed how the nit’s swelled, so it struck me it. would »e a good way io ease my shoe. So lb’ft night I packed the shoe full of t reoafs. poured it full of water, anti lashed down the top securely. When

I awoke the next morning the first thing I did was to look for the shoe, and what do you think 1 saw? Why, that miserable thing had stretched and stretched, until, from a modest number 7, it hail become large enough to hold an elephant's foot. And It had not stretched evenly. If was full of knots and bunches, and such a sight you never saw in all your born days. I am looking now for a man whose feet will fit the two shoes." “No, sir,’’ concluded the suburban friend with a mournful air, as he thought over his overproductive improvised stretcher, “next time I have any shoes to be enlarged I'll either take them to it shoemaker or wear ’em just as they are, in spite of corns." ■fr + + Dublin University and N.Z. Arts Degrees. The University of Dublin is prepared to recognise the arts s'tidies of the New Zealand Universities. Any student producing certifieites that he has passed two years in arts studies at the universities, or the exunruations belonging to that perir.d will be entitled to put his name on Trinity College books as a senior freshman, a student with one year's credit, with tliis reservation: “That, if the course of arts which he has pursued does not include all the subjects of the junior freshman year, the senior lecturer may require him to qualify by examination in the omitted subject or subjects within one mouth after bis mime has been entered on the l ooks. The medical studies at the Otago University will also be recognised, two consecutive anni mediea, taken at any period during the four years of the medical curriculum, to be recognised as qualifying for admission to the < xaminations of the School of Pbvsic.”

Read the splendid new Serial on pages 428, 429, and 430,