Topics of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue XXVI, 29 December 1900, Page 1203

Topics of the Week.

Finis. Well, we have done with that old century—the nineteenth —that wonderful hundred years—and are fairly embarked on another. Naturally we must feel somewhat strange when we eome to consider the transition, I know it will be years before I get accustomed to speak of the nineteenth century without a sense of dealing in distant futurities. A. child and man of the nineteenth, 1 cannot regard the twentieth save as a kind of foster parent. Its thought, its discoveries, its inventions, its heroes, its sages, its poets —I know them not. Mine belong to its predecessor. Before the twentieth century has made a reputation for itself I shall most likely have done with time. I never can hope to be on such easy familiar terms with the newcomer as with the old nineteenth, who was my father's and my father’s father’s friend before mine. Perhaps we shall never be friends, but merely’ acquaintances. Nay, I may find him my enemy. Certainly I cannot expect so much of him as of the friend of my early youth, my family friend, kind old “nineteenth.” Drop a tear with me over the fresh grave before we turn away. Perhaps our happiest days are buried there, and our fondest hopes. We pass over the border into another century, wherein, as Schiller says, we must find our life element, but the storehouse of our most treasured memories will be on the other side. There we shall find the quiet retreat which is not to be found in the busy, bustling days to come. To feel thoroughly in touch with the twentieth century one should enter into the world with its dawn. The babies born this week will be the most favoured children. But we, whose familiar dates are 18 this or 18 that, must, always have the appearance of being old and antiquated. When you relate some occurrence of a year or two back, and couple it with the explanation, “Yes, that was last century,” you will inevitably convey the notion that you are a greybeard. The last century! Dear me! Although it is only yesterday that we were there it already seems an antediluvian period. At the beginning of last year, when we dropped the eighteen hundred in our dates and wrote 1900, it was a little hard to get accustomed to the change. The inclination always was to start with 18—as folks had been doing for ninety-nine years. Now, however, we have got used to the alteration in the numerals. But you can’t change your whole attitude of mind as you can a quartette of figures, and while you write quite glibly 1901 you will' doubtless be thinking last century style. If you are past middle life the chance is you will never get mentally acclimatised to the new era, but will constantly be open to the sneering comment of the new generation. “What can he know about it: he belongs to last century!” But enough of melancholic regret. This is a time for hope quite as much as for regretful retrospect. The new century holds in it abundant and glorious promise, and why should not we be partakers in its bounty? The future! The future! Is it not for us, the oldest, as well as for the youngest? We have lived in a mighty era and seen great enterprises come to fruition. But also we have been privileged to see the first dim suggestions of others, which are probably destined to be more wonderfid than all the wonders we have witnessed; and we can look, forward in this new century to see fulfilled the prophecies of the old one. ■O O O O G New Year Resolut'tns. These, the dying days of December, are those in which we begin to reflect that the years are speeding anst, and that we hare indeed done tne things we ought not to have done and left undone those things which we should have done; and we usually make all sorts of redolutiens for the -oomin# year. Thia time we have not merely to fum a page in the book of time, but to close one volume and to open another. Nineteen of these vast tomes of the eewtvwiea Me behind vm, but that on which the covers are now closing

is the most inarxellous uud eieutful of all. No wonder then if the uiok thoughtless of us feel some thrill as we realise that we are personally called to open our account in the new volume, a volume in which may be written still more wonderful things than contained in any that lie on the shelves of the past. No wonder that we are all, or 1 hope all, determining that we will do our utmost that Our record in the new volume may be better than aught that has been set down either for or against us in the past. It is usual to be jocose and mildly humorous on the subject of New Year resolutions. To me, I confess, the subject savours more of the tragic. Looking back on the dead and gone years, the reminders of broken or blasted good resolutions stand out grim and stark on the barren land (which should have been so fruitful), like the stumps of half-burned trees on some neglected clearing-. Humour it seems to me is swallowed up in shame. Even where we have in soma degree kept our pledges how far short they have fallen of what we intended and really ought to have performed. Yet failure in the past is nio reason for altogether ridiculing the habit. Even if we only keep conscience alive by our annual resolutions, they are worth while. Even if we fail, so that we have really made some effort, the moral force expended is not altogether futile. It is after all merely the try, try again of nursery days applied to our daily life and morals. Nor does it need that the resolution should be of a weighty order. Effort is everything. So that there is effort, so that we care to exert effort and feel shame when we relax, things ai-e not altogether hopeless. It is then for us to take our courage in both hands, as the French say, and resolve that our resolutions shall be better fought for than in the past. After all it is not everyone who is privileged to witness and assist at the dawn bf a century, and we have our extra responsibilities in connection therewith.

Cold Water. The kill or cure method of medical treatment still Continues to find favour among the Maoris in spite of the spread of science and civilization. Last week, at same place near Gisborne, a native suffering from typhoid was handed over to the tohungas for treatment, and these gentlemen took him out to sea to give him a course of sea bathing. In two days the patient suci eumbed, as was to have been expected by anyone with any real knowledge of medicine. In all likelihood their failure to cure their man will not in the least destroy the faith of the hydropathists in themselves or the native belief in their methods; and if they are not hindered they will be ready to prescribe and superintend a course of sea bathing to the next poor unfortaunate in need of medical help. From the fact that this method of treatment enjoys the prestige of great antiquity among the Maoris it is plain that they had discovered the virtue of cold water before modern Europe dreamt of it. For the bath, deemed so indispensable among the Romans and Greeks, seems to have disappeared almost completely during the Middle Ages, and is only slowly regaining the high position it held of yore. It is only in England, and there of comparatively recent times, that the institution of the morn-, ing tub has any claim to being established. And a couple of generations ago it held a very doubtful position. Examine the old houses at Home and in nine-tenths you will find no provision for washing in the shape of a proper bathroom and bath. In Scotland it is very much the same. I remember hearing of one family who had lived two years in a hmise where, for a wonder, there was a bath, and dnring the whole time they were never quite certain for what the room and the contrivance were intended. On the Continent the absence of bathing appliances is ten times more marked, and bathing, as we here understand it, a hundred times less frequent than in England. The average Frenchman or Frenchwoman —and I am speaking of middle-class people—would seldom think of indulging in a daily dip; and

the Briton’s predilection for his tu* is a stauding joke among Continent ala. who endeavour to turn the laugh against us by saying, “What a dirtyj people to require such frequent üblu. Uous!” Bathing ia one of the madnesses of the British in a Frenchman** eyes. And perhaps there is amouM some good folks a tendency to carry their devotion to cold water a little too far and to emulate our Maori to hungas in their confidence in its vlrv tues under every and al! circumstances. We do not take our typhoid path enta out to sea and dip them in th<J briny, but it is questionable whether many people do not indulge in cold water bathing to an extent that is injurious to their health. The best medical authority is against the indis. criminate use of the tub. Here the danger to be apprehended is not bO great as in a cold climate, where it i* simply madness for delicate people to take a morning bath in ice cold water, as they frequently do; but even here it is a mistake to conclude that cold water bathing is equally good for everyone.

A Sensible Reminder. The speeches of the dignitaries who present the prizes at “breaking up” ceremonies at our schools are usually somewhat laboured, commonplace and stilted, and have a very strong family resemblance one to the other. That of the Rev. Mr Beatty at King's College, Auckland, was an exception to the rule, and there was much solid sense and wisdom in the position taken up, namely, that in a commercial people in a utilarian age are far too apt to look upon education as a means of turning a boy into an efficient money-mak-ing machine in the shortest that it is useless to instruct a lad in the art of making money if we do not also teach him how to keep itand bow to spend it; how to use it, in slw>rt, for his own betterment—mental, moral and physical, and how to devote part of it the service of others. The bool! learning acquired during early years is perhaps the least important part of education. The formation of character, the moulding of thought, and the acquiring of habits—these are the important subjects. In choosing a school one is far too apt to look solely to examination results. It would be far better to keep a record of the stamp of yioiing men a school turns out in after life if this were practicable. It seems to me to matter little if a man has crammed so much knowledge into his head as to be able to demonstrate the right to have certain letters after his name, but it does matter everything if he has become impregnated with high ideals in the matter of truth, honour and business rectitude.