HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XX, 16 November 1901, Page 932

HERE AND THERE.

HaH to the new Prince of Wales, a fresh arrival since the last issue of this paper. Will his fresh honours and higher dignities bring him more pleasures than those which attach to a mere Royal Dukedom? It may be doubted. More work will undoubtedly be hrs. Some of the minor functions, such as bazaar openings, foundation stone laying, he may now escape, but it will be “out of the frying pan into the fire," and the years will be spent flying round his country receiving addresses, and making speeches year in, year out, till death strikes again and calls him either to higher duties or to rest. What a weary, weary round it mtist be. Let us congratulate ourselves on being plain Mister, Mrs or Miss.

The Highland pipers of Waipu (which is more Scotch than Scotland) are mightily incensed at the treatment they received at the banquet to Sir Hector in Auckland. They were public heroes, and expected to be treated as such. For days their magnificent costumes, their beautiful bare legs, and their stalwart figures had been the delight of admiring enthusiasts in Queen-street, and 10, on the evening which should have seen the culmination of their triumph they were set aside as people of -no account. They marched round the table as is the custom of the country, and then on looking for places to sit down, found none, and were incontinently marched off, as inere paid musicians might have been, to a back room, away from the hero, away from the gaiety, away from the hospitality they had done so much to promote. Eh mon it was awfu’. The pipers now declare Auckland Scotch may whistle for them next time they want national music for a distinguished guest.

At the Scotch 1 banquet to Sir Hector in Auckland, the chairman, a namesake, announced that the toast of the guest of the evening must be honoured in true Highland fashion, and as some of the guests looked somewhat dubious as to how it was done explained the modus opei-andi. The scene which followed was funny. .The struggle to stand on the chairs (small round ones) was severe, and to get the foot on the table was a test in equilibrium which many only surmounted- with an obvious and painful effort. The glasses were not, by the way, broken after the toast was drunk. They should have been of course, but thriftiness set in here. After all hotel crystal comes high.

The definition that a Scotchman is a man who keeps the Sabbath and every other thing he can lay his hands on. was surely justified in the case of the Scotchmen of Auckland and Sir Hector Macdonald. Had the distinguished soldier not intimated pretty plainly that he had no intention of being monopolised by hia countrymen, it is very questionable whether the population of the Northern city would have seen anything at all of Fighting Mac. As it. was his namesake, aided by Mr McKail Geddes, scarcely let the hero out of their sight, and assumed as much an air of proprietorship in him as if they had been his parents.

Sir Hector hinted pretty broadly to our young colonials and to us all. that the estimate of the colonial trooper as a fighter which obtains here requires just a little adjustment. Admirable in many respects our boys were, this soldier of soldiers most generously allowed, but he was the last man -to flatter, and he qualified his praise by dwelling emphatically on the necessity for a much greater restraint and discipline among colonial troops. “Law. Order, Duty an* Restraint, Obedience, Discipline!” the words which McAndrews' engines sang to him, is the lesson the General might have quocd to our youth. No man more than ho has been guided by them through life.

The world's stage presents few more melodramatic situations than the last moments of Li Hung Chang's life, when the Russian Ambassador vainly endeavoured to get the dying

Viceroy to affix his seal and. signa* tuns to the Manchurian Convention, Fortunately Li’s subordinates were equal to the • occasion,’ or one does not know what Russian intrigue might have effected. The policy of “the closed door” was adopted, and the astute envoy of the Bear stood waiting, while the old Chinaman kept his last engagement with the inexorable Ambassador of the mightiest of Powers. You can fancy the Russian gentleman vexing his soul at his non-success, while Li slips away into that far country where foreign intervention, and Manchurian convention, and the most momentous affairs of this little world are forgotten trifles.

One cable last week announced that Mr. J. Anderson, a New Zealander, had won three events at the Cambridge University Freshmen's sports, while another message later in the week announced in a paragraph all to itself the death of Mr. Culme Seymour, who stroked in the last Oxford boat race. Such is fame! Why should you go wearing your brains out over Greek and Latin and the differential calculus, young man, when the same attention devoted to the ciiltivation of your muscles will set the cables vibrating to your honour and glory all round the world?

The great Waimangu geyser, whose photograph has appeared in these pages, is not a geyser to be trifled with. You can tease the Whakarewarewa spouters till they spit fiercely at you from their depths, while you stand back and laugh at them. But beware of Waimangu. for he throws stones. Only a short time ago a visitor was received in this way, and did not escape without a good many severe bruises. He with a friend was watching the geyser trembling in his den, when suddenly the monster threw himself some four hundred feet into the air, showering stones at the same time, one of which knocked down one of the gentlemen, while another boulder struck him as he lay on the ground.

No one ever questioned Air. Seddon's force of mind, and the recent intimation that he has entirely given up smoking is additional evidence in the same direction. The Premier is associated in most minds with a big fat cigar, which I confess it added rather to his dignity than otherwise, for he had a most regal’way of manipulating it. There waH ‘sbmethin’g oracular in the way the great man’s voice used to issue from a cloud of smoke. To those who knew Mr. Sedition in his big cigar days, this new smokeless era will suggest a want.

Sir Hector is not like most of the pictures one sees of him. The numerous engravings with which the shop windows and our illustrated journals announced his coming prepare you for a bigger and more sombre man. Gallant Mac is neither big nor sombre. Just about the averag-e height and rather squarely built, he shows a familiar type of Scotch face. Even in repose it suggests power, but much more alertness, and the presence of this quality is enormously emphasised when he smiles and when lie speaks. It is a delightful smile from the eyes rather than the firm mouth, and Mac's words come clearcut from his lips. One quite understands Ihe popularity of such a nature alike with officers and men.

The bacteriologist is greater than the poet. Kipling-told Auckland that she was loveliest and exquisite, and the rest, seeing the city with the poet's eye; and Auckland has sat preening herself on the strength of that commendation ever since, to the ■neglect of those sanitary arrangements which modern cities ignore at their peril. These deficiencies the poet's eye did not detect-, and Auckland took the poetical estimate. Behold now the bacteriological nose comes poking in with disastrous results. Dr. Mason, the Government Health Officer, as good as tells the Queen of the Waltemata that her beauty is not much better than that of the whited-sepulchre, and when next hen crest-falleli citizens quota Kipling, her enemies will retort with Mason.