HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue VIII, 22 February 1902, Page 351

HERE AND THERE.

In our cartoonleta this week we deal pictorially with the disgracefully lenient sentence passed on a blackguard who so burned his horses and so flayed them with the whip that three weeks after the offence their condition aroused the horror of all those who saw them in the court-house yard. The few pounds fine inflicted was at once a direct encouragement to brutes of this sort to think they can practise their devilish cruelties with impunity, and an insult to the community. The Magistrate who would reward so disgusting a crime with so trivial a sentence may be a respectable and reputable person in his own private walk of life, but his notions of proportion and of right and wrong are decidedly peculiar, and the Bench is no place for such undiscriminating persons as he. If it is not possible to flog for such an offence as this it ought to be, and in cases where such an absurd miscarriage of retributive justice occurs the higher court should have power to bring the man or woman up again and inflict a more suitable penalty.

While we in this colony are grilling under a broiling hot sun, and anathmatising the heat, the unfortunate folk at Home are, according to the cables, suffering agonies of cold—the Thames itself being frozen over as far down as Marlow. Verily we are an ungrateful lot if we complain. The heat we growl about, what is it after ail? Does it ever cause real illness, or even inconvenience, far less death as it did in New York and London this summer. As for the suffering. this cold snap will entail, it does not bear thinking of. Just imagine, what must be the agony of body for those who have to pass the night in the streets of London with one ragged garment alone to cover them; to do this when the cold is so intense as to freeze running water. Certainly we may thank God we in New Zealand.

Valentine’s Day passed on Friday, utterly and entirely unnoticed. “How* are the mighty fallen!” Twenty-five years ago, Valentine’s Day meant a big strain on the Post Office, and from one end of the colony to the other, passed a stream of valentines. The ugly or insulting personal sort endured for a further year or so. and were even to be seen in certain small stationer's shops twelve months ago. This year they seemed entirely to have disappeared. The age is too busy for love-making by valentine nowadays, and if one wants to insult a man, one does it by telephone.

The following advertisement was in the Auckland “Star” last week: — “Found, horse and gig. Owner can have same by paying all expenses.” This would seem to argue that someone had lost the same. One would have thought a horse and gig not a very easy thing to mislay, but its wonderful what a man (and women) can do in this matter. For example, one constantly sees lost false teeth advertised for, and it is not so very long ago that a Wellington advertiser offered 5/ reward for the return of a wooden leg left between Lambton Quay and the Manawatu railway station. How on earth’’ that man had managed to get rid of his leg “unbeknownst,” as it were, and how he got home without it, and who found it, and what he, or she, did with it, are problems over which this scribe seriously ponders in the solemn watches of the night.

An unlucky individual in a Dunedin paper inserts the following advertisement in the morning paper: — “The King’s Coronation. —For sale, three and a-half second saloon return tickets. New Zealand to London, per Orient Line. Berths booked per Omrah. leaving Sydney about middle of March." This tells its own tale of disappointment pretty plainly, and whatever may be the reason the advertiser has had to postpone his trip, he has the sympathy of the “Graphic.” To have made arrangements, and then not Ho be able to go, must he most annoying. But the “ad” ®>so prompts one to wonder if aay attempt has been made to coroN the market in the matter of

berths this year. To a bold speculator it might have provided a very handsome profit to buy up every berth for England during the next four months. The capital required would have been large, but enough rich folk would pnobably have given at least 25 per cent, advance on current rates rather than miss the show. As an old mining speculator of Auckland used to say, “There’s money in it,” or at least there would have been if someone with enough cash had thought of it in time.

Filial affection, and the steadfastness of lovers willing to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of comforting the declining years of their parents, are not entirely virtues of the past. Last week at Onehunga there were married a couple who became engaged fifteen yars ago. The girl was the last of a large family, all of whom had married, and she declined to leave the old people lonely and desolate. Her lover agreed to wait. After several years one parent died, and just the other month the other pasvsed peacefully away, tended by the loving daughter. So this last week, after fifteen years of patient, and devoted duty on the one side, and steadfast faithfulness on the other, these two fine characters were united. May they have all the happiness this world can give will be the wish of all who read this paragraph. A modern romance such as this is an object lesson to us all.