After Dinner Gossip and Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue II, 9 July 1904, Page 16

After Dinner Gossip and Echoes of the Week.

The Decadence of Dancing. We twentieth century people have certainly a most remarkable record of progress and good deeds to our credit, but there is one thing we can’t do—we are quite incapable of dancing. There arc exceptions, to be sure, but they only go to prove the rule. What a stretch of the imagination it would require to lit* that favourite epithet of the poets, “the merry dance,” to the modern ballroom. One can still extract a lot of fun and amusement from an “At Home, hut dancing, once the primary object, is now a very secondary one, and is something like a pianoforte selection at an up-to-date afternoon—-“something to put the guests at their ease and start conversation.” A ery few people dance nowadays for the love of the thing per sc. It has become a conventional form of entertainment. and makes a splendid background for the “Do yon reverse?’ “A lovely floor!” style of conversation. Like* so many incidents of modern life, the modern dance is essentially selfish. Any dance in which one is required to dance with more than one partner is voted old-fashioned and slow. The Lancers is the only remnant of a once long list, and oven that jolly old friend is threatened by some who think the kit-chen-lancers “rough.” Nothing but the languid gyroscopic waltz is tolerated nowadays. They even waltzise the sprightly polka, which is very bad taste < ven if it were not bad form when the hostess has indicated her views on the subject by giving it a place on the card. 'The waltz is anything but pretty from a spectator’s point of view, and is slowly but surely bringing all its devotees down to one dead level of iuelegancy. Who ever looks for grace and courtliness in the ballroom of to-day? Note the evolutions in the one or two figures of the lancers where the dancers have to adopt a pose a little Jess like a-res-eue-o fan-apparently-drowned-person of which the waliz always puts one in mind, and one is forced to admit that a graceful bearing is not a strong point •with the young person of to-day. The whole economy of a .ballroom, if I may use the term, seems to me to be in sad need of a reformation. Women talk about their ‘•rights” and go looking for them on pditiril platforms and other ]dices where there is a minimum chain e of finding them. It would be much more logical (and therefore perhaps unlikely) if tiny would start in the ballroom. Tin* early hours at this place of gay and festive amusement (vide the poet-*) always remind one of market day or a prize poultry dispos I sale. The ladi» s stand round with the correct smile of unconcern on their pietly fares. The male kind, from the Idasc, elderly gentleman with the lacklustre eye, to the callow and flippant youth who varies the performance of twirling his programme with stroking the place where l;is moustache will be by and bye—take a cool, calm and collected stare over the material available, and then proceed to make up a card for al! the world like a man noting his purchases at an auction or a punter jotting down his transactions on the ba k of his race-book. How the fair sex goes through the ordeal and comes up smiling every time is a big puzzle. Won’t some of their strongminded sisters who are so busy hunting the delusive honour* of a political career turn aside for a brief moment and rescue ihe martyrs of the “merry” dance?

Man's Opinion of Woman. In that smart little Australian magazine for women, “The New Idea,’’ men have, one notices, been invited to set down their judgment of woman, the colonial article in particular, and not a few of the quaintly alleged “sterner sex” have set pen to paper over the matter. In choosing a subject such as this for discussion in print, the astute editor obviously trusts more to its perennial popularity than to any hope of obtaining any originality of thought. For what, after all, is there new that man ean say of woman, or woman of man? Yet of all subjects in this world it is the one on which we all will ever be talking, and on which that large class who delight in “writing to the papers’’ finds it most delightful to pour out their amazing vocabulary whose magnitude is frequently, by the way, the envy of many of we poor professional hacks who scribble for our bread and butter. Under such flimsy disguises as “Is Marriage a Failure?” "Shottiu Women Have an Annual Holiday '” etc., etc., women have discussed men and men women in the public press ever since this pastime achieved its present and ever-growing popularity. Wherefore it is not very surprising that there should be a rather plentiful lack of anything new in the papers submitted to the “New Idea.” The frivolity of woman is, one notices, a good deal comment' d on, ami with a certain censoi iousness, which for the life of him the present writer cannot bring himself to believe altogether genuine. What they think, the public will think they ought to think, rather than what they absolutely do, is characteristic of the printed opinions of most casual writers to the press on subjects such as this. Wherefore, because it sounds, or rather writes well to admire a "sweet seriousness” in woman. most of the critics have a dig at our colonial sisters, sweethearts or helpmeets for their frivolity. Now, beyond what is natural and pleasing, it seems to the writer that frivolity is not a characteristic of the .Antipodean woman. The accusation, if brought against, the wealthier class at “Home,” might be justified, but here, where distinctions of money and class onlv exist in very minor forms, it is surely scarcely fair. The colonial woman. to one who comes from and has been brought up in the Old Country, is a personage of such amazing adaptability that one cannot help imagining full credit has never and will never be done her. To find a wife in comfortable pecuniary circumstances. and with a moderate family to look after—despite our mm-h-talked-of falling birth-rate—suddenly bereft of all such assistance as the servants (hateful name) ean give, is so common an occurrence nowadays that no one gives the matter a moment’s thought.. Our women folk simply take up the work where it was left, and, as most men folk will admit, do it quickly, unostentatiously and well. and are then able ami willing to enjoy the theatre, the dance or the feminine amusement of shopping which are attributed to them by several writers for frivolity. A fondness for pleasure, for dress, for gaiety ami distraction undoubtedly exists amongst colonial women, and mighty unpleasant personages they would be to Jive with did it not do so; for all work and no play would assuredly make not merely a dull, but a discontented woman, but emphatically they do not, as a class, sacrifice their duties, domestic or otherwise, for pleasure. The colonial women is, in general, harder working than her sister across the seas, but she is systematic, and makes less of the matter, ami for that reason seems to take tilings easy sometimes, but to accrne her of undue frivolity is gro-ly under-cried and unjust.

Banker and Caitraer. The banker in his time plays many parts, not the least important of which in the part wherein he honours or dishonours our cheques, as the case may be. But (says “Lex,” in the “Australasia”) suppose he pays a cheque, thinking it to be the properly-signed cheque of his customer, whereas it is not. Then awkward, points of law arise. A banker is, of course, bound to know the signature of his customer, and he is only entitled to pay away money and debit it to the customer where he has been actually authorised to do so. As to endorsements on cheques he is not bound, beyond the exercise of reasonable care and caution, and if he pays on a forged endorsement that is in general no detriment to him. But suppose the customer signs a cheque for £lO, and on presentation it appears to be a cheque for £llO, and the banker pays it, what then? The £lOO h - been paid without the customer's orders; can the banker debit his account with the £100? According to the New South Wales Court, this depends on circumstances. If the customer has been guilty of such negligence in drawing the cheque that a third person could readily alter the amount from £lO to £llO, then the customer has to lose. For instance, assume that the customer, instead of writing up to the left-hand margin, has left a space in front of the statement of the amount, so that the sum named ean readily be increased, and has also failed to write the figures at the bottom of the cheque closely together. who is to suffer for the fradulent variation between the issue and presentation of the cheque? If the Court thinks the drawer has been careless, he has to pay the increased amount. The drawer, the Full Court says, owes a duty to the banker to be ordinarily careful to prevent the occurrence of fraud. He has to take into consideration the fact that he is issuing the cheque to the public, and that some person may try to defraud the bank by adding and changing, and lie must therefore protect his banker as far as reasonably lies in his power. The question of the degree of neglect or carelessness which will thus exculpate the banker who pays the enlarged sum is always one for the jury, and is naturally to be decided on the particular facts of each ease. It is. however, a golden rule that you should write your figures and words in the body of a cheque close to the margin, and close to one another. •ir ■fr 4’ A Great Ai’tist Dead.

The cabled nows of the death of the veteran artist, Mr Theodore Watts, at the age of 87, will be received with the most profound regret by all who take an interest in the art of the nation, for of all artists of our day, Mr Watts has done the most to fulfil the highest possibilities of his profession, and to use his heaven-bestowed genius for the teaching and betterment of mankind. Lord Leighton and Sir John Everett Millais were great artists and men of the highest moral worth, and their names live after them, but it is to be doubted if the work of either of these artists —though now Infinitely more generally appreciated and understood, will ever achieve so potent mid permanent an effect for good as the-great allegorical paintings to which this splendid imaginative and high-souled artist dc-

voted the very zenith of his powers, and which he donated to the nation as his moesaye to humanity. To the uneducated mind these symbolical paintings are, of course, not so attractive, or even so easily appreciated as the works by many other of our greater painters, but the glorious genius for colour, and the boldness of the masters conceptions always compel attention even in those who take art most carelessly, and they are assuredly those which leave a more lingering impression in the mind of the same class to whom a picture is a thing to be looked at. and forgotten. You cannot forget Watts’ pictures when oneo you have looked at them —they haunt the memory and compel renewed attention, which in turn is followed by curiosity which subsequently develops into thought. His primary object has never been to attract the eye. Beauty he will have, but it is to the mind, not the senses, that he addresses himself, lie has said himself on the occasion of the donation of his pictures to the Tait Gallery, if one mistakes not: ‘ Aly intention has not been so much to paint pictures that charm the eye, as to suggest great thoughts that, will appeal to the imagination and the heart, and kindle all that is best and noble in humanity.” It was his tenet that the main object of the painter should be demanding noble aspirations condemning in the most trenchant manner prevalent vices, and warning in deep tones against lapses from morals and duties.” This work he has nobly carried out in such pictures as 'The. Alinatour Aluminon” and ’’The Shuddering Angel,” in which he directed his genius against the sin of greed and cruelty and in the last-named over woman's folly and thoughtlessness in saeritieing the bird kingdom to the dictates of fashion. He is gone, and 1 here is none of the present men who can replace him; and though he would not at his great age have been expected to produce any further work, yet his personality will be missed. Titles he was twice offered, but would have none; hut he last year received from the King the new Order of merit. To such men as AVatts the nation's debt of gratitude is a deep one, and it is to be hoped a statue to his memory may be placed amongst those which are already beginning to beautify the Thames Embankment. • 4