After Dinner Gossip- Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XV, 8 October 1904, Page 16

After Dinner GossipEchoes of the Week.

Mr. Seddon and His Political Jubilee. By the hour this appears in print the fiechlon Political Jubilee will be a thing of the past, and the Premier back at .Wellington. after his triumphal progress amongst his friends and constituents of the West Coast. If anything were needed to show how complete is the .Dictatorship in which Mr Seddon’s indomitable will and other strong qualities have established him, it would be the utter stagnation of politics during his temporary absence. Not even the mice dared to play. However, it was ou the holiday, and not its effect on politics, that the spirit moved me to make some remarks, for the reason, perhaps, that there is just at present little else to talk about. No doubt the Premier hugely enjoyed himself, and there is not one of his opponents, so bitter, so narrow, or possessing so little ‘’milk of human kindness’’ and sympathy, who grudges him one iota of the pleasures of the tour and the unceasing flow of adulation and admiration which poured forth on every side, wherever he stopped to speak, or even to smile. We all love praise. Even when we know it is undeserved it is not without savour, though to the conscientious there is then a bitter after-taste, but deserved praise, such as Mr Seddon undoubtedly deserves —not merely from Kumara and the Coast, but from the Empire—is sweet indeed. We cannot all see eye to eye with him. and some of us mislike much that he has done, and is doing, but. foes as well as friends, recognise “Seddon the man” (as the phrase goes), while Seddon the success commands wonder amt admiration from those who gird at him most stoutly on questions of policy and legislation. But amongst his own constituents he must have been met with that extra ami affectionate pride which conn's of possession. Lord Roberts is a hero to ns. as everywhere else in the Empire, but what sort of god like personage is he. think you. to his family, his old schoolmates, and the friends and neighbours who surround his early home? To Mr Seddon processions and triumphal progresses through miles of cheering multitudes are no new thing. He has received honours accorded to monarchs, has ridden in the ’(treat White Queeji’s” States coaches, and seen his King crowned, and at all of the stately pageants in which he has taken part he has been pointed out and received with an enthusiasm denied the crowned potentates who rode before, so that with the smallest stretch of imagination he might have pictured himself Dictator of New Zealand in name as well a«i in fa. 4. Yes, he has tasted Royalty, and that he enjoyed it to the full was writ large lor every one to sep. Who does not remember the sentries at the Hotel <*<•»•»!. and the evident pleasure the Premier found in their presence? But the triumphal progress through London was an impersonal matter, there was no ailed ion for the man himself —it was New Zealand they were viieering. and. of course. 1 he Premier knew that. In Kumara they welcomed ’’Dick Seddon.” old fri nd and representative, ami 1 have little doubt there were moments of emotion which had a higher vajuc than all the pomps and glories of Diajnoml Jubilees, or even ('oronalion ceremonies. Naturally. Mr Seddon in his speeches was largely reminiscent in drain. and cared to visit old landmarks here and there, and •'peaking of his \ i-.it to the .section he cleared and cull iva! cd with his own bands at Kumara. One writer surmises that he wa« a happier man then than now. It js a common, and in its way a natural, supposition. We are all apt to look bark with some regret to early* days, but I dn nut think that Mr Seddon, or any

other man who has satisfied ambition, and achieved legitimate success, was ever really happier before he began the upward climb. In looking back on life, more especially on the early struggles of maiftiood. we see happily only the sunnier spots, or in the light of after experience we can reflect sunshine back upon them, giving even dark days something of a glow they never possessed in reality. We have anxieties, responsibilities now we had not then, but we arc—most of us—happy in them. The attaining of such rungs as we can on the ladder of life is the greatest pleasure of mundane existence, and it does not cloy* with years, so that we are as happy climbing now as we were in the twenties, for though there are vanished illusions, and pleasures past, yet there are ever new ideals and fresh ambitions to take their place. 4* 4* 4* Human Gullibility. They say you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time. Perhaps you cannot, but it is astonishing what a long time you can fool all the people, or at any rate enough of them to enable you to make a very good living. Someone, has said that the people like being fooled, and really' some of them apparently do. A crowd, a mob, or call it what you will, is the most ignorant thing in the world. ‘When man congregates he is the most illogical animal on the globe. There are thousands of instances of his want of reason when there are a few hundred of him gathered together. Perha]>s the most common one js the panic in the presence of some real or fancied danger. In such a case the minds of the crowd seem to escape like gas with the usual result when a match is applied. Carlyle thought the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the -world was a concourse of people moved by one common impulse. So it is if the impulse be a good one. but the other side of the picture is a most deplorable affair. It takes a clever man io be a fool, but it takes one a groat deal cleverer to fool, and one can never withhold his admiration for a man who takes advantage of this gaping gullibility' of his fellow-men, and waxes and grows fat on it. I will grant you this is not good ethics, but that is by the way. Take the primest. “fooler” the world has known, that accomplished gentleman named Collet. He was undoubtedly a consummate impostor, hut the brilliancy of his methods ami successes at first dazzles even good folk, who think very hardly of him when they have time to cogitate. One always enjoys (if L may be allow rd the term) this sort of thing more when one is an onlooker, but it is astonishing how readily some folk take the bait, ami never seem to learn even in the bitter school of experience. The “some of the people” who can be fooled "all the time,” must have a lot of descendants and connections. W ho does noi remember how a certain slight little lady named after somebody’s magnet took thousands of pounds out of the colony simply because she knew how to fool the people about the centre of -gravity? No wonder the gods laugh at us poor mortals! How they must have guffawed to look round nt all those well filled seats at 5/, 3/. 2/, and 1/ a time, and see the public's intent look and hear the bursts of grateful applause! But. enough. What started me off on this fascinating subject was a recent event in wrestling

in Auckland, during the past week or so. a professional wrestler, one Carkeek, sent over by Mr Rickards, has been giving some examples of his skill in this now fashionable exercise, and after the manner of his kind has issued general challenges to all comers. The

other evening, two personages occupying the stage box bounded on to the stage, and created a vast amount of excitement by demanding a contest there and then. The by-play was quite excellent. The chief spokesman, an apparently excitable little Frenchman, gave a most finished performance, and his stolid companion—a brother to the fainouX Haekensehmidt. backed him up with a policy of sullen but masterly inactivity. Carkeek ordered the intruders back to their box, threatened to bring down the curtain if there was any disturbance, issued his challenge for the following evening, got an extra “tenner” promised by his manager, nnd closed the incident amidst a very thunder of applause. The contest duly came off, before an enormous house, but now, after it is all over, some people are professing a vast amount of indignation, because they consider they have been “bad,’’-that the whole affair of the challenge was a “fake,” and that the excitable party and his gigantic companion came over in the same boat with Carkeek and his company, notwithstanding that gentleman’s assertion from the stage that he never saw the man before. Well, without going into the merits of the case. I would merely observe that some people have a shocking memory for faces, and did any reasonable being ever suppose a professional wrestler would find locally as many would-be champions as would enable him to fill a 12-night season! But that is not the point—the point is, that it is a pity in a young country such as this to get out of the habit of laughing at a- joke when it. happens to turn out against ourselves. If it was a fake the other night in Auckland, it was wellworked up (save the stage box—that was an oversight. Conspirators should always come from the stalls), and added much to the evening's amusement. In l.ondbn, such “arrangements” are common, and unless clumsily managed never resented. The writer well remembers one at the “Umpire,” London, one Saturday night, when Kandow had just beaten Samson as champion strong man. Sandow, as usual, issued his challenge from the stage. The vast theatre was packed, and from the back of the stalls came a disturbance. There were cries of “sit down,” “let the man pass,” and a woman's voice loud in her entreaties that “George” would not make a fool of himself. However, George came charging forward, was ■helped over the division from stalls into orchestra stalls, and pushing musisians none too gently aside was helped over the footlights on to the stage, a friend following him. There was then an angry altercation, but at last Sandow agreed to let the men try. The fake soon became apparent, “George” producing a small tube and his companion a bicycle pump, and having bogus muscles blown up all over his body.

The house shrieked with laughter, wbieh redoubled when, offering to do something serious. George, amid breathless silence am] attention, raised his companion standing on his bands to full height. Having accomplished a feat which even Sandow gazed at openmouthed and amazed, “George” calmly walked from undcrneali his companion, who. of course, remained suspended by the invisible wires which had raised him. There was a second’s pause, then the long “Oh” of a house completely taken in, and then such a burst of laughter and applause as one is not likely to hear again. The joke was taken as a joke, and all was as it should be. Confederates are necessary in many entertainments, and to lose one’s temper because they at first deceive one is as unreasonable as it is childish. ♦ + 4> That £30,000 Picture. It is odd how dense we all are when it comes to understanding, far less appreciating, another man’s hobby. Some of our pictures in last week’s “Graphic” showed South African girls from Uganda with bangles of fencing wire, which it. was explained are greatly prize!. “How absurd!” said a certain lady acquaintance. “SujreJy it isn't true—fancy fencing wire.” And yet that same lady had quite a little treasury of trinkets on her hands, round her neck, and even —for earrings are again fashionable ■ —in her ears. Yet, what is the difference between the fencing wire bangle and the gold Nellie Stewart bracelet, or between the glass beads from Birmingham and tiie diamonds from De Beers’? More curious still: a friend walking down town no later than Monday remarked on the expenditure of £30,000 for a single canvas by Titian for the National Gallery. It was absurd, he said, and still maintained, though I pointed out the Prince of Wales was credited with having given over a thousand pounds (£l3OO was it not!) for a single stamp—a tiny scrap of defaced paper with no other recommendation than that it was one of perhaps three copies in the world. £30,000 does seem a stiftish price for a portrait which must ever be “caviare to the general,” but surely it is comprehensibility it: elf, or the craze of paying a hundred, far less a thousand, pounds for a stamp! Now if you come to collecting first editions of Dickens, Thackeray, and other famous authors, the writer is with yon at once. There is sense in that. To be sure, the modern editions are better printed, better bound, and a fortieth part of the price;- but the others are—well, perhaps, the subject better drop here.