The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 25, 22 June 1907, Page 23

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

SOME'HTING should really be done,” the amateur musician remarked, “to put a stop to the nuisance of encores at concerts.

It very often happens that au encore is not a compliment to the performer. It is sometimes well known to the audience that a particular singer always gives a certain song as an encore, and tlie audience want to hear this song, and therefore applaud to the echo something that they have not appreciated at all. A programme to suit all tastes does not want to be entirely made up of classical pieces and songs in foreign tongues. The encore is often nothing more than a demand on the part of the majority for something more intelligible. Then at many amateur performances if one singer secures a recall the listeners feel bound to pay a similar compliment to all succeeding performers, and so a concert, dreary enough in all conscience to begin with, is rendered doubly tedious by this stupid custom. I have often been urged to encore a bad piece, either because it is hoped thereby to secure something better or because everyone else has been thus honoured, and it would be invidious to make exceptions; also in the case of highly-paid professional artistes, it is hardly fair to ask them to do double work.” © © © “The thing is all right in moderation,” said a young accountant, who enjoys some local fame as a tenor. “I don't fancy the singers look on it as a tax at all; they Regard it as a compliment. Of course, the recalls can oe overdone, the whole affair rendered meaningless, but if people would only encore what they really admire, then it would serve as an additional spur to singers to do their best.” © © © “Everything nowadays," suggested the Cynic, "suffers from adulteration. Our honours are made so cheap that the greatest honour is to have avoided them. A man with no title and no letters after •his name is a person of consideration. Alphabetical distinction may easily become the mark of a fool. I remember an individual named Pain once started a gigantic competition which he styled a Bible skill competition. Everyone eent a shilling entrance fee and counted the number of times the letter “c” occurred in S. Luke’s Gospel. The prize was a turkey and permission to use the letters P.T.B. after your name. One or two successful competitors used this distinction, and interpreted it to mean ■Prize for Theology and the Bible. Mr. Pain, when he retired from business, explained that tlie letters really meant Pain’s Turkey Biter. I see, by the way, that a Sydney judge has been preaching e sermon on excessive legal charges. He Hays that 3/4 for looking at a telegram, and 6/8 for reading it is rather much. This judge is like a converted burglar giving an address on the sanctity bf property. Perhaps the telegram was on the law of evidence, and required pondering, though this part of law is really beautifully simply, inasmuch as nothing is evidence in a court of law which is in ■the least degree likely to enlighten the jury.”

“ The law of evidence,” responded the legal light, is really very clear and lucid. We have the four great exceptions—hearsay, opinion, and suchlike—but the law is founded on the great principle that we must always produce the best evidence. Now if you come to think of it you find very little realisation of this in everyday; life. People say: “I know so-and-so stole my things because he is a notorious thief.” But this is no proof that he committed this particular theft. Of course many things not legally admissible would carry great weight with a jury, and counsel often try and work them in, even if the judge stops them; the impression desired lias in many cases been made. In a case the other day when a defendant complained of legal jugglery, the matter was really quite clear. As he had not pleaded justification, he manifestly could not call evidence on this plea. I must, however, admit that some of the refinements of the, law are not very clear at first sight. Thus in a case of insanity, a medical man may not be asked if he considers a patient insane, but he may be asked if certain symptoms are indicative of insanity. A good deal that is not legally evidence is given as such in our courts of law, especially when you get a J.P. on the bench.” © © © “I must say," interposed one of our committee, “ that you chaps rightly say in your K.G. oath, “ according to my cunning.” Listening to a lawyer talk always gives me a headache. His hairsplitting is rather a head-splitting performance. That reminds me that wo are all likely to suffer from bad heads if the French Government persist in discouraging the making of wine from grapes. All my sympathies are with the vineyard proprietors. They are really waging the battle of pure wines against chemical concoctions. Gracious me, everything we eat and drink will soon be turned out of some filthy German laboratory. Hardly one bottle of wine in a dozen has ever seen a grape nowadays. I fancy our New Zealand wines are better than most of the imported stuff, despite their immaturity. I wish these prohibition fellows would do something in the direction of protecting us from adulteration. It is bad liquor that makes me drunk.” © © © “It is only another instance," remarked tlie country member, “of a democratic Government pandering to the city worker. The French ministry daren’t forbid the making of wine from chemicals, because this industry supports a large number of working men in the towns. The vign crons made the riches of France, just as the settler makes the riches of a colony. It was

the country people who paid oil' the war debt of £200,000,000 after the FraficoPrussian war. Our trade unions would willingly ruin the farmer to benefit their own members. They com-

bine to raise the price of labour, but they want to make it illegal for pro-

ducers to combine to raise the price of produce. They cry out, “Down with the employer,” just as Campbell Bannerman cries out: “Down with the House of

Lords.” We work hard enough in all conscience to grow our stu, and if the unions make us pay more for our clothes and boots, we intend to make them pay more fgr their bread and their meat. Where it will all end, goodness only knows.” “ That is easily answered," replied the cynic. “We shall all end in the Union. It is not without a certain prophetic insight that the* British poor have applied this name to their workhouses. When bread has risen to a sovereign a loaf, and it costs you a similar sum to engage a knight of labour to give you the benefit of his services for an hour, with overtime allowance if you have called him away from a football match, no one except a labour agitator or a member of the House of Rigmarole will be able to afford to live on his own. We will all be supported, under a paternal Government, in workmen’s cottages, and we will occupy our leisure moments in trying to count the number of times the letter “D” occurs in the reports of meetings of Trade and Labour councils, so that we may qualify to add one of Mr. Pain's turkeys to our daily allowance of socialistic rations.