FACTS, FANCIES, QUIPS & COMMENTS

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 3, 15 July 1908, Page 11

FACTS, FANCIES, QUIPS & COMMENTS

FROM THE AUSTRALIAN PAPERS.

MIXED. Smith: “By Heavens, sir, that was a dirty trick you played us last night.” Brown: “Why, I put you each in a cab, gave the cabbies your addresses, and sent you home.” Jones: “Yes, but hang it, man, you put us in the wrong cabs, and sent us to x ; the wrong homes.” <§><&<?> Marriages of Chinese to European women are quite common; the other day a Japanese resident in N.S. Wales advertised openly for a white wife; and the aboriginal women are very frequently the victims of white men. . . . Now, it should be in Australia a criminal offence for a white man to marry or live with a coloured woman, or for a coloured man to marry or live with a white woman; and the punishment should be harsh enough and certain enough to act as an effective deterrent. It is within the power of the Australian Parliament to enact this; and the power needs to be promptly exercised. <»<?>«• Two lines in the dailies the other day recording the death in a neighbouring State of a farmer who left £34,000 behind! him are, as an inducement to men to go on the land, worth acres of writing about colossal crops of corn and prodigious productions of pumpkins. For an agriculturalist, as presumably he was, to amass such a fortune is rare in any country, and, properly worked up—if it will stand working up with due regard to truth—and circulated abroad, this solitary fact ought to bring hundreds of British farmers to our shares. <«><•><» A “ TAKING” VISITOR. The Maid: “ There’s a man down below who——” Mrs. Lodsecasii: “Tell him to take a chair.” The Maid: “But he’s taking ALL the chairs! He says he’s.from the time-pay-ment firm! ” <3> <S> <S> A STATISTICAL ITEM. Old Gent (reading statistics): “ Good Heavens! Just imagine it. Every time I breathe, a man dies.” Nasty Person (opposite): “ ’Um. Well, try eloves.” <S> <s> <s> New Zealanders will not appreciate the statement of Bishop Julius that their country is not the hub of the world. <S> <s> <®> The flag display by 7000 children should be one of the most striking features in connection w'ith the visit of the American fleet. «•><s>❖ So far from being anything to crow about (as certain dailies seem to think it), 4332 immigrants in two and a-half years is an absurdly small number for this unpeopled continent. <»«><•> Sound Advice.—“ See here, Dinny, me b’y, if iver y’ walk pasht a horse at close qnarthers, go ayther in front av him or behind him. Fur if ’y go in front ay him he can’t kick’ y’, an’ if y’ go behint him he can’t bite y’.” The Tory Press prints, but passes without comment, the news that the supply of labour for the coming Queensland sugar season is more plentiful than in previous years, while most of the men coming forward, many from the south, arc of a good type. And yet it seems but yesterday that the same Press was moaning like a broken elephant over the approaching ruin of the sugar industry because white men not only wouldn’t but couldn’t undertake Wie work.

The aim of governing bodies, from the Parliament down, should all the time be to reduce taxation. A lightly-taxed country is something to boast about, and is likewise a good immigration advt. <s> <S> <®> The Victorian Crown Solicitor, Guincompetitions of skill, not of chance. ' Yet the winning stanza of a recent big limerick competition, prize £75, is ungrammatical, faulty in metre, defective in rhyme, wrong, in sense, and is not a limerick. Apparently, it is only the mess, declares limerick competitions tax judgment that is a game of chance. <s> Nearly 100 N.S.W. pubs have been ordered to close since the beginning of the year, under the Local Option Act, and the work isn’t nearly finished. The coming Cornstalk will be a great walker through his struggles to get from one pub to another in a day’s march. ❖ <?><?> “Was your wife angry when you got home late last night?” “No; she actually threw flowers at me.” “Then how: did you get that black eye?” “Oh, she forgot to take the flowers out of the pots.” <s> <s> ® There is no reason why the 200,000 boys in the Commonwealth of cadet age’ should not be taught to ride as well as shoot. As to cost of rifles, it is not necessary to have a rifle for each boy any more than it is necessary to have a horse for each. <s> <s> & It is discreditable to Sydney that the Governor should be able to describe the Sailors’ Institute as “the meanest and most disgraceful institution of the kind that I.have come across in my travels.” Let us see about altering it ere the hot flush of self-reproach passes. <s><?>«> The manicurist may prove more dangerous to the unwary male than the Biblical arrow that flieth in the night. One of her had a polish-and-cut-your-forepaw-nails parlour in a big building in Sydney, and to her repaired many circumspect married men for null upholstery. Up to date four of them have been blackmailed by the Lady of the Curved Scissors, and report says they have paid up. «><•■> «> Victorian Statist Drake, the man whose business it is to state facts and hang the consequences, prints a remarkable table in the just published "Finance” section of the Victorian “Year Book.” He shows for 10 years the average number of persons killed per 10,000,000 passengers carried in every country that keeps tally tally of such things—and away right at the bottom of the list is Canada, whose average railway butchers’ bill for 10 years is nine times that of N.S. Wales, 13 times that of Austria, nearly 12 times that of Germany. 8 times that of France, and more than twice that of even the United States. And it was to Canada, with the most appalling record of railway butchery in the whole world, that those amazing geniuses, Irvine and Bent, went for a Victorian railway boss! «><s> «> A casual cuss is the average parson. Last week a Victorian back blocks minister, driving churchwards, fell out of his gig, and the wheel passed over him. An hour later he was in the pulpit giving Satan Hailes with extraordinary fervour. A while before an Essendon preacher ran for a train as it moved off, and, unnoticed, fell between two carriages on to the buffers. When the next station was reached he coolly stepped upon the platform, minus most of his clothes, and proceeded on his way rejoicing, with a view to giving Beelzebub beans, as usual. Such happenings lessen the public wonderment over the fact that in a single denomination of the Cabbage State there are a score of parsons still drawing the superannuation allowance ment of Un years.