The Club Smoking

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 12, 16 September 1908, Page 4

The Club Smoking

By

HAVANA

THE cynic seemed to regaid our political member with a genuine and affectionate interest. At last he asked him what he had on his head. The politician patted his scanty locks, and his bald crown carefully and tenderly, but, failing to discover anything, he rose reluctantly from his comfortable arm-chair, and surveyed himself in the glass. This proving no more satisfactory, he asked the first speaker what he meant. © © © “I was not quite certain,” replied the cynie, “but I thought I saw signs of a halo forming round your head. You political people are making us all so pious by Act of Parliament, that I am daily hoping to see you all develop wings, and fly far away. A wicked monster was heavily fined the other day for publishing a tip for a horse race. He should have been sent to gaol. Now, I rejoice to see that you are bent on preventing that much-harassed individual, the bona-fide traveller, obtaining the harmless but necessary cup of tea on the Sabbath. But, why stop here? Why not legislate against the hot Sunday dinner? Look at the work it gives, consider the washing up of greasy plates afterwards, and the bad language used by the head of the house if the cook should happen to have burnt the joint. People should be made to subsist on a bun and a glass of milk, and, instead of gadding about, they should be taught to find what pleasure they want in reading the ‘Sunday at Home.’ ” © © © “I think,” put in the journalist, “that we badly want a law to prevent a man kissing a girl unless he is engaged to her. The habit of promiscuous kissing is one of the crying evils of the day. It can only be stopped by the most drastic legislation, and the severest punishment, being meted out to offenders. Our legislators have been criminally careless in neglecting to deal with this hideous form of moral corruption. I would suggest that upon conviction the culprit be ordered to kiss ten assorted members of the Pious Females’ Association. The selection of the females to be left to the discretion of the magistrate, according to the heinousness of the original offence. The alternative should be ten years’ hard labour. © © © •Give me the alternative,” quoth the sporting youth. “We are going clean crazy with our absurd laws. People want to prevent us betting on a race, or watching a boxing match, or having a split B. and S. If they are so precious keen on things, why don’t they legislate against women's extravagance in dress? Many a decent fellow has had to suffer through his wife’s habit of running up bills to get fal-lals she doesn’t really want. Talk of a man wasting money on booze, why many women spend more on hats alone in a twelvemonth than most fellows do on drinks all their life. They want us to practise total abstinence. Why don’t they start with themselves and their clothes?” © © © “Shi” said the schoolmaster, “such a suggestion makes me blush. But I think we ought to have a law regulating the length of skirt to be worn by hockey players. It is shocking to read

cf skirts eight inches from the ground. I see that the matter is already being taken up. Our legislators might import Anthony Comstock as arbitrator. George Bernard Shaw said of Comstock that he had spent his life in trying to keep dark the awful secret that woman was a biped.” © © © The padre gave a slightly deprecating cough. “We labour under the delusion,” he remarked, “that we can make people good by cleansing the outside of the cup and of the platter. I don’t blame the many really excellent people who hold this view. They mean well, and they are actuated by the highest motives. But we were warned of old that the thing is impossible. We only produce men who are like whited sepulchres if we regulate their outward acts, and fail to regulate their inner dispositions. The truest and best way to conquer evil is to fight it, not to run away from it. You remember Tennyson’s Northern Cobbler. When he wanted to conquer drink, he bought a quart bottle of gin, and stood it where he could see it every day. “Wouldn’t a pint ’a’ sarved as well as a quart? Naw doubt; but I liked a bigger feller to fight wi’, an’ fowt it out.” That is the sort of reform we want to encourage, the reform that lasts.” © © © “I remember,” put in the dominie, "that Gilruth once said that he was surprised at the number of strong, ablebodied young fellows who applied to him to get them Government billets, instead of going on the land and making their own way. The returns just issued of the number of Civil servants in the employ of the State furnish rather a startling commentary on the veterinarian’s remarks. The total number, including school teachers and railway employees, reaches 40,000. That is to say, that of our entire population one person in every twenty-five is drawing Government pay. The wages paid amount to over £ 4,000,000 a year. A speaker recently declared that if everybody receiving pay from the State was compelled to wear a uniform, one out of every five adult males would be so attired.” © © © “That may be so,” retorted the schoolmaster, “but I am sure we earn it. If your figures are correct the average rate of wage works out at less than £2 a week per head. That is considerably under what most trades unions now demand as a living wage. Some fellows draw good salaries, of course, and have pretty soft billets, but most of us work jolly hard and get ptficious little for it. I have known men wear their lives out in teaching up-country schools for a v. age that few crossing-sweepers would deign to accept. Nor, from all accounts, does it appear that the railway employees exactly wallow in luxury. People get an idea that we all live on the fat of the land, and do precious little for it.” © © © “Some of the new legislation proposed to-night,” suggested the commercial, “should open up a few good posts for inspectors. The journalist might be appointed to preside over a royal commission to report on the prevalence of prenuptial kissing, and our sporting friend might do the same for female extrayagance in dress. What I would like would be a good soft Government bll*

let at a thousand a year and travelling expenses to supervise an industry foil making smoked glass to observe total eclipses of the sun visible in New Zealand. I might get a chance then to have a day or two off.”