The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 6, 10 February 1909, Page 4

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

I OFTEN wish,” the padre remarked, "that we eould come to some understanding with the people who give and the people who attend concerts in regard to the matter of encores. At the present it simply means that every single item on the programme—good, bad, and indifferent —is vociferously applauded, and thus the performers have double work the concert is unduly prolonged, and the applause itself becomes absolutely meaningless. It is right enough to applaud any exceptionally fine item, but most of our audiences display absolutely no discrimination in the matter. I daresay some people feel that wl.en several items have been encored it would be invidious to make distinctions, ami so there is a stamping and yelling and clapping over everything in the programme. It may be my parsonic instinct, but I feel that any applause is out of place after a sacred item. People will be applauding hymns and chants in church next, or even the sermon, as they used to do in the days of Chrysostom.” © © © “My good and worthy padre,” replied the cynic, ‘‘you need be under no apprehension that people will accord an encore to a sermon, whatever they might feel inclined to do n the matter of hymns and anthems. Most people are only too thankful when it is finished to desire any repetition of the discourse. Managers of concerts nowadays arrange short programmes to allow of extra items being included. They ought to draw up a programme of suitable length and definitely announce that no encores will be given. But the audiences are not altogether to blame. It often happens that it is well known that favourite pieces will be given as encore items. Take the case of the Welsh Choir or the Besses o’ the Barn Band, for instances. Several of their best selections were given in response to the demand for an eneore. W hen an Italian song or some very classical item is greeted with vociferous applause, it generally means .that the audience hopes to get something more popular in the second contribution. Some people r.pplaud things because they don’t like them: even public speakers are sometimes vigorously cheered.” © © © ‘‘We hear a lot about hard times,” said the banker ‘‘but I have noticed If it everybody seems to find it easy ( <ough to raise the necessary funds for tickets for concerts and theatres and moving pictures. I must say we have had some exceptionally good performers in the colonies lately ami they deserve large audiences, but even mediocre affairs can generally rely on a fair house. I think the cry of hard times is rather overdone. I have been studying the balance-sheet of the Auckland Savings Bank, and I notice that deposits show an increase of £40,000. The Penny Bank also seems to be well patronised. This shows that we are not wasting our money in reckless extravagance, but that V>? have money to put by as well as money to spend in amusements. Most of our public companies have been able to show good balance-sheets. Both the Auckland and the Wellington Gas Com-

panics have done well, and it does not appear that electric lighting is injuring the prospects of these concerns. I daresay there is a certain amount of unemployment and some poverty, but the croakers who are for ever predicting financial ruin for the colony do not seem to have much to go on. People who can afford to spend several thousands on some fancy heating apparatus, and accept tenders without any sordid consideration or price cannot be said to be exactly at their last gasp for coin.” © © © “I have noticed,” put in the Dominie, “that we seem to be reaching a stage when we want the best of everything to do our work with. Girls at some ‘institutions are taught washing, and they are given, every kind of apparatus to work with. In after life they will have to do their washing with nothing more than a kerosene tin and a fire in the open. Then they will be perpetually grumbling because they have not got a copper set in brickwork, and a mangle, and wringer, and tubs, and water laid on, and gas irons and all the rest of it. To my mind the great charm of country life is the way people manage to get on with all sorts of makeshifts, and the clever manner in which they turn old sacks and empty tins to account. It is ridiculous to teach girls at these large homes to expect that they must have everything needed for their work ready to hand. They would be quite lost in the bush.” © © © “People,” said the cynic, “who undertake the work of education seldom have any large amount of common sense, or sense of any kind, common or otherwise. We have got just at present, an insane idea that we ought to educate girls on the same lines as boys, just as some travelling menageries try to make the elephant perform the same tricks as the poodle. We think it derogatory to the fair sex that they should be taught cooking and housework, and so we endeavour to teach them the higher mathematics and political economy, and a whole lot of stuff that can never by any possibility be of any use to them. If they knew more about things that have to do with their homes, and less about abstruse subjects, there would not be so many unfortunate husbands sacrificed on the altar of higher education. The aim of all real training should be to teach people to do well the work they are likely to be called upon to do in the world.” © © © “All the same,” answered the professor, “I don’t quite see how you are going to make cookery a subject for matriculation or junior- scholarship examinations. A set of written questions and answers would be no earthly good because the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Each candidate would have to cook a certain number of dishes, and the examiner would have to eat them. If there were two or three hundred candidates the examiner would have a pretty bad time of It. In these matters theoretical knowledge is not a scrap of good, and if you had a practical test yon would probably kill off all your best

examiners. You might, of course, keep a number of dogs, and let them test the dishes, with a skilled supervisor to note the effect produced by different concoctions. But I am afraid any scheme for including cookery as a subject for matriculation would not be found to work well in practice, though theoretically the idea is admirable.”