Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 679, 12 March 1903, Page 13

Echoes of the Week.

The Mayoral elections, as well as those for Councillors, all over the colony take place on the 29th inst . For the City of Auckland the only candidates who have announced themselves through the usual channels are Messrs Stichbury and Hewson, but it is understood that the redoubtable cold-water champion, Richardson, also means to have a run for it.

He will be taken seriously by Messrs French, Rout and Hare, Mrs Chapman and their following, but scarcely so by many others. Very few of the wags who helped to swell his total at the recent general election are ratepayers, and those who are have begun to see that it is possible to carry a joke too far Years ago, in Hamilton, when the only otherwise fit candidate was personally unpopular, certain humourists nominated a negro, but they repented before the day of election. And Aucklanders are not endowed with less grace than Hamiltonians.

The trouble that has arisen in the furniture trade is not likely to be settled without concessions, mutual or otherwise. And it would be best to allow those directly interested come to a settlement. The interference of the Government in the person of the Under-Secretary for Labour, is l calculated to offend the employers and irritate the workers, while it is, as the morning journal has pointed out, a direct slap in the face to the

Chairman and members of the Arbitration Court. From all points of view it would be better to revert to the conciliation machinery of the Act, and allow the dispute to be dealt with by the tribunal before which it should have come in the first instance, In effect, the function of the Arbitration Court now is to fix a minimum wage over a given period of time, a principle opposed not only to political economy, but to the comman horse sense of the man in the street, whose particular trade is not at the moment a party to a dispute.

The charms of prison life at Waiotapu do not appeal to the mind of every criminal who, for whatever virtues he may be supposed to possess, is sent tree-planting. A man named Lee, who is undergoing a sentence of five years’ hard labour, was brought before Mr Brabant last week, charged with escaping from the Waiotapu camp. He admitted the offence, and was awarded an additional four months, to commence at the termination of his present sentence. This penalty seems, unduly so”ere. in view of the fact that the man only vtadel in crdis ihat he might be sent to Mount Eden, where, according to his opinion, the work is lighter and the rations better and more abundant. On the other hand, the reports laid before the magistrate go to show that the prisoner belongs to the incorrigible class, and the probability is that, if he live to see the outside of the prison once more, it will not be long before he is back again. So four months is neither here nor there in his case.

The following applications for transfers of licenses were granted at the last quarterly meeting of the Auckland City Licensing Committee, the police report in each case being favourable :—William J. Brewin (Mr Colbeck) to Julia McCullough, Criterion Hotel ; Sydney W. Buck (Mr McVeagh) to James Thomas Gray, Queen’s Ferry Hotel ; Victor Cornaga (Mr Nicholson) to Percy Isaac, Royal Mail Hotel executors of Charles Edward Stone (Mr Goldwater) to Alice Stone, Robert Burns Hotel.

On the subject of the Melba “ boom,’’ <t 'CivilS!,C.in thd Ortjago “ Witness,’*' has? something to say that is well worth reproducing. “ Our enthusiasim for Melba,” he says, “ is generated partly by the fact that she began ’n an Australian church choir. It isn’t altogether enthusiasm for high art ; at least Melba herself doesn’t so understand it. The composers she chooses to carry her through New Zealand are Donilzetti, Thomas, Arditi—three musical mediocrities ; and every programme are the ecstatic outpourings of two heroines gone mad — Lucy, in Donizetti’s version of “ The Bride of Lammermoor,” and Ophelia, in Thomas’s “ Hamlet.” Why this deliberate choice of mad music for New Zealanders ? That is Melba’s delicate aupreciation L She wishes to show us how much she can do that nobody else can do with that common possession, the human voice ; and for this purpose there is nothing in the whole range of opera so serviceable as music in the Italian style composed for heroines gone mad.. Beautiful it may be, but the wonder of' it transcends the beauty. Absolutely, it ife not the highest art; but it is the highest for New Zealanders. That is a delicate discrimination, of which none but a great artist would be capable. My estimate of Melba has gone up since I have seen her New Zealand programme.