Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 769, 1 December 1904, Page 15

Echoes of the Week.

(By

“Ithuriel.”)

I notice (says “ Civis ”) that the Dunedin Council of Churches is hankering once more after the flesh-pots of l-igypt—that is to say, after American jokes, music-hall chanties, meetings morning, noon, and night, with denunciations hot and hot of all pleasant sins —racing, dancing, fiddling, drinking. In a word, the Council of Churches desiderates Torrey-Alexander, and, inasmuch as Torrey-Alexander cannot be had, is settling its mind on Gipsy Smith. Now who is Gipsy Smith? I don’t in the least know; probably outside the Council of Churches nobody k,nows ; but that is a detail and unimportant. It must be conceded at once that a revivalist calling himself Gipsy Smith has an immense pull to start with. Other names were mentioned. prosaic names like Stokes and Noakes ; but, if my vote counts, I vote for the Gipsy. Like Falstaff, a Gipsy Smith ought to be not only witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men. And wit, strange to say, is of a revivalist’s most essential stock-in-trade. We may nowadays read, if so minded, “ The Wit and Humour of Mr Spurgeon.” “ Put plenty into your sermons, gentlemen,” he once observed, “ After hearing some discourses, I have been reminded of the request of the farmer’s boy, ‘ Missus, 1 wish you would let that chicken run through this broth once more.' Again, ‘ Long prayers injure prayer meetings. Fancy a man praying for twenty minutes, and then asking God to forgive his shortcomings !’ ‘ Mind you avoid inappropriate texts. One brother preached on the loss of a ship with all hands on board, from ‘So he bringeth them to their desired haven ’; and another, returning from his marriage holiday, ‘ The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Oh ! bring me out of my distresses.’ ”

The Rev. Mr Saunders, I regret to notice, was ostentatiously cool towards the proposed importing of Gipsy Smith. It may be remembered, also, that the Rev. Dr. Gibb, with whom the Rev. Mr Saunders does not on all subjects see eye to eye, similarly fell away from his allegiance to Torrey-Alexander. Possibly these backslidings only show the need more urgent.

A pair of Sydney visitors to the great city of the “Cup” (says “Boondi”) had a rather novel and decidedly costly experience. They were staying in fashionable lodgings, and the husband seldom got home during the Cup week before midnight, his excuse generally being that “Srooport Clarke kept him to look at his horses, and get his opinion on their Cup chances.” One night this gay deceiver was shedding his clothes, when a white bone cardcounter rolled out on the floor. “Oh, what’s that pretty thing, Tom ?” asked the wife, as she hastened to pick it up. And the husband, with that fluent and often happily conceived gift of lying which pulls so many husbands out of tight places, promptly said : “Oh, that’s one of those new dyspeptic tabloids ; splendid cure for indigestion and all that sort o’ thing ; pass it over, petty ?” “No fear,” said petty, sharply, “it’s just the very thing I want,” and before her affrighted lord could stop her she had swallowed the counter at a gulp. Later on awful internal complications ensued, and in twenty-four hours the wretched husband had spent in doctors and chemists’ bills just nine times as much as there was in the “jackpot” he had cleared the night he brought home that unlucky bit of bone.

That recalls to the same raconteur the story told of the man who was taken very ill after attending a wedding breakfast and very foolishly eating heartily of the viands, although the bride had confessed to cooking most of them herself. The doctor came, and it didn’t take him long to size up the truth, and advise the trembling wife to give her sick spouse a black draught as soon as possible. That night the good wife called on the doctor again to say her good man was getting no better very fast, and complained greatly of stomach pains. “Did you give him the draught I ordered ?” asked the doctor. “Well—rto,” replied the lady ; “You see, doctor, we don’t play many games at our place, and I could not find a draught about the house anywhere, so I gave him a domino instead —a real good one, too —a double sixer !” And yet (adds “Boondi”) we are told the country’s salvation depends upon the extension of the franchise to every woman in the land.

The editor of the “Scientific A.merican” has again had the query put tc him —“Suppose a train going at (he rate of a mile a minute has a gun upon it which fires a tall at the same rate of flight, first in the direction in which the train is going, then in the opposite direction, what would be the result in each case ?” and gives the following reply : —“The principle is simple. The gun will do the same to the ball as if the train did not exist. The train will do the same to the ball as if the gun did not exist. Newton’s law is ‘a given force will produce the same effect, whether it acts alone or with oHier forces.’ If the ball were discharged in the same direction as that of the train, the ball would go forward with two ■motions, that of the train and that of Ihe gun. It would thus go ahead of the train a mile a minute. If shot in the opposite direction, the train would carry the ball forward and the gun carry it backward at the same time, a mile a minute. The ball would, therefore, drop directly from the mouth of the gun to the ground.”

News from Lord Howe Island. A wandering geologist from New Caledonia touched at the petty eyot and forgot some nickel specimens he’d brought from the French settlement. They were found—specimens always are. So a gentle boom-wave went through the knowing Sydney minting men, and the wee island was mysteriously alluded to as a mountain of metal that would soon show New Caledonia what nickel deposits meant. The samples were assayed in Sydney, and declared equal to the best that N.C. could show —which was no wonder, for they were the pick of many. Mr Farnell, the resident or visiting magistrate, had the duties of mining warden hemmed on to his growing responsibilities. Scout parties of prospectors were employed to spy out the land, and locate the lodes. These duties were removed from Mr F’s. shoulders last week when it was discovered that the specimens were a mere accident of travel, and that a 1000-mile tunnel to the N.E. offered the sole chance of success, so far as nickel was concerned. The lesson will be understood by those who in days gone by sold (sacrificed) their all so’s to be among the first on a new rush engineered by publicans and butchers on the strength of a few specimens brought from afar.