Echoes of the Week.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 772, 22 December 1904, Page 22

Echoes of the Week.

(By

“Ithuriel.”)

Dean Hole, the noted English clergyman who died recently, was the leading figure in many humorous stories. On one occasion he was crossing the Channel after a visit to the Continent, the voyage being very stormy. The Dean was a bad sailor and had suffered a great deal on the trip. At Dover he was looking over the railway company’s rules on the station wall as a passenger came up. Said the Dean : “After that stormy voyage we have at least one advantage in making the subsequent trip to London. I see the company carries returning empties at reduced rates.” * * * * A worshipful aiderman, whose flashes of wit were brilliant but irregular, at one of the festive gatherings at the Old Bailey propounded the following conundrum : “What is the difference between a pair of silk stockings and a donkey?” The witty aiderman, however, with a smile of self-approval, said, “The difference between a pair of silk stockings and a donkey is that the one you wear and the other you are. Ha, ha, ha !” The answer was greeted with a round of applause, which threatened the conviviality of the remainder of the evening. At last a literary gentleman asked : “What is the difference between a gentleman and an aiderman ? You’ll never guess it,” said the journalist. “No ?” “No ; because the one vou are, and the other you never will be. Ha, ■ha, ha ! ” “This bell,” said a well-meaning sexton, when showing the belfry of an interesting- village church to a party of visitors, “is only rung in case of a fire, a flood, a visit from the lord bishop of the diocese, or any such calamity.” * # -»c ♦ Chatting with an old schoolmaster the; other day (says “Boondi”), we struck on the question : “Do our horses, like our men and women, deteriorate in stature after a residence of many vears in our Australian climate ?” “is it a fact that the men and women of Australia have gone down below the standard ?” I asked, and my chum replied : “Well, judging from the race of giants we were wont to find on the Hawkesbury in the early days, ‘when our beards were black,’ and the miserablelooking natives of the present day, I can certainly say there is a most ’ decided falling off.” That settled the problem in one shot, for it took our thoughts back to the times our fathers loved to gossip over when strolling round the old Hawkesbury course, and there could be seen such splendid specimens of men as the three Chalkers, the Cables, Cosgroves, and Meglins, of South Creek, the Dargins, Dights,

Boyles, Bowmans, Norris’s, and man'/ others, all standing from six feet to six feet four inches high, from 15 to 17 stone in weight, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, as straight as pines, fleet as deers, the ideal yeoman that should he their country’s pride.

These giants were mated to wives in every way well worthy of them ; clear, cream and rose complexions, tall, stately, broad-hipped and bosomed, and with limbs that Diana herself might have envied. Everyone then led a good, healthy open-air life, with plenty of work to do always, and a sure market wherein to profitably realise on the result of their

labours. Men could then afford to marry when in their prime, and being wedded to healthy, well-formed partners, the offspring rivalled the parents, for a generation or two at least. Then some deteriorating causes began to make themselves felt, and we found a race snringing up that was tall enough, hut there was a loose, slop-made, slab-sided look about its representatives that was not gcod.to gaze at. It was by no means a bad crowd, however, for though they were all legs and wings, they were hard and wiry ; capable of quick spurts and full of staying powers, too, but lacking the noble mould of their ancestors. The women were tall enough, but

began to grow thin, and to lose the beautiful well-rounded lines that made their mothers such an armful of loveliness for the happy men who won them. Slowly but surely this thinning down kept on until now men stare after a fine-looking woman as though she were the eighth wonder of the world ; and our men are represented by the thin, weedy wisps we see roofed by “NanNan” hats and pulling at cigarettes so hard that they have to lean against posts to prevent a collapse that would land them in the gutter. When these weeds are mated with slips of girls of the “donah” type, all hone and “fringe,” flat-chested, lark-heeled, and

with no more hip than a gohanna has, we have a poor show of finding those strong, sturdy youngsters which MajorGeneral Huttcn thinks will make rare fighting men of the near future. One of Tom Malone’s bantam cocks would fight and knock out half-a-dozen “NarJ-Nans” before breakfast any morning, and it seems to me it is “up against” the Government to appoint a Royal Commission to enquire into the real causes of this deterioration, for it is a matter upon- which the future of our fair land in a great measure depends. We don’t want more babies, but we want better babies badly.