NO TIME!

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVII, Issue 996, 8 April 1909, Page 22

NO TIME!

Two costermongers had met at a street corner, and one o: them eyed what the other called his “ moke” —a beautiful specimen of a skeleton — with anything but admiration. “ Don’t you feed ’im, Bill?” he exclaimed at last. “ Feed ’im ! Well, I like that! ” was the reply. “Why, ’e’s got a bushel and a ’arf of boats at ’ome now, but ’e ain’t got no time to eat ’em.”

At the Temperance Hotel, Wobbegonggolonggoloonga. Well-known C. T. paying his bill: “Pardon my curiosity, Mr. Swampoak. but what do you stuff your beds with in this hotel?” Mr. Swampoak, aggressively: “With the best straw to be got this side o’ Sydney Heads. Why?” C.T., still suavely: “I only wanted to know. It’s awfully interesting. Now I know where the straw came from that broke the camel’s back.”

A South Australian hotel-keeper, summoned for allowing two men, not bona-fide travellers, on his premises on a Sunday, writes to the “ Advertiser ” his idea of the cure for imposition on the hotelkeeper. He says: — “ In my opinion the only way in which the Licensed Victuallers’ Act can be carried out is by the Government placing an officer outside the hotels to see that none but bona-fide travellers go in, that is in front of those hotels that are compelled to keep open for travellers.”

If Australian wowserdom had its way life would be a misery instead of a heaven blessed with joy, under Austral skies. Don’t be misled for a moment into thinking that our wow-

sea- friends would rest content if they succeeded in carrying prihibition. That secured, they’d be reaching out for more power, inspiring more cowardly legislation such as they scared Wade into promoting, and would endeavour co rule With a rod of iron the everyday life of a groaning people. See how the early wowsers carried things with a high hand: —To realise the full rigors of the Puritan Sunday we must go to New England. Mrs. Earle, in her “ Sabbath in Puritan New England,” has collected some samples from the days when the rule of the “ saints ” lay heavy on the land: —“ In 1670 two lovers, John Lewis and Sarah Chapman, were. . . tried for sitting together on the Lord’s Day under an apple tree.” “ Jonathan and Susannah Smith were each fined five shillings and costs for smiling on the Lord’s Day during service.” “ Captain Kemble, of Boston, was in 16 cz s set for two hours in the public stocks for his ‘lewd and unseemly behaviour,’ which consisted in ‘kissing his wife publiquely on the Sabbath day, upon the doorstep of his house.’ when he had just returned after an absence of three years.” Compared to this the modern English—or even Scottish —Sunday is an ungodly orgy.