Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 39, 28 January 1898, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Mr. Morley in his Aphorisms, has said that " excessive anger against human stupidity is itself one of the most provoking of all forms of that

than the swallowing of certain quantities of pork and vegetable 9 constitutes health and strength. la both instances there must needs be assimilation — in the case of learning, by the process of thought. In this respect man is a ruminating animal, and the boy or girl who has acquired the habit of thinking will be the least likely to fall headlong into the colossal tomfooleries which we have quoted above. The highest function of mere instruction is to teach young John and Patrick and Alexander and their sisters to think.

SOME PRIZE BLUNDERS.

stupidity." It is, happily, sometimes easier to laugh at it than to be angry with it. When English as She is Wrote and English as She is Sj)olie first appeared, many people were disposed to look at their miraculous stupidities as the conscious work of designing authors. Some of the school-boy and school-girl blunders might indeed have been manufactured with malice prepense by a man in his right mind ; but — as Mark Twain says of another prize blunder book, A Guide of the Conversation in English — there are others which " no pretended ignorance could ever achieve, nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, when unbacked by inspiration." A similar remark may be made on the enchanting imbecilities to which reference is made in Inspector Spencer's recent report on scholarship examinations, at the Education Board meeting, Dunedin. "In science and history," says Mr. Spencer, " the results of confusion of ideas were often somewhat ludicrous. ' A gas presses down, for if we were to go up in a baloon and get out of it we should fall to the ground. This would happen if we were not up too high.' (Class A.) 'A piece of iron is porous, because if a piece was put in a bowl of water it would soak up all the water.' (A.) ' The thermometer falls if the air is cold and damp and goes up if it is light.' (B.) ' Capillary attraction is the force that draws all things up.' (A.) In the history of Class A, it was stated that ' Blenheim was fought bptween Wellington and Napoleon, was a battle in the civil war in the time of Charles I, and was an English admiral ;' ' the Glencoes got William (III) to sing an order of destruction,' and were then made responsible for the murder of themselves. Moreover,' Columbos ' was a famous soldier and Drake discovered America. In the history of Class B we find that 'the chief ways of laying taxation are the wheel tax and the dog tax.' Writing about the South Sea Bubble, one stated that ' the bank of N.Z. which was then a very rich bank in those days paid nine million pounds sterling ' (to relieve the distress). ' Customs ' (revenue) were explained by a senior candidate : ' A custom is a thing which all the people of a nation do. For instance, it is the custom of the Scotts to eat porrige ; it is his habit of coming late. To eat porrige is a custom.' "'

A friend of ours, who has had a wide experience as inspector of schools in Australia, has furnished us with a series of sublime replies received by him from time to time. They go to prove that the average boy or girl is as little of a ruminating animal in Australia as in England or New Zealand. We give the answers which most readily occur to our mind. The first two were elicited at oral, the remainder at written examinations :—: —

" What are the uses of a table ?" Answer (after a very long pause) : " To salt pigs on."' " What is an epicure .'"' " A great smoker."' " What is a circle .'" '" A round straight line w ith a hole in the middle."

" How would you calculate the area of a room ?" •' Multiply the room by the number of feet, and the product will be the result."

" What are the functions of the gastric juice V " Gastric juice is a thing that is put in your inside to prevent your bones creaking." (fc A large percentage of such schoolroom blunders arc fairly traceable to the system which trains the memory of our boys and girls at the expense of their intellect. The gulping down of pellets of facts and figures and formulas no more constitutes knowledge

MORE BLUNDERS.

for hell." Your schoolboy blunders have no moral status. But there are those who consciously or unconsciously flounder in serenely upon our sentiments, beliefs, and aspirations as Catholics — mostly through that ignorance of our doctrines, and usages, which, according to Newman, is the protection of the traditional Protestant view regarding the Catholic Church. We smile at the honest and upright, though idiotic, follies committed in non-Catholic reports or other descriptions of our ecclesiastical functions. Not long ago, according to the Roch"ster Catholic Journal, a Chicago daily paper described Archbishop Feehan's entrance into the sanctuary with a "tonsure on his arm." To another western bishop was attributed the feat of carrying " a Cosjack on his shouldirs." Then another paper spoke of an acolyte who '■ advanced bearing in his hands a thurifier and chasuble." It is not alone in the American press that such absurdities creep in. They are also to be found in the English papers, so widely advertised as pluperfect. The London Standard described a chaplain in a " black" surplice, and the Times described the " cathedral chapters in ermine-trimmed copes of purple." The name of the perpetrator of the worst blunder of all is unfortunately lost to posterity. He was " writing up " the recent St. Augustine centenary celebrations at Ebbs Fleet, and would have it that " Cardinal Vaughan conducted the Mass, but the Consecration and Elevation were performed by Cardinal Perraud." We are all familiar with the " evening Mass " and " morning Vespers " with the priest who reads his office out of a missal, or celebrates a '• Pontifical High Mass " all alone, or "celebrates the sacrament'" on a cope and baldaquin. Those of our readers who are curious in this matter will iind abundant scope for a melancholy kind of enjoyment in the pages of Mr. Britten's I'rotrstant Fiction.

But the most distressing feature in this matter is the ignorance of even educated non-Catholics regarding our beliefs and practices. It is dense to an astonishing degree. Froude, in his English in Ireland, tells us that the Wexford insurgents on their march to Arklow, " halted at every mile to hear Mass." But perhaps it would be unfair to expect accuracy from the man who, as the Athcnceum said, " leaves us hopelessly struggling to distinguish between his history and his hysteria." W r e were entitled to expect better from the late Poet Laureate (Lord Tennyson) ; yet he asked Mr. Britten (secretary of the Catholic Truth Society), in all ssriousnes", if he were a Jesuit. On receiving a reply in the negative, he remarked : '• You are a Roman Catholic, though." A few yearn ago one of the series of Irish Readers contained— and perhaps still retains— a footnote to the Friar of Orders Uny, which gave the valuable information that beads are " something Übed by Catholics in confession, when a bead is told off for every sin confessed." It would be easy to multiply such instances.

But the most lamentable ignorance of all, on the part of our non-Catholic friends, is that which prevails regarding the teachings of the Catholic Church. A number of expositions of our dootrin<p, by Protestant clergymen, were long since collected and sent forth in pamphlet form under the title : Tilings Catholics do not JMirrr. When thiEgs happen in the green wood what are Aye to expect in the dry — to wit. the masses of the people whose ideas of us are imparted by such unenlightened guides /

Som 2body has said that blunders are " like the ghost of Tomlinson in Rudyard Kipling's poem : neither good enough for Heaven, nor bad enough

HINTS FOB THE FOOLISH SEASON.

But, like our neighbours over the water, we have our silly seasons. The New Year's holidays are gone by. The callow city youths who could not distinguish the breech of a gun from the muzzle, and ''didn't know it was loaded," have been abroad as usual, and have shed as little of each other's gore as could reasonably be expected. But we are in the height of the bathing and boating Beasons, and our seaside or lakeside friends may relish the homely advice which our genial friend, "Flaneur," of the Sydney Freeman, thus gives to all whom it may concern :—: — " Most persons are drowned through the foolish attempts they make to climb out of the water into which they have fallen, and hang on to the air overhead, while they yell for help loud enough to wake the dead in Lapland. That is as great a mistake as it is for a man to dress himself for the day in an ice-cream hawker's suit of white calico clothes and canvas boots, simply because the official head of our Weather Department has prophesied that the day will be ' fine and sultry.' Let everybody and his wife and his children remember that the human body weighs but lib in the water, and a piece of board a foot square held in one hand is quite sufficient to keep the head above water, while the other hand and two feet used as paddles will propel the body to a place of safety. The first care of a man dumped suddenly into the harbour should be to keep cool. The water will help him to do that — if he stays long enough in it — and then let him throw his head well back, keep his lungs inflated, his hands below the surface of the water, and move his feet up and down just the came though he were pedalling round the park on his bicycle This is known as ' treading water,' and it is as easy to tread water as it is to tread upstairs to a Minister's room to receive a Government billet worth £500 a year."

Despite the successful ascent of Mt. Cook, New Zealanders have not been seized to any great extent by the all-absorbing mania of mountain climbing — an occupation which affords people a great variety of ways of breaking their foolish necks with reasonable neatness and despatch.

A DEAD DONKEY.

a fitting epitaph to the now happily defunct " A.P.A.," or socalled " American Protective Association." The society has been in existence for the past few years. As an organisation it is now dead, and a sprinkling of its standard-bearers .ire, where the rest might well be, safe under lock anl key in United States prisons. Others succeeded in escaping to Canada. The A.P.A.. was a revival of the Know-nothing organisation which raised such a loud noPopery cry in the fifties, and in one year (18.">6) wielded such influence that Fillmore, its nominee for the Presidency, polled close on 875,000 votes. Soon afterwards, it fell to pieces through its own rottenness. The A.P A. inherited all its worst traditions. Mr. W. T. Stead, in his book, If Chrixt Came to Chicago, says that this association counted within its ranks " far more Canadians and Orangemen from Ulster and Glasgow than native-born citizens of the United States," who were trying to " scare old women of both sexes with the bogey of impending mabsacre, and of the domination of sixty millions by six." It opposed, with all the force of teeth and claws, the presence of Catholics in any position in the State ; scattered broad-cast no-Popery literature, bogus Papal encyclicals and pastorals, and sent around the country itinerant '• lecturers " — so-called "ex-priests" and "ex-nuns" — to stir up public feeling against the Catholic body. The action of tha American law-courts thinned the ranks of this class of foulmouthed adventurers. They were convicted of various gross crimes and relegated to private life and the sweets of solitary meditation. These incidents cast such discredit on the association that orders were sent out by tLe ringleaders of the organisation against their further employment. The free air of America did the rest. Their organ, the Boston Daily Standard, suffered unlamented shipwreck. The last blow came when the supreme headquarters of the association at Washington were closed. The office furniture was sold to satisfy a printing claim by the firm of Hartman and Cady. And the A.P.A. and its anti-Ca,tholic propaganda are as dead as Julius Csesar. There is one curious circumstance worth mentioning in connection with this revival of the old no Popery cry of the A.P.A.'s predecessor, the Know-nothings. Mr. H nry J. Gardner was Governor of Massachussets and a Know-nothing. Ho issued orders for the disbandment of the Irish-Americ vn military companies in the State. In due time, however, the disbanded soldiers took up arms to defend the Union. Gardner stayed comfortably at home. So did the great body of the leaders and rank and file of the association, Their cow ardice supplied the theme for the following poem

by Mr. Whitcombe Reilly, which recently appeared in an American paper. It is addressed to the now defunct A.P.A. :—: — " Ye were mighty still when Sumter's guns went shakin' up the J^ land, An' I had my Irish regiments march in an' take a hand ! Great strappin' fellows, shot right deown, with a shamrock on their breasts, The Stars and Stripes above 'em, and a cross inside their vests I "The last guard of MClellan, and Burnside's furthest dead ! No, I guess not, stranger, — jest yit ; I ain't goin' to lose my head ! Like 'nuff in goin' to heaven our roads may be apart, But in pintin' to the gineral end we're ah the same at heart. " Some of my folks were Catholics as far back's '7G 1 An' thirty-six years later helped me out uv a nasty fix ! An' as for Irish — in Mexico — of all Zach's bloodiest fields, He found at Cerro Gordo his biggest hoss was Shields ! " But the way that you've been talkin', St. Peter raves and swears, When comes along an Irishman that kneels and says his prayers. But now I come to think on't, and look ye in the face, I'll be hanged if you ain't Irish— an' no credit to the race !"

The summer of 1897-1798 will long be remembered in the Australasian colonies as the season of big fires.

A BAD MASTER.

Victoria and Tasmania have had their innings ; and now our fellow-colonists of the Manawatu district have learned by bitter experience the truth of the old proverb that fire, like water, is a good servant, but a bad master. In tendering our cordial sympathy to the sufferers, of every class and creed, we gladly acknowledge that our deep regret for their misfortune is mingled with a feeling of satisfaction that they have displayed, in a time of sore trial, a degree of pluck and patience which is beyond all praise ; that the disaster has evoked not a few acts of heroic devotion ; and that steps are being taken to afford a measure of relief which will be a practical and tangible expression of the sympathy and goodwill of their fellow-colonists.

The devastation wrought in Manawata recalls the famous bush fires which took place in Victoria on " Black Thursday," February 6, 1831. Bush fires are a usual summer sensation among our neighbours on " the other side." But the fires of Black Thursday still hold the record for Australasia. They arose out of conditions somewhat akin to those which have inflicted such awful damage in New Zealand. For a long period a heat-wave had settled down upon the colony, accompanied by scorching winds from the north. The parched, yellow grass became as inflammable as tow, and the gum-leaves became dry and hard, and gave out a sort of metallic click as they beat against each other in the wind. When Black Thursday came, the thermometer stood at 112 in the shade. The country took fire in many places, the flames were fanned by a hot, high wind, and swept along with incredible speed. Where the grass was long there came a wall of flame many feet high. In the timbered country the main body of the fire was preceded by pieces of burning bark and leaves, which went far ahead — acant-couriers of the conflagration — and carried the flames across roads, streams, and rivers. A great part of the colony was on fire, and many people fancied that the end of the world had at last come. Attempts at fighting the fire with branches of trees and wet bags were useless. People fled for their lives. Many lost their lives ; and homesteads, huts, bridges, stacks, and crops were destroyed. Horses, sheep, cattle, and wild animals were burned alive in incredible numbers. Even birds fell from the trees, and Labilliere, an eyewitness, tells how great numbers of them were subsequently found dead. The smoke was driven rapidly southward by the gale, and created in Melbourne and Geelong the darkness which has caused the day to be known in history as Black Thursday. The smoke drifted over Tasmania, and the historians of Victoria tell how burnt leaves were carried to vessels far off the coast, while the ashes borne aloft by the northorn gale were deposited on the decks of ships forty miles out at sea. We naturally do not relish paying too much for our whistles. Still, experience keeps a dear school. And such calamities teach a homely lesson of overy-day prudence which, in prolonged periods of safety, people are all too liable to forget. The lesson of wise prevision was brought homo with especial force to Londoners by the r ecent geat fire in Cripplegate. It resulted in crowds of applicants — many of whom had never insured before — trooping into the offices of the various insurance companies. " The great fire," says one of our contemporaries, "&o far from being an unmitigated disaster for the insurance offices, is proving for the bulk of them which were not affected, or only slightly affectei, a boon of no small magnitude."

That genial exhibitor of live snakes and " moral wax figgers," Artemus Ward, once asked himself in a retrospective mood : '• Where are the friends of my youth ?" And he answered : " Some are dead— some are in gaol." His reply would form

PATRIOTISM UNDIiK DIFFICULTIES.

'• wretohos." Their woakness for raw llcbh, rancid oil, and evil-

THE stories of Arctic voyagers have led most educated English-speaking people to look uponJ the Etqumimaux as a half«savage, blubber-eating, skin-clad rase. The Danes formerly called them "Skroellingar," which, bein^ interpreted, mcaneth

smelling dens, is calculated — like O. W. Holmes's music-grinders — "to pluck the eyes of sentiment." But an incident recently in New Yoik which goes to show that a well-developed sentiment of patriotism may burn brightly even in a half-developed Esquimau ; and that the sight of what he deemed his native ice may arouse feelings as strong as those with which a Scot views a sprig of his native heather, and an Irishmen a bunch of " the dear little, sweet little shamrock of Erin." The New York Freeman's Journal thus describes the incident : — " Menney, the little Esquimau who came here with Lieutenant Peary from the ioy region", is in Bellevue Hospital, New York city. The attendants carry ice in pans into the wards for patients, and the little Esquimau was deeply interested as to how they got it. He was brought to the icehouse in the basement. In it were eight or ten tons of ice. As soon as he spied the blocks of ice he rushed in, threw himself upon the ice, patted the big blocks with his hands, caressed them with his cheeks, flattened his nose against them, kissed them and stuck out his tongue and licked them. When the attendant called Menney to go with him Menney understood, but preferred the ice to the hot ward. He lay down and refused to move. John had to lead him out by force. This is a fine example of love of country. Menney i& a patriot, for sure."

Some years ago the New York Tribune made the following remarks :—": — " Almost any candid Protestant will acknowledge that Catholicism has shown

THE COMING OF THE MONK.

much more wisdom than Protestantism in utilising for religious work men of every kind of capacity and ability. Until within recent years, Protestantism has been able or willing to offer the ministry alone as a permanent form of religious activity. The young man who felt called to give his life to the service of mankind was compelled in some way or other to fit himself for the technical and conventional duties of a parish clergyman. As for the young woman who felt a special call to evangelistic work, Protestantism, until recently, offered her nothing except the work of volunteer visiting and Sunday-school teaching— vocations that, at best, offer only a limited field of usefulness to one who desires to give a whole life to God. No wonder that Catholicism, with its multitude of Orders, clerical and lay, employing men and women of many gifts, grows as it does."

One of the first acts of the Reformers was to suppress the monasteries — for the sake of their revenues — and to banish the monks. The Widow Carey says in Disraeli's Sybil : ■' Calling your neighbour names doesn't settle a question." But since the Reformation the name of monk has been pelted with mud and spat upon by an interminable host of ill-informed scribblers, whose writings have helped to swell the great current of Protestant tradition. Happily, the history of the Reformation is being reconstructed. The Church and the monks are the gainers thereby. Father Gasquet's great work, Ilmry VII T. and the Knglixh Monasttci'its, has marked an epoch in the history of English monasticism, and even such strongly Protestant organs as the Quart/ ily Hi riciv have published highly appreciative articles on the learning and industry of the monks, and on the services rendered by them to science and agriculture. We are in a fair way towards hearing the last of the " lazy " and '■ ignorant " monks. The High Church party are helping the crusade of History's Muse in favour of the monks. They have formed sundry " brotherhoods " and founded divers '• monasteries." Our readers have all heard of "Father" Ignatius of Llanthony Abbey, in Wales, and of the Cowley Fathers. The Protestant Episcopalians in America have not been less advanced than their English conferers. In 18SG the Order of the Brothers of Nazareth was founded in New York. Eight years later— in IN'.H — another such association, the Brothers of the Church, was established in the same city by the Protestant Bishop Potter — the real founder and first superior being Mr. Russell Whitcombe, a successful young business man of New York. They take perpetual vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, and now claim the title of Benedictine monks. One of the latest developments of these l'rotestant brotherhoods is known as the Order of the Good Samaritan — an association of medical '• monks," founded by Mr. George W. Davidson, who was recently received into the Church. They bind themselves to vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience, in imitation of the genuine monks. From a letter which appeared recently in the Guardian we learn of the existence of an Order of St. Paul, of whicha " Father "Hopkins is Superior-General. The future may bring us such associations as Anglican Franciscans, Dominicans, and — why not Jesuits also ? The confusion of Protestant and Catholic designations may — as they do already — give rise to situations that will be bewildering to the members of both religious bodies. In the meantime, the Protestant brotherhoods have been for many the stepping b*ne to the true Church. Three members of the Order of the Good Samaritan, several of " Father " Ignatius monks, and a great part of his nuns left the shadow of religious life to find its substance in the bosom of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Cardinal Newman said truly that ignorance of " nail it down." our doctrines and practices is the protection of the

traditional l'rotestant view of the Catholic Church. This is particularly exemplified in the doctrine regarding indulgences. There is, perhaps, no other dogma of the Catholic Church regarding which even educated Protestants entertain such sublimely puzzle-headed notions. We fear that their ignorance is, in this case> a voluntary misfortune. A few minutes' perusal of a Catholic manual of instruction would lift from the mind of individual Protestants a mouldy mass of misconception on this subject. The South African Maya: hie told a few years ago how the Cape Mercury interpreted three hundred days' indulgence to mean three hundred days' furlough out of Purgatory. The comment of the Magazine was a characteristic one : "If our Protestant friend were to see a fifty -horse-power engine, he should look inside it for the fifty horses." Our latest copy of the Boston Pilot, commenting on a meeting of the Presbyterian Ministers' Association of Philadelphia, tells how, after a prayer had been offered for '■ charity to all," a Rev. T. L. Gulick told the meeting that " while he and his wife were in Minneapolis, speaking publicly on the sale of indulgences in Spain, a priest named M'Golrick offered to give money enough to support two missions in Spain if he could prove the sale of indulgences. They sent and got two indulgences, one of which had an outline of the sole of the shoe of the Virgin Mary, which gave an indulgence from all sin for three hundred years. Father M'Golrick backed out of his offer, and in his reply to the paper showed that he knew all the time they were doing this in Spain. This man, the Rev. Mr. Gulick added, is now a bishop." In reply to a letter from the Cutliollc Standard and Time?, Bishop M'Golrick wrote :—: —

" Dear sir. — You may state most emphatically that I never had any discussion with the Presbyterian Minister Gulick. I don't know him and if he showed me his wonderful indulgence I would be very glad to set him right. Gulick is of the usual style of controversial romancers, and has evolved the wonderful story of his triumph from his inner consciousness. It will be a good thing in behalf of truth to nail the lie as they used to do with counterfeit coin in the past. You are doing a good work. I am, yours sincerely, James M'Golrick." We like the good old custom of nailing spurious coins to the counter.