In Lighter Vein

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 38, 19 September 1901, Page 18

In Lighter Vein

(By 'Quip.')

•*• Correspondence, newspaper cuttinsrt, etc intended for this department should be addressed ' QUIP/ N.Z. TABLIT Offloe, Sunedia. and should reach this office on or before Monday morning.

Parliamentary Privilege.

After the decision arrived at by Parliament regarding the recent breach of privilege it will be a wonder if every editor in the Colony does not manage to have his paper dragged before the Honse by some obliging M.HB, ' Sweet are the uses of advertisement.' The man of the shears and paste-pot who ' runs ' oar local symposium (Jhe White Island Extinguisher) told me the other day that an arrangement for breach of privilege is the best fifteen pounds worth of ' boom ' that a paper could get, and that a* loon as he can discover a man who is clever enough to secure a privileged report without getting it dishonorably, he will make the Extinguiiher a household word throughout the length and breadth of New Zealand. Last week Mr. Hornsby tabled a motion regarding an alleged breach of privilege by Mr. Pirani's paper, and Mr. Pirani returned the compliment by tabling another motion regard* ing an alleged breach of privilege by Mr. Hornsby's paper. Somebody suggested-— wrongly, of course— that these two gentlemen were acting on Artemua Ward's principle: 'Toasoratoh my spine and He scratch yours.' Parliament costs the country about #30 an hour ; and if members are going to be as long-winded over these two motions as they were over the one in reference to the Dunedin Star, the public will be able to realise how very expensive a pair of breaches can sometimes be.

Up All Night. Speaking of Parliament, it must have been inspiring to view the House during the all-night sitting hut Friday night, one half of the members partaking of

* Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep ' ; and the other half, like Hotspur, ' drank with choler.' There is nothing like an all-night fitting for putting a man's temper on edge. Lumps of salt in your plate of morning porridge 'ain't a sirkumetans ' compared to it, and all those who have the virtue and the reputation of this country at heart should petition the Premier to abolish this pernicious custom of Bending the Members to their homes with the milkman. Want of sleep makes legislators crotchety, testy, and as cross as two sticks, The wee sma' hours ayont the twa)' are the period when they nre most disposed to con* vert the House into a Dear-garden, and to leave sufficient hair and whiskers on the floor after them to stuff a mattress. It is the satne everywhere, in England and on the Continent as well as here in New Zealand.

Those oalm and easy-going members that are not abasing the fellows on ' the other side ' back to the forty-seventh generation, or taking a tarn at collar-and-elbow, or biting one another's ears off are sleeping like grown-np cherubs. For one who prefers to be a man of peace, instead of a man of pieces, there is no narootio like an all-night sitting.

' Not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world '

can oompare with it. And it is while legislators are 'a 1 noddin' nid, nid, noddin', ' under its influence that laws are made and some* times the fate of nations determined. Kinglake, in his History of the Ciimean War, tells us that many members of the Cabinet worn oat with long sittings, were fast asleep— some of the wretches were even discoursing ' the melancholy musio of the nose' — when the momentous despatch of the Duke of Newcastle was read ordering the invasion of the Crimea.

I hare formed a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to.Mem. ben of Parliament. The other two members and myself ,«e doing

our utmost to have these All-night sittings made illegal. Failing this we shall oar influence to gain permission for the members to smoke daring suoh sittings, or to rtury the dull monatonj of ' olapper-oUwing ' by a g «mt of oards. There is nothing like a few soothing whiffs at the dhudeen to oalm a ruffled temper. And a h\nd or two at "Nap. I—eixpenoe1 — eixpenoe *up' and a 'Kitty' — wiuld saTe many a member the humiliation of being oaught ' napping.'

Absent-minded Beggars.

The gentleman in khaki that was ordered south some time back isn't the only absent-minded boggar about the place. The lists of articles found in trains, trams, and cabs every year prove this. These lists make ourioui reading, with their thousands and thousands of every conceivable kind of artiole from babies to bile beans and front mangles to measles, left behind by a forgetful public. I forget whether it was one measle or two that was inoluded in this year's published list of the Railways Lost Luggage Department. I am doubtful, too, about one of the babies, whether it was pioked up in a train or found in an unaddressed envelope in the Dead Letter Offloe.

Professors seem to be the most absent-minded of all men. It was a professor who had to get a direotory to find out his own name. It was another who took out his watch to see if he would have time to go home and get it before the train oame. It was also a professor who put hiß clothes to bed and hung himself over the back of a ohair. Clearly, a good many professors of various kinds and of assorted sexes do business with our Railways and Post Office Departments. • v