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New Zealand Tablet, 19 September 1918, Page 26

NOTES

Manners Old and New In sublime unconsciousness of the fact that the latest searchers for truth have cast the light of their lantern on the discovery that Evolution was a thoroughly bad guess and that the real explanation of various true and alleged phenomena is that man is degenerating instead of progressing, the children of this age and their teachers continue to imagine that they have arrived at a degree of culture and scholarship that would make Lorenzo the Magnificent green with envy. However there are a few ill-natured persons who refuse to shut their eyes to plain facts and who refuse to preserve silence about the lack of manners as well as morals displayed by the products of the progressive "system." As a hint we produce the following lines from a writer of the Middle Ages. We could do worse than have them hung in all schools:

Thou shalt not laugh nor speak nothing While your mouth be full of meat or drink Nor sup thou not with great sounding Neither potage nor any other thing. At meals cleanse not thy tusks, nor pick With knife or straw or wand or stick. While thou holdst meat in mouth beware To drink; that is an unhonest chare; And also physic forbids it quite. You may displease the host or else his wife If on the table-cloth you wipe your knife. Nor blow not on thy drink or meat. Neither for sake of cold or eke of heat, Nor lift thy meat with knife to mouth. Even a savage would not be so uncouth. Lean not on thy elbow at thy meat And on the mantle-pice place not thy feet, Plunge not thy fingers into glass or cup, Even tho' drowning flies a row kick no. Wear not thy napkin like an overall Donned by a but; standing in his stall. Begin the meal with grace and end also. A great number of people arc still looking for the man who wrote the following sensible advice sonictime after the Flood : If you are idle, "having no work to do Visit not men who busier are than you : lie not so wrapt up in your own affairs As to forget that other men have theirs. To overlook these things makes man a bore - And, troth, at such an' one full oft I swore When urgent work did occupy my mind. And little time for others could 1 find. Because we all are sinners such things be : But, Lord, a little goes a long way now for me. The doggerel, Irk? most sensible rhyme, has more reason than poetry in it. Many editors will appreciate its homely wisdom. The lines will henceforth be hung on our door the day before publication. Conversation Another quaint medieval rhyme may be quoted for its common-sense philosophy : If a man demand a question of thee, In thine answer making be not too hastie; Weigh well his words, the case understand. Ere an answer to make thou take in hand ; Else may he judge in thee little wit, To answer to a thing and not hear it, Suffer his tale whole out to be told, Then speak thou mayst and not be controlled. Of course the trouble nowadays is that however well one might be disposed to follow such an admonition there are too many people whose words come too fast to be weighed and who go on for such a length of time that the listener's funeral is over and the undertaker paid before they have done. Of such the last lines might run: Suffer his tale out to be told. By that time, if not dead, you will be old. An up-to-date version ought recommend a hearer to bolt as soon as possible in such a case. Still there are some who find delight in the modern art of conversation when all those present speak at the same time. If the rata avis who still carries on a discussion on the old-fashioned lines that were in vogue before the days of "Progress" should happen to read these pages he will appreciate the following guide for one who would reply in a fitting and proper manner to questions put him: l In audible voice thy words do. thou utter, Not high nor low, but using a measure. Thy words see that thou pronounce plaine, And that they spoken be not in vaine:

In uttering whereon keep thou an order, Thy matter thereby thou shalt much forder, Which order if thou do not observe, From the purpose needs must thou swerve. Sound advice that! Order is heaven's first law; and it is the one thing that we have abolished nowadays in every department of our activities. We have disorder in speech, disorder in writing, disorder in law, disorder in politics, disorder in thought, disorder in deed. The greatest sign of the universal disorder is that the disorderly editors and orators of the No-Popery push tell us that there was nothing but ignorance in the ages in which the foregoing homely verses were written!* On Laying Foundation Stones Another sign of disorder is the epidemic l of laying foundation stones. In old times, except in rare cases that job was left to a mason, and as a result it was done well. Nowadays in New Zealand the practice is to have" as many stones as possible laid by politicians.We have in mind one insignificant little building of which most of the stones in the first course were laid by amateurs in silk hats and claw-tailed coats—anyone passing up or down Dowling Street can read their names in a row still. In principle there may be thing to say tor (he habit: it docs give a certain amount ot exercise to the denizens of that Zoo in Wellington it has an outward appearance of making them do something for the money they get from the ratepayers if they happen to belong to the mystic brotherhood of the square and compass it might even be pretended that their stone-laying was symbolic of something or other. If we were a people gifted with a high sense of humor it might have many possible explanations, but as we are not we may leave that avenue unexplored for the present. There seems to be a sort of ritual attached to the nonsense too. For instance it does not seem to be appropriate to get the Prime Minister to lay a stone for a building that has not a pretence at solidity and grimness; Sir Joseph could hardly be asked to do the laying for anything below a Post Office in ugliness; a wooden school with an iron roof is apparently » s low as it would be safe to invite Mr. Hanan to descend : when there is question of a new pub or a picture-theatre, the Mayor may be relied on to lay the stone and spout over it appropriately. Any one of the countless officials who are at present thriving on the taxes may be invited to do the job in the case ol other combinations of brick and mortar, ferroconcrete, or wood and iron. We would however suggest that the custom of having the names and ages of the layers cut in stone be abandoned forthwith. Other? wise the antiquarians of some future century will arrive at the conclusion that in the twentieth century a New Zealand statesman was a man who was paid by the community for laying foundation stones all over the country. We are at this stage reminded of the conversation between the vicar's boy and the bishop's. While the ciders were engaged in a discussion the boys were entertaining each other. The vicar's boy said he had a canary, and that it had that morning laid an egg. "That's nothin'," retorted the bishop's heir: "Dad lays foundation stones every day."