Answers to Correspondents

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 35, 7 September 1922, Page 17

Answers to Correspondents

■ i •. •...■'. •■ • • - W.P.R. (Timaru). — far we have not received any official draft of the scheme, but when Ave do we will write you. Everybody is in the guessing stage at present. H.M. —"The Fourth Estate" means the pressmen or members of the now ignoble profession of journalism. Sport. Gloaming is doing well in his work in Australia. Whether he, will ever race against the cracks is another matter. Hitherto anxiety to meet them has not been, a striking characteristic of the stable. In any case he is an Australian-bred horse. As-to your second query, most emphatically do we . hold that Master Strowan was the only ; first-class steeplechaser New Zealand has seen for six : years'or - more. G.G.—Certainly reading letters meant for other people is * sinful, and may be even grievously sinful. It is as bad as eavesdropping or playing "Peeping Tom." No person who is guilty of such practices has the slightest claims to decency. , "Claudius Clear" sends us a cutting which informs us that a Swiss magistrate fined a person who borrowed books and did not return them forty francs. That is a sign that there is some absence of the ass in the law in some places. Our only fault with the penalty is that it:was not much more severe. Hanging, drawing, and quartering of the culprit and perpetual exile for every one of his -relations, relations by affinity and spiritual kinship, would be our idea of . an adequate sentence. For first offenders we might suggest a long journey on New Zealand trains, with an obligation to dine at the railway restaurants en route. '••;•. Sacerdos. —A promise of marriage in the sense of "sponsalia" must have the form of a contract in writing signed by both parties, and made before the parish priest or the ordinary, or else before two witnesses who also sign their names. A third witness may sign for an illiterate person as a proxy. E. O'Haxlon. —Long ago we referred to the directors the question of an annual supplement in the shape of a Catholic Almanac. The idea appeals to us, but it is not in the power of the Editor to do more than submit : : the* suggestion to the Tablet Company. We also agree . that it would be advisable to have some illustrated ..pages weekly, but here too the matter does not rest • with the editorial staff.