THE SUNDOWNER'S SWAG.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 66, 6 March 1877, Page 3

THE SUNDOWNER'S SWAG.

" Hang out our Banners." Mcßoughantough's reminiscences.

Great are the uses and many the abuses of the advertising columns of newspapers, not excepting the Akaroa Mail. Judicious advertising has made and makes fortunes, gains repute for men. merchandise and inventions, that without its wide spread aid l would be comparatively unknown. Many | of the. most useful mechanical and scientific requirements of the age owe their introduction to journalistic advertising. Had advertising been j " A thing to be " ] we should never have read and been enlightened with the announcement that " G. R. Joblin " was " the only candidate who understood the question of the drainage of the lakes and railway to the harbour in all their bearings." Shade of Lindley Murray hover round us. Is this not enough to make the very substance of the defunct grammarian rise up irate ? " Drainage " of the " railway," eh ! strikes me that that advertiser, like this sundowner, has a fondness for draining, and must have hobnobbed with "John the host, who in his wakefullest state, Is not, on the whole, immaculate." Further on I read that G. R. Joblin was " the only member of the committee who interested himself in the matter." What matter ? is it the drainage as aforesaid ? is it "their bearings?" I must confess that after assiduously draining for some time I oft times miss my bearings, and wander about promiscuously in thought, speech, and person, perhaps •in my peculiar idiosyncracy lam not alone. Reluctantly Sir, I am forced, like the Christy minstrel, to " Guv up dat riddle" adertisement. Another advertisement in your columns, Sir, tortures my mental faculties. I read . under the heading of " Church Notices " — " N.B." —"A short pause is made at all services before the sermon, to allow any persons who may wish to leave the church." Strange notification this, the like of which I certainly have never read in any other newspaper. Is the larrikin element the cause of this announcement ? if so, surely the church officers have power to check any unseemly conduct which may be annoying to the congregation, and tend to disturb them at their devotional exercises. I should be loth to think that anyone in your community, professing to be a member of the church in question, could be guilty of such a breach of good manners as to make it a practice of leaving the church during the time that any part of its services are being solemnized. Perhaps I have unwittingly hit the " right nail on the head," for I do know that "If.the veil from the heart could be torn, And the mind couldbe read on the brow, There are many we'd pass by with scorn, , Whom ws are loading with high honours now." What about the "right nail" Mr. Noonan? you should be an authority on nails, for you are hard on them who hit " the wrong nail on the head."

| If anyone doubts the truth of the old adage which declares that "every goose considers itself, a swan," let him, or her, read the sayings and doings in Le Bon's Bay, anent the School Committee and schoolmaster. The exhibition of washing the educational dirty linen in the columns of your journal, is not edifying, nor yet is the hissing and gabbling over the performance, at all an inducement for any teacher to wish to locate among the disputants, and make himself their rhetorical football. If a schoolmaster is to have authority over, and be respected by his pupils, that desirable end will not be attained by the means used in Le Bon's, where the tv qouqoe and you're another kind of arguments seem to be those in vogue. When you assemble in public meetingdrop personalities. Gentlemen of Le Bon's, do not allow the chairman of your meetings to indulge in this vexatious and undignified proceeding. Think of the pettiness of such things, and how you retard instead of advancing the intellectual and moral status of your youth, who naturally look to their elders for instruction in the amenities of life, and who are keen copyists of your ways, sayings, and actions. Think of Addison's words—" A man who takes delight in hearing the faults of others, shows sufficiently that he has a true relish of scandal, and consequently the seeds of vice within him." Adieu.