My Humble Opinion

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 257, 3 November 1906, Page 12

My Humble Opinion

By f mmm I PIERROT. 1

THE CLASSES AND THE MASSES

When I began this column last week. I did so with one steadfast idea. 1

would never Hatter U""'n though the i ladies swtcU-, oalJc'd mc v b- ■> i"or my 1

pains) and 1 would try my be-a to give my own poor thoughts, and not the

thoughts that other people thought | i ought to th,iuk. There, are too \

mnny at that game, already. 1 1 people want to hear ihat New /Zealand

i.-i I'ai'adise in the first degree, ami lliu rent of the Empire in the second —with a bad, bad place lo represent the misnamed c-eksliul regions of John Chinaman I couiiuemJ them to enthusiastic guide-books on the one hand, and that eloquent work known as "Tile Shadow"' on Km other Let mc. be a free lance, anil remain as un-

prejudiced us v pool ordinary wivicn can be in this w<>tld of dogmu and clique ami class opinion. Si.i when 1 come to the nice little question opened up at the Labour meeting of the Synod last week, I hope tluit 1 shall nut be blamed for refusing to join iusue either with The Classes or The Masses. For the speakers there in iiuding Llial the parson Jiad come to be regarded as a defender of "cast," suggested a larger question, pcrhajis, than they were aware of —the whole question of that mighty wall that separates, and for a long time yet will separate, class from class. "You put on side, yah!" "You are vulgar, booh., sums up as much of this elegant warfare (is most of us are privileged to take in. and 1 am inclined to think as much of h as is of real significance. Mind you L have neither more nor less sympathy for the man who iincU "»ide T, in delicately accurate speech, grace of movement aud a taste for good cooking than 1 have for the man who iinds vulgarity in the. honest, directness of nobility in fustian. The "johnny' , as the extreme type on the one side corresponds in the one class with the extreme type of the brutal in the other. '"Johnniea" and brutes are both gelt'llg rare, and it is only the wild distortions of prejudice that makes them appear everywhere. And both classes condescend—the poor condescending so that they shall not bo condescended to; so that here also a .-■.peeiliu charge is weakened by a ludicrous "'tu tjuoqui'." But there is a meeting ground—and a meeting ground that present will so well recognised that. the worst Sting of these antipathies will be removed; the ground of the "'gentleman" of all classes. He may not be Dr. Wdldoii'a footb;all-pLiying ge.nflelnan —but he will be JJr. YVelldon's honourable, kindly, just and simple-mind-ed gentleman. And as yut lie is rave anywhere, and su far a.s 1 ran tin.l no class .shelters him more than another, lie has the genius of tact, of gentle regard for the feelings of other.-: lie is modest and quiet and respects the stranger (while the boors of all classes are always claiming either equality or superiority). He loses a game with grace, whether in business or at cards; rush cannot ruffle his politeness; and a lu»Wl full oC Ihieve- cannot touch L s ideals of honesty and honour. Like honesty politeness pay-, and ;>s with honesty it is better to be polite because it pays than not to I h> polite at all. Personally i make a rule of never giving n»y custom twice to an impolite .shopkeeper. The surly savage who will not answer your "gpod-night" as you leave his shop deserves to be starved into the graces and sweetnesses of life. All men may be equal, but the stranger in the superior of all. Now, until true courtesy becomes general in each class, those classes will be as oil and water; because courtesy is tin; one and only solvent of real barriers, and every class has its own particular form of rudenpss which is misunderstood and exaggerated by the class which develops another form. Let us forget some of our hurry. The true business man never shows it, and suavity uo/.es from his every pore. It is the smaller fry who develop that brisk, business-like, insolent, tone that grates on one in nine shops out of ten that one enters. N"o one has ever seriously pretended that it saves one-tenth of the. time that it loses in the irritation of the customer; and it is certainly more of a bar to social sympathy than a hiccough or si bad accent. The business man who is a business man through .ill his waking hours may be a smart fellow, but he is hardly a gentleman in the ideal, senut , to which I have referred. Jle may sneer at the fisherman's manner of speech but I fancy lie will do well not to .-tart from scratch in the race between the two. There is another leveller — education; and J think the education of life for the learned—the education of books for the ignorant. There is more in life than the utilities, and the sooner one discovers it, the sooner one begins to live. Do you call it providing a son with a life to drill him in bookkeeping and arithmetic and type-writing and shorthand and leave him a soulless drudge? How shall he have sympathy with the vast world of intellect, the broad truths of science, the Irish ideals of art. the measureless depths of ] believe innnen-sely in technical education, but I would rpgnrd the making of a boy of mine a more reeeptical for bo many lulps-ot-thciuib a.-;, a cruel wrong entitling mc to his life-a-crnel wrong entitling mc to his life long | rpproach. it is fur the poor io rind out this truth, and to refuse to be hoodwinked by 'hi' paltry pretences of pc,,- ; pie whoso aim is largely to perpetuate] '■chiss." These people, brother-worker. who ask you to teach your sou ;> trade, and to save time by forbidding him to . read the history of his r;,C". arc tim v >v ; people who would rather hang :i mill-j stone about their ton's neck than let I him do the like. Hut you-ig Fitzher- j bert is to be a "gentleman." and clones' boy is to learn the most elegant wr.y of making his boots. Jones, your boy has just as much right to be the only sort of '•gentleman" that is known to Fitzherbert; and it will be a pleasant i revenge if you choose to see that your boy is the first to knock the bottom I out of this pretty little game of privilege by a knowledge, a wisdom, and a ! grace that should be attainable by children of every class. '"The truest university is a library of books.'" ' and books can be bought at the priep of a drink, and be drunk eternally j i lor nothing. All this, of course, is not j necessary to the making of a •'gentle- i man"' as J see him: but it will be | found to lip the cheapest and • easiest , way of making him as the "'(.•lasses' , see him. Then which will be The Classes Land wbicb. the Masses!