Oid Grumble on "Rough on Rats"

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 22, 1 August 1885, Page 3

Oid Grumble on "Rough on Rats"

The freedom of New Zealand is ■uch an inexhaustible theme that Grumble is induced to give some further opinions on the subject. Commercially, as politically, free, the enterprising man of business, with the true spirit of free trade, and acting on the principle of "live and let live,'* gathers within his store every conceivable article of trade that he can turn a penny by. He is a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, and every other trade which the magical rotten potato may develop. - Selling everything, he leaves nothing for the less general dealer to get a living at. A strange medley stands upon bis shelves — pills and peas, bluestone and bulls'eyes, rgjpticacidandcandedfruits, "Bough on Bats" — but no responsibility. Grumble does not remember ever seeing coffins in one of these heterogenous depots, which, is singular, as they have now become indispensible accompaniments to the deadly wares which are dispensed from and ranged side by aide with articles of food in a general ■tore. Arsenic, as arsenic, is classed among the deadly poisons, and as such the sale of it is placed under stringent regulations, the vendor being duly licensed and holding a certificate of efficiency, and who, knowing the heavy responsibility he is under, exercises the utmost caution in dispensing it. But arsenic, under the unassuming title of " Bough on Bats," may be dealt out bj any shop boy to all who choose to ask for it, even the littl© child seeking some new confection wherewith to delight its palate, and who innocently supposes the disguised poison to be some ambrosial sweet, only to find out its mistake by the agonies of death. But why point out what might occur, when the frequent records of what have occurred are grim enough, in all conscience, without provoking one's thoughts to more horrible imaginings. Still, numerous as are the instances of men dragged down into the slough of despond by vice or hard circumstance, and Alice Barnabys, weary of life through the misery wrought upon them bj heartless Igoes, with no hope left, the wonder is, not that so many have found the means placed thus easily within their reach of ending their wretched existence, but that more do not attempt to " shuffle off this mortal coil," or slip some other one out of theirs. The distinctions of trades must have changed greatly since the days of Shakespeare, otherwise it would not have been before the apothecary's shop, but at the huckster's, he would have made Borneo pause to soliloquise — " And did one need a poison now, &c. ; here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him." Mrs Gh now is so terrified at the probability of her being poisoned that Grumble is compelled to leave off, and assures her that a Bill ■hall be brought in at once, making it imperative that those who sell the poisons shall defray the expenses of the funerals of all who die by such means, which he thinks will have the desired effect of their relinquishing the sale of such villainous compounds as "Bough on Bats." Old Gbuxbus.