LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 259, 10 April 1875, Page 4

LOAFER IN THE STREET.

(From the Press.) The three-penny-bit is the particular coin of Canterbury. It represents at once the price we like paying for a glass of beer or for a church donation. It is not likely that beer will ever be any lower than at present, but were silver pennies introduced here to any extent we should probably at once limit our devotional subscriptions to that amount. We don’t descend to low coppers. Thus it is that a man who drops his accustomed threepence into the plate at church goes home feeling that he has cast his bread upon the waters liberally, and has preserved his provincial respectability at the same time. The recent Costume Cricket Match has brought our three-penny, or rather in this case two-penny-halfpenny idiosyncrasies to my mind. In a crowd of some two thousand five hundred people the average contribution was just about twopence halfpenny. Your contemporary seems rather surprised at the paucity of the takings. I’m not. I can imagine the delight with which dear old Onesimus Whiffielugs would see his way to a cheap chance of taking his family to an entertainment where he could look upon real actors without his conscience being burdened with a greater sin than having subscribed three ponce to such an iniquitous institution as a dramatic association, an association which, it is almost needless to say, is for the benefit of sick and superannuated actors. Personally I’m wicked enough to wish that the takings at the gate had amounted to treble the amount, but for the sake of our respectability, I’m glad to notice that J 57 was taken in three-penny pieces. Some communities would have given shillings, some coppers, according to circumstances, but the 560 three-penny pieces found in the box, clearly shows that our charity can’t be vaunted at more than the price of a half-pint. Its our regular form. When a party of the name of—let us say— Johnson, gets fined five shillings for a drunk and disorderly, all the Johnson’s of that ilk and other ilks at once inform your readers that they are not the drunk and disorderly Johnson spoken of. These letters are teeming with interest to a public which does not care whether one Johnson, or 500 Johnsons were drunk or not; but there is, so to speak, a more entrancing form of coming before the public still. It is as thus—“On January Ist, the wife of Marmozet Morepork of a son. Home papers please copy.” It will be apparent that immediately on the arrival of the New Zealand Mail, the London limes and all the first-class European papers announce the fact to their readers that Morepork has got a son. Stocks rise or fall, Bismarck frowns, the Left Centre in Paris shout for each other, Rothschild guarantees a fresh New Zealand loan. Oh Morepork, why can’t you be satisfied with the silent condolence of your colonial friends without expecting the Old World to get on the bust because Mrs M. has presented you with a seventh perpetuation of your own ugliness. Home papers please copy, indeed. It’s the apotheosis of rotment, Morepork. We are a pretty want lot here on agriculture and pastorality. We can congratulate ourselves on having as good stock as most of our neighbours, and on possessing individuals amongst us enterprising enough to import stock of all kinds regardless of expense. We can supply any outside fellows with well bred animals of all kinds if they have got the money to pay for it. And if it comes to a push we can supply the sheep of any other province with the scab. We can proudly boast that however careful we may be about allowing imported sheephere, even proceeding occasionally to cremation, we always have kept a little “rift within the lute” to keep scab from dying out altogether. In his Honor’s Address to the Council the following sentence occurs ; outbreak of scab from the sale of a number of sheep from a farm in the northern district points to the necessity of more stringent provisions for the suppression of the disease.” This is a world of change, but I can scarcely believe that our Government is about to abandon those Conservative principles which have so long and successfully supported one runholder in being a terror and a standing nuisance to the rest of the Province. I suppose it is possible to clean the run in question, but hitherto the owner has preferred (excuse my hyperbolical style) his own Pharpar and Abana to the Jordan style of cleansing adopted by other people. It may be that the “more stringent provisions” alluded to above may induce this pastoral Naaman to take more decided steps; but it’s hard on him, and should his efforts be crowned with success how will the province feel the loss of what has been truly called the great northern scab manufactory 1 There have been a multiplicity of disasters on the sea lately. Such things are not laughable when you come to join in to the business, but if I don’t give you something in the shape of a wreck this week you’ll get thinking I’m behind the times. If you’d only employ me oftener I could produce as many novelties for your admirable journal as anyone in New Zealand. A man I know in the North Island went boating lately with some Maories. There was another white man in the boat, and when it came on to blow, which it did subsequently, and the big waves came rolling over the boat, the white man last spoken of, who was a carpenter, began hitting out on the weeps. His lamentations were sad and loud to hear. On being rebuked for his want of manliness, he said, “You don’t feel as I do. I built this boat. It was a contract job, and I only knocked her together for these poor heathens with two-inch nails. Bo sure as we scrape on a reef of any kind she’ll break right up like punk.” The boat got safe in, and now that contractor trots round blowing about the sea-going qualities of bis boats, and keep on building them for the heathen Maories with inch and a half nails, but he don’t go out in them himself. He seems to have acquired a distaste for aquatics. It is wonderful how circumstances alter cases and our opinions of things A man I know went and hired a buggy the other day to go to Leeston and back. It was an express part of his agreement with the livery stable keeper that Leeston was to be the limit of the excursion. He, however, went on to Bouthbridge, and then down a road or two to call on some friends, making another ten miles or so, besides the extra distance to Bouthbridge. Some people would have thought the horses had done a fair thing for the money, and would have travelled easily going home. This party did not. They were three in number, and they got a two shilling sweep up on the time of their arrival at the stable. The driver drew the earliest hour, and to win four shillings he hunted those horses in at top pace. I dare say he only thought he was getting fair

value for his money ; but. ic would please one to think it possible that this humane driver might in some future state develop into a costermonger’s donkey. He might then form a fair idea of the object of Martin’s Act, There is more cruelty perpetrated by people wanting to get the “ worth of their money” out of hired horses than most of us think. Men otherwise kindly enough are flint on hired horses. I could go into this topic a much lot more minutely, but as it stands, if I could feel that I had persuaded one man that horses, even hired ones, are not cast iron, I should also feel that I had not lived this week altogether in vain. A correspondent of your contemporary asks why the profane custom is introduced into this church settlement of selling Hot Cross Buns. He considers the present mode of making a feast day is most iniquitous to children and painful to consistent churchmen. I partially agree with him. Personally a hot cross bun is a class of comestible I don’t hanker after to any great extent. Hot cross buns swallowed wholesale may not only prove iniquitous to children, but might prove painful to the moi-t consistent churchmen. I don’t wish to call public attention to the case of young Drabbits, who I consider the most consistent churchman in our establishment, but he certainly did eat 14J hot cross buns last Good Friday, and I’ll bet even money he was the most painful consistent churchman on that day in Canterbury. He’ll tell you so himself- As to the profanity of vending the succulent and tepid cake which people appear to devour on much the same grounds as the Vicar of Wakefield cracked nuts on Michaelmas eve, I could noi speak very positively, but if the correspondent of your contemporary is shocked at it, I can only say its quite on the cards that when he has been out as long as I have, he may be glad enough to gorge a tract for his stomach’s sake, without thinking about “ devout persons fasting in olden times.” Rather a sad accident happened lately to Drabbits, apart from the above. He has lately been on visiting terms with a very nice family where there are daughters. When I say visiting terms, he has been in the habit of going there every Sunday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The two eldest daughters are called, let us say, Kezia and Karenhappuch. Kezia is dark and Karenhappuch fair. Not very fair you know: what you might call a rqealy brown, Drabbits took up with Kezia. He appeared much taken with her. He appeared more taken with her than I should have been. As a matter of choice, I should have preferred Kezia’s grandmother. I never saw her, but I feel I should have done so. But this is foreign to the subject. Karenhappuch’s hair has been coming out lately to a large extent. She utilised it. She made a pad of her own hair, I don’t in the .least know what a hair pad is. I’ve never used them myself, but, anyhow, she made one. It is necessary to grasp this fact to understand the melancholy circumstances of the case One night Drabbits was presented by Kezia, the object of his affections, with a lock of hair. He was happy. He was happy until next day, when he discovered it was of a sandy color instead of a deep black. He lost confidence in his lock of hair, and his charmer too, and busted up his engagement. This was hard upon poor Kezia, because she had only made the small mistake of cutting the lock from her sister’s pad instead of her own, I still repeat, 1 don’t know what a pad is exactly, but it would appear that they are unreliable to cull locks from.