LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 565, 10 April 1876, Page 3

LOAFER IN THE STREET.

{Jbrom the Press ) They get more law I expect for their money in England than wo do. Justice is awful blind there. This Las struck me frequently in reading the country police reports. 1 was reminded of it again this last mail. I read of a case iu the Windsor and Eton Gazette, where a hardened caitiff was arrested for stealing a faggot, the property of a rector. 1 call the prisoner a hardened caitiff, because any man who thinks he can't do without a fire in the month of January in England, aud robs a faggot in con 3. queues, must be a hardened villain. The caitiff begged the reverend owner of the faggot to let him off ; but the rector very rightly observed that in his position he could not overlook an act of felony. Witnesses were called and testified to the prisoner's honesty, but the hardened villain got four months w th hard labor. Does not the above show that a Christiau spirit is still about amongst reverend gentlemen at home, and I quote the case as an encouragement to the numerous class of people hero who, like the prosecuting rector above, invariably quote " principle" when they have anything uncharitable to put through. The folio.ving was picked up by a friend of mine somewhere iu the stmt 1 believe: — " Char man of the bord sor fc-r work cut, ling ols to take the watc of th/i land 3 d ivs aud nights too and from £1 10s which it don my crops and patos moor then teng pounds worth of f.rm," I have thought a deal over this, and have come to the conclusion that it is either a bill or a conundrum. Supposing it to be the latter I give it up. Supposing it to be the former, I hope the chairman will consider the originality of the document and part. The shooting season has commenced. Mr Manning informs me that 479 guns left Christcburch on the first; and I can inform you that the results have not been, let us say, quite commensurate with the number of shots fired. But there's been a lot of lying —real good straight out lying—about the doings on the first. I've spoken to lots of sportsmen. They have all made bagsimmense bags, but where are they 1 According to the results given me, if our gunnists go on as they are going now, there won't be a duck for anyone to shoot by the first of May. Gunning is a goo 1 thing for the papers though. At least a column of the daily papers, or half a column, or a third, is filled up by preservers of game warning trespassers off their laod. This is as it should be. It makes another link iu the long chain of resemblance between Canterbury and England. The most striking advertisement is that of Mr Joblin, of Little River. B!r Joblin has suffered. He informs us that unprincipled and evil disposed persons have shot and appropriated pigs, sheep, and cattle of his on the pretence that they were wild. Mr Joblin can't stand this any longer and no more should I. I should like to be introduced to the man who made the mistake about the wild sheep. He would be an innocent abroad worth knowing and travelling with. I believe in remedies for coughs, colds, bronchitis, and consumption, especially when they are cheap. I suffer a lot sometimes, especially irom consumption. A remedy for the above i 3 advertised in a contemporary of yours which cures also the worst, form e f "horseness." Is this sarcasm? or does thi'-t panacea cure those who have b">en knocked (say) at Dunedin. If so, the Irish moss will have a very very great many clients,

I should like to see my way to go into trade. I mean of course respectably. I should like to be an importer of goods on credit. It works. Oh ! you can bet it does. A man I know has been importing things for the last two years. He was indeed the farmers' friend He sold them beets, turnips, wheat, and machinei wherewith to pkuuh reap, and thresh, and I'm not quite sure thet he didn't some of the hone3t farmers ton, and then he left. He wrote, though, to an acquaintance. Ho said that owing to the mean way he had been treated by lhe bank and others, he could stop no longer in the province. Many friends mourn this man's absence, and many will welcome him back when he comes.

This is a very mercantile town. It's a more business town than Dunedin. I was never there, but I'm sure of this, because the clerks in our banks and merchants' offices do so well, You see, they work during business hours, for which they get paid, and then they work in the evening, say on an average four days a week from 7 to 11, for which they don't get paid. The career of many clerks here reminds one of Silaa Wegg, who professionally Declined and Fell, but as a friend dropped into poetry. Our clerks work professionally all day, but drop into work of an evening as friends to the proprietary. Its a noble institution, this working overtime without pay. It is one of the few things in this country which shows the superiority of the educated over the working man. " Pay for overtime " marks the line between the patrician and the plebeian. Long may it continue bo, even if several promising people die in establishing the principle. It is allowed by most people that we ought to go to church on Sunday, Most of ns do. Some go in carriages. In tlm event of a man having to travel some miles to church, there is of course some excuse for breaking the fourth commandment. But I can't give much for the piety of a man who drives five mileß to chapel and hangs his horse up to a rail in the blazing sun, or the driving wet, as the case may be, during Divine service, when there is a stable close by. 1 know lots of devout men who do this. The animal who carries these pious people to church loses his day of rest, and while his master and missus are truthfully

calling themselves miserable sinners on a comfortable hassock inside a building where the Gospel and respectability cao bo obtained (exclusive of pew rents) for threeppnee a Sunday, he starves outside and wonders (an I do) whether Martin's AC: don't apply to Ihe just as well as to the unjust. What a letter to the paper some horse? I know could write.

Au anonymous correspondent of mim l writes to me to the effect that the dancing of the young women of the rising generation i» deplorable. He assures me that there are v.iry few who can, to use his owr. expression, " get along iu anything like good form." I'm sorry for this. 1 have always been of opinion that a young woman who could pass a fair examination in dancing and dress, would be fitted to take any position in which Providence might plane her. It is to be hoped that these two subjects will for the future form leading features in the curriculum of our ladies' schools. The feminine mind, not to say feet, drops morercaiily into these two things than subjects of a more literary kind. A gentleman who now occupies a very good position as a dealer in merchandise, aud who lives well, in Canterbury, used in other days, not to say happier hours, to drive a hawker's waggon. ThiDgs went well, and he began more sua to get hypercritical about the viands at the tables of the hotels, where he stopped. On occasiou ho expressed himself well satisfied with his repast, but qualific ! his praise with Ihe remark that the jam wtu deuced bad. The landlord, on examination, discovered that he had been eating about half a pound uf Chutnee. There is nothing very laughable about this. I am only reminded of it from the fact that at the tabic of a restaurant I sometimes devour at acme gentlemen grumble over the feed with just as much reason as the merchant above. One can only come to the conclusion that the geutlemen in question never knew what a good square meal was until they reached advanced manhood. The're always the worst sort.

I like Kaiapoi. I like the people, from the Mayor down to—well there's no use in being individuous —down to auyone. I take an elephantine interest in anything that occurs in Kaiapoi. I am glad to see that Kaiapoi has dug out a Brutus. A stern parent thinks he finds his sou out stealing a five-pound note. Some fathers would foolishly have condoned the crime. Not so this papa. He endeavored to smother parental feelings to further the ends of justice, and succeeded at the first attempt. It would appear that his feelings wanted propping up a bit under this ordeal. It would also appear that he propped them with the flowing bowl. It subsequently turns out that the boy was quite innocent. What a happy boy that must be, and how easy he must now find it to keep up to collar in the fifth commandment. I always thought Brutus was one of the greatest fools on record, but one can respect his foolishment. With regard to the Kaiapoi parent, on second thought, I should scarcely call him a Brutus. I should call him something very like it though, in one syllable you know.