LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 758, 24 November 1876, Page 3

LOAFER IN THE STREET.

{From the Press.) I came very near never writing to you any more. You will never know how narrowly you escaped missing any more of my valuable .contributions. It is now some time since you heard from me. Probably the circulation of your valuable journal has materially increased, but that is no reason why I should have suffered such treatment as I have at your hands. 1 offered you to write a condensed account of the Show and Races, which would be suitable for people who like brevity, and: prefer prose pastorals by the inch. I wrote you such an article. I don't profess to know about either sheep, pigs, or racehorses ; but 1 fancy I can write about them though, and say what you like, there is the freshness o£ originality about the following sentence, which you said was idiotic: "The Derby Class at the Metropolitan Race Meeting produced four entries, three of these being fine growthy butchers' beasts, and beautiful handlers. Songster, the winner of the first prize, is a most symmetrical animal, with a very lustrous fleece, and showing all the points of a true-bred Leicester." I know now, of course, that Songster is not a Leicester, but if you wero to go to three Agricultural Shows in one week, and follow them up with a Race Meeting of three days, you might get a bit mixed between bucoiic and sporting phrases, particularly if you be of a trusting disposition like yours very truly, and believed all people told you. It's best to do so though. It saves such a lot of trouble in this world to believe people's statements about themselves and their belongings. Life is too short to bother about hunting after solid truth. It only exhausts one, and you never find it. You can bet on this. I wish to state in reference to my paragraph quoted above, that other people make mistakes besides me. Here is a paragraph I saw somewhere the other day :—" The San Franoisco Mail ;Tbe City of New York left Wellington yesterday moming at arrived in

Lyttelton last, and was forwarded by a special train at an early hour this morning." Now look here, I may have got mixed a bit between sheep, and racehorses, bat I never brought an ocean steamer through the tunnel. I expect I lack a lot of imaginative power even yet. Let it, however, pass, only when you want some one again to write you a synopsis of the gala week, don't think of me. I wish to tell you a little about the skating rink. I feel glad we have got such an institution for many reasons. Every town in the world of any pretension has a rink, and though, like the Athenian loafers of old, we are fonder of talking about new things than doing them, it would be a saddening thing for us to be behind London or Paris, or any place like them. lam glad there is to be a testimonial to Mr Eolleston, but I really think Messrs Millett and Saunders ought to have a statue erected to them, A nicely made statue you know. I expect they would do as fair on a bust as any other men who have deserved well of their country. Having visited the rink I can safely say I like it. I'm not good on describing architecture or upholstery; besides, you have already given an account of the skating shop, but I should say it was replete with every convenience, especially for falling down. The phrase " replete with every convenience " is not original on my part, It has been used in locals for many hundred years. The reporter for the Merenrie uses it in reference to the Torture Chamber at the Tower in Queen Elizabeth's reign. It seems a good phrase to use here. The origin of skating, you may perhaps be aware, is, like the morality of the turf, wrapped in a few balos of obscurity. I should like to have devoted a few lines to its origin, because a fluent writer like myself may as well make a few pence at per line out of the early upheaval of skates as anything else. I have however no book on the subject to crib from. Ido know thatskatingis mentioned in Runic poems as a necessary accomplishment of the Northern hero, but neither Shakspere nor auy other of our old poets mentions the amusement. But there were no rinks then. I'm sorry for this, because a quotation from an old poet no one knows, looks scholarly and neat. Chaucer did commence a poem as follows :

" As I lay a thynking Like wynking Of Rynking"; But he never finished it, and the only man fit to tackle the job is the indefatigable author of " Zealandia" and other poems. The rink is a very amuring place to go to. Every one drops there, and you feel before you have been there five minutes that you are getting fair value for your money, which alas is more than can be said of such a lot of entertainments I could mention. - You are reminded of Mr Rochefoucauld's aphorism about there being something not unpleasant to us in the misfortunes of our best friends. It's old, my festive reader, is this observation of Mr R.'s, but its real true, and fits a rink like a glove. The skating of the fair Lillie and Mr Taylor is very graceful, and reminds one —or rather doesn't remind the big scene in the Huguenots, because I have seen some very shaky rinksters on the stage in that lot, but its a treat to see Mr Taylor skate. It looks so easy. Flump said so last night, and said he'd go and have a wade in. He did. What a wade he made of it. In all my experience

never saw anything more perfectly helpless and ungainly than Flump's start. I say this advisedly, though there are perhaps as many unbeautiful objects in this city as any other in the world. Flump started with caution. His movements were those of a landcrab suffering from a combination of ophthalmia and rheumatism. One foot went irregularly in different directions, and the other vacillated behind. In ten yards Flump fell and nearly dislocated his elbow, It was one of the funniest things we had ever seen. He started again. This time he got along at a fair pace for a real good twenty yards, and then both his feet wanted to work in unison and disagreed after going ten inches. Then Flump came down once more. It was just pleasant to watch him. As your sporting correspondent would say, he dismissed himself with a beautiful start next time, and sailed away like adecrepid emu right down the room, got round the first turn at a fair speed, then bis left leg got undecided and his right foot jibbed, and Flump wanted to moderate the pace. On what principle he elected to manage this I don't know, but I know what he did. He gyrated about like an idiot. He floundered here, there, and all wheres, and then another neophyte rinked into him, and Flump fell again on the back of his head; you could have heard it at the Post office. It sounded as empty as possible. How we did laugh. He went on again as good as gold, but never did I see a man set his mind to falling down like he did. He persevered with his attempts at floor thumping with an energy I never saw equalled. He says he means rinking as much as possible. I expect he will rink well some day, the more so because I saw several there who were wearing the rollers for the second time only, and they were getting on famously. I did not rink myself, though pressed courteously to do so by the urbane and gentlemanly managers (newspaper phrase for which I won't bo responsible). They said I should never hurt my head if I did coma on it, which is possible, but I notice that rinksters do not always fall on their head. They fall to sweet music though, and that's next thing to dying to slow ditto. There iB one point about the rink I am glad to observe you have left for me to touch upon. I allude to the great boon it will be to the ladies of this metropolis, Hitherto, so far as I have been in a position to judge, they have never gone in for anything except, in some few instances, a little charity, and I never heard of their over-doing that, But I feel sure that this rink will supply a want which has long been felt. I sen no reason why the fairer sex should not amuse (you can spell it with a b if you like) as well at the rink as in Church. I feel sure this fact will go far to ensure the future success of the institution. I am given to understand that rinks in England and elsewhore are conducive to matrimony—that, so far as bachelors are concerned, the oft quoted inscription of Dante's might be truthfully written up over the portals of rinks, May it be so here. I meet so many people who are not married, but who I feel sure would like to be, and any institution which can give the marriageable section of the community an extra show is deserving of the support of right minded colonist. And this reminds me of a little story 1 heard only yesterday. There was a fellow away north somewhere who met a sweet girl on a Friday ; gotentianced with her on Saturday, proposed to her on Sunday, saw her father on Monday, bought the ring on Tuesday, got married on

Wednesday, and on Friday came back to the parson to know if he couldn't annul the marriage. What a sweet little idyll this would make, and it's really true I give you my solemn word. Perhaps it's as well not to propose to anyone until you've known her over a week, even at a rink. There's no law against it however. I hope the skating asylum will continue to be a pronounced success; that our rinkers, some of them at any rate, will continue to improve, and the proprietary will meet with a better recognition of their endeavors to cater for the public than benefactors usually do.