LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 771, 9 December 1876, Page 3

LOAFER IN THE STREET.

{From the Press.) 1 like a real good upright man, one who can look after his business and his employees welfare as well. They can boast of such an one away in a rising township down South. He laws for a living I believe. A clerk in his possession recently felt hirpself a little over worked, and asked for an evening a week to hipaself. The following is a selection taken from a letter received by the clerk from his paternal employer :— M As a matter of principle I cannot consent to your getting an evening for some time to come. He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not scattereth abroad, My first condition is that you will get your own and my clearance from the Grand Templar Lodge. You must attend the Congregational Church twice a day on Sundays, Your notice I have noticed. You will call at my house morning and evening for orders. It will be beneficial to yourself, as well as respectful to your employers, to put your pipe in your pocket in the street up to the time of wishing me good evening. You can amuse yourself (the italics aro mine) at home in thinking out matters of business, reading books on costs, preparing hills of costs, providing for

salaries instead of throwing the burden on my shoulders.” This is enough to quote of my legal friend’s ideas of clerkship. It makes rather a long paragraph, but it’s much more original than anything I could write were Ito think for a year. There is such a sweet—a very sweet originality about the sequences of the man of law. Twice to chapel on Sundays, and thinking of costs all the week. I like the idea myself, but I may add that if the clerk be a family man be may perhaps feel, like Mies Miggs, thankful that “servitudes is no inheritance.”

I understand we have a lot of poaching here in the shooting season, and that a number even of our high class sportsmen slay without a license. The following are the Japanese regulations which I saw in the Japan Gazette the other day. “ Any foreigner found guilty of shooting without a license will be beheaded for a first offence. “ For a second offence he will be sentenced to commit suicide by the mode of Harakiri. [Note —I can’t find Harakiri in any dictionary. 1 “ For a third offence he will be deported by his own consul.” I don’t exactly see how we could make these regulations work here. I fancy the first one would be enough for us, and then the executioner would be kept in constant employment, and have a number of very respectable customers too. The carriers are going to havs a picnic I understand. They are going to have bands of music and children, and intend to revel in the wilds of New Brighton, which is mainly remarkable as a place where people go and freeze looking after frost-fish, and never get any. How a carrier can be expected thoroughly to enjoy himself when he has to drive his own family five miles and back for nothing, I can’t understand. It doesn’t seem in accordance with the general fitness of things, so far as carriers go, but I hope they will have a good time. A gentleman, who was described as a decent looking man, was summoned recently in Dunedin for using naughty words in a sweet locality called the Devil’s Half-acre. His defence was that the euphuisms he made use of were only the usual dialect of that locality, and consequently not only could not insult any of the residents, but were ncces aary to be intelligible to the inhabitants, I think the Bench might have let him down for the originality of the defence, but perhaps it would be rather a bad precedent to establish. We might have some fellow here trying to get off for perjury on the ground that the had been living so much among liars. And in some cases I know of a prisoner could make a very strong case even in goody Christchurch. The members of the City Council are naturally exercised in their minds about the Charitable Aid question. Mr Bolleston is, I am pleased to learn, working very hard at it at the present time ; and I may say it is a subject which, ever since I have had to earn my own living, I have myself devoted as much time and attention to as any man living. It may be that there will be trouble in getting our fair proportion of funds from the outlying districts, but as Councillor Turner observed, it won't do to let people starve in Christchurch because they belong to Timaru or any other place. It would be best to provide a fund to send real straight out paupers to some other part of the colony, some part you know where they are used to that class of people ; not a place like this rolling in wealth and commission agents. Councillor Turner suggests that the ladies should be enlisted to act as a distribution society. I am sure they would do this very nicely; that is, with a little practice : because I’m given to understand, by those who ought to know, that they have not been in the habit of devoting hitherto more than fi x hours a day to charity, and charity like caviare is, to the fair sex, quite an acquired taste after all. Two members of the metallic ring, well known in Christchurch and Dunedin, have, as they usually do, lately issued a book with the entries for the various leading events and the current state of tbe odds. At the end of the book they advertised that they from £2 to £2OOO to lend on personal security. After the recent Dunedin Meeting a client, who we may call Nails, had lost £SO to them. Ele settled his claim by an order on Spike. The latter, when called on to part, suggested that the firm should lend him another £SO on his personal security, and then, said Spike, “I shall owe you £100.” The firm couldn't see it. Still, I think, on personal security they cau do a fine business. We have a new Theatre here now. I mention the fact because so many people must be unaware of the fact. People, 1 mean, who grumbled habitually, and not perhaps unnaturally, at the accommodation afforded by the old one. I was always given to understand by many of these patrons of the drama, that were a new building, “ fit for ladles, you know, erected, it would pay well." Perhaps it may eventually, but the cupport accorded to an actor like Mr Dampier, would scarcely lead me to believe that the dividends accruing from the new Theatre will be very overpowering. The more I see of the taste of our audiences, the more I think poor Miss Rose Evans touched it with the point of a needle when she told us our form was dogs and monkeys. We cry qut for novelties and good actors ; when a good one comes amongst us we show our appreciatiou of him by never going to see him, The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette came out in a now line a short time ago. It became conscious of the fact that there were thousands of men and women, of all ages, capable of making each other happy, who have a chance of meeting. It resolved to devote a column of its best energies in bringing some of these single people into communication with each other. lam sorry the editor has not seen his way to continue the matrimonial column, because, as ho very truthfully observes, marriage is such a very ancient institution that it excites universal interest in tbe human family. Oh, yes ! in lots of human families. It becomes a question for the reflective mind If it wore not for marriage what should we do for mothers in-law / Marriage is an institution which, wo are informed, is honorable in all. The authority for this statement is good, but I’ve known exceptions, fvid were I to accept the invita fciou of (he editor of the L.V G, and contribute an article calculated to enlighten the public mind in reference to this ancient institution, I should quote Punch's advice to those about to marry. The various appficants who advertise in the column before mentioned put in their claims very nicely, and if the lady aged 33 with £2OO a year and without near relations has not yet found her affinity I wouldn’t mind exchanging photographs. You have my address.