LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1413, 26 August 1878, Page 3

LOAFER IN THE STREET.

[fboji the press.] Has it", occurred to you that the telegraphicagents throughout the colony are improving ? It has so struck me. I never could get up a thrill over the fact that Mr Jones of, say Riverton, had been thrown out of his buggy and broken his arm. Had Jones broken his neck, I could not have felt excited over the fact. In justice to telegraphic agents who have real hard work to delve out anything at all to send, I have tried for hours to heave up sympathy or interest over similar telegrams, but I have failed. I will not disguise the fact. I don’t care two straws about knowing that a man has broken every bone in his body if I have never seen him. You may perhaps, I can’t, but I do like a man who can knock something original out of an old subject. Thus I could ask the man who sent the following to a northern contemporary to drink with me many times —at his own expense : “ A fatal accident, which will probably turn out to be of a very serious nature, occurred last night.” Ever since I read the above I’ve been wondering what the agent who sent it would consider safe to represent to his clients as a really “ serious accident.” “ From one hundred to two hundred ablebodied Hawaiian men,” says the local paper, “ are to be seen every day, interested spectators of the doings of the Legislative Assembly. They have the appearance generally of being well fed, although poi is undoubtedly high. One cannot help speculating what a valuable work this body of men might accomplish on a sugar or rice plantation, if so minded, instead of loafing away the time in witnessing the equally unprofitable frittering away of time by the Representatives.” How like ISewZealand must Honolulu be! Our parliamentary audiences are not usually quite so good, but then we have a “Hansard,” a sweet boon which is probably denied to the politicians of Honolulu, If we could save

tho few paltry thousands a year this valuable and interesting publication costs here, it would perhaps be worth our while to put up with a couple of hundred loafers in the strangers’ gallery. Real nice, gentlemanly, useful Maori loafers. They could be found quite easily. At leas). I fancy so. I’ve been thinking a lot about the extension of the franchise to the fair sex, and I can’t see how it would work satisfactorily. The other day, at a public meeting at Ashburton, a gentleman was proposing a vote of confi dence, when another well-known resident came forward to embrace him. It would be a little embarassing perhaps to a fair elector addressing a public meeting—say of 500—if all the audience were, like tho Ashburton gentleman, to get carried away by their feelings and want to embrace her. Assuming her to be fair to look upon, such a thing is quite possible. The Timaru Borough Council is on the dwindle. It only contains five out of ten original members. The last Councillor who threw up his job did so on account of his grammar being criticised. This was weak — very weak. Grammar is not an essential to any Borough Councillor. At least I should say not. The Hon. Mr Macandrew writes to the Agent-General suggesting a new plan of getting immigrants for this rising country, lie says—“ If it is deemed necessary to resort to extraordinary means for obtaining suitable emigrants, I am inclined to think that advantage may be taken of the services of those who, having acquired a competency, have gone home to visit their friends, There are many such who, throughout their native districts, would in themselves present, as it were, ‘ a living epistle,’ setting forth the advantages which have resulted from emigrating to New Zealand, and who, I have no doubt, would be glad to make known the attractions of their adopted country at a cost to the colony much less than the amount of the head money now in question, and with far greater results.” This is quite possible, but there would require to bo some little care exercised in the selection of the “ living examples.” It does not follow that because a man has landed with the traditional shilling in his pocket, and subsequently acquired a competency, he should be a pleasant sample of a colonist. I know at least one or two with very pleasant competences who, were they to pose around Great Britain as living examples, would, from their style, frighten away a heap more immigrants than they would attract. Messrs A. B. Fleming and Co., the famous type manufacturers, have erected at the Paris Exhibition a pyramid of photographs of newspaper titles, classified under their several nationalities. The heading of the “ Weekly Press” especially attracted the attention of Marshal Macmahon and Lord Beaconsfield, who is himself a local-writer of no mean order. “ Enquire, my dear Beak, of the Agent-General of New Zealand,” said the martial ruler of the destinies of France, “ who runs this paper, and tell him to come home to me. A man who has nerve enough to put that paper onto an Anglo-Saxon community has a brilliant future before him in France.” “It shall be done, Mac,” said the aged statesman with his customary politeness, and they twain passed on to have a gentle cocktail with the art reporter of the “Police Nows,” who happened to have Is fid about him and wanted a par from Beaconsfield. One of the saddest sights in this world ie to see a Press man returning thanks for the 4th Estate. The toast is always one of the last. Many of the audience are, as it were, pleni vetcris B ace hi, all are tired, and the tulkist has to get up on his hind legs to make observations he has made hundreds of times before. So far as eloquence goes all the froth has been taken off the oratory, and I don’t thing Demosthenes would shine in such boots. I am reminded of this circumstance from the fact that in public matters I’m always at the tail of the hunt. By tho time I want to give you my valuable and carefully - thought-out impressions, the thing is played out by the other boys. Thus it is that I don’t see how I can say anything that has not been said before on the subject of the Hagley Paak question, further than to remark that I was showing this property of the people to an Australian friend some time ago, and ho said with all due respect to my feelings he thought the best part of it was the sheep grazing thereon. I think the Mayor’s remarks on the subject are worth consideration. He said that after sixteen years’ experience he had no hesitation in saying that the state of the park was a disgrace to us. It was a perfect wilderness, and the young trees were scarcely to be seen for rank grass. I suppose, like everything else, it requires money to straighten it out, but a community so strong on presentations as Christchurch might rake up enough to give the park a start. Your sub-editor left me a while in charge the other night, while he went away down to see a friend in a public-house. During his absence some telegrams came in. The one in reference to the Jackson’s Bay settlement was good. When published, the last part read as follows: —“ There are some good men amongst them as amongst other settlers, but the proportion is very small. The settlement has been heavily handicapped by having such material to work, but, notwithstanding, I have not tho least doubt of its ultimate success, and the operation of the inevitable law of natural selection will, no doubt, result in the survival of tho fittest.” As received, the last part read “ will, no doubt, result in the survival of the fattest.’, Under the circumstances, I’m sorry I didn’t let it stand, as I’m not so sure that the telegraphist’s new rendering of Mr Darwin’s theory was not more appropriate under the circumstances than the original. He was a good old man, writes a Northern correspondent of mine. He was much respected up our way, but he had a trick of forgetting to part. In the memory of the oldest inhabitant he never was known to part, but he glode gently at his neighbours’ expense o’er the billows of a selfish world. He took a bit sick lately, and a mercenary creditor took out a summons against him. When the minion of the law came to deliver it, the young and artless domestic, with a handkerchief to her face, said her master was dead. Tho minion straightway departed, telling the sad intelligence on his road home to the local undertaker. The latter artist went on up, and entering by the back door, with which he was familiar, lost no time in entering the room of the deceased, and started on the melancholy job of measuring him. Like the famous Mr Finnigan, the deceased jumped up and said, “ Flemmin’s, there is such a thing as being too keen in business. I’ll summon you to-morrow for being illegally on my premises,” He did too and got judgment. The members of the House of Assembly have been struggling for years with the Local Option Bill, and now these engineers are likely to get bust up with their own petard. There is a talk of abolishing Bellamy’s. The drinking offends the temperance principles of Mr Fox, the odour of the hidalgic onions disturbs the nose of Mr Wason, and thus a fine old institution is in danger of being set at naught—but I don’t think it will somehow.