THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 420, 1881. LATIMER SQUARE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2405, 20 December 1881, Page 3

THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 420, 1881. LATIMER SQUARE.

The la + er years of George Eliot's life were saddened by a general consciousness of the futility of human effort. The enormous waste of power that is constantly going on seems to have weighed on the great novelist like lead. It must, indeed, strike everyone who thinks at all on the subject that the impassive resistance offered to well-intentioned designs by unsympathetic natures and by other obstacles is not pleasant to contemplato, and the world would run more choorily were the dead weight so dreaded by the great novelist to be reduced to a minimum. The City Council would, we imagine, endorse these remarks were they to moralize on the -views they once held with regard to Latimer square. The square was, as our readers know, a short time back laid down entirely in grass, and the games in which the young Britisher delights were played there without lot or hindrance. Sucking Graces and Spofforths might be seen there any evening wielding the willow or trundling the ball with immense energy, and somotimes with a certain amount of skill. But the City Council came to the conclusion that it wa9 necessary to chazige all this. The square, they held, was for the people at large, and flying cricket balls annoy elderly citizens and frighten nursomaids. The square wa3 to be laid down, paths were to bo constructed, and an idyllic state of existence was to roign in place of the boisterousness that had previously obtained there. The square was, in fact, to be filled with nursomaids and olive branches, with the former of whom the traditional " bobby " was to carry on mild flirtations, while the latter were to be delighted by veterans relating hair-breath escapes by field and flood, or were to join in innocent games to the delight of all passers by. Occasionally the Mayor was to pass through and beam placidly, though vaguely, on the happy throng, while the Town Clerk might now and then soften the awe which his office would naturally inspire, by throwing sweetmeats broadcast among the little boys and girls. The Council began work at once. Certain paths, with an idiotic curve in them, wore cut out, and were strewn with a most exasperating gravel, and the remainder of the ground in due couree of time found itself covered with a fair turf. Then the Council breathlessly awaited the result. It was nil. The housemaids did not come; the little children, the bobbies, and the veterans all held aloof. The Mayor passed through, and had to beam on a solitude; the Town Clerk kept his lollies in his pocket, for there was no one to scramble for them. The scheme had utterly failed. And why ? The Council had not reckoned on the dead weight of opposition to be encountered in the nursemaid, the policeman, and the veteran element. For the Christchurch nursemaid is haughty beyond measure. The German nursemaid may be seen in any German town with a small white cap on her head and knitting absolutely knitting while her charges play about her. She looks generally pretty and invariably picturesque. But one would as soon expect the man to descend out of the moon and mix in every-day life as to see a Christchurch nursemaid behaving in what she would consider to be such an indecorous manner. On the contrary, her principal endeavour appears to be to absorb the nursemaid into the duchess. There are, of course, exceptions, but as a rule, when a peculiarly stately young person, clad in quite the latest fashions, is seen in charge of children, that girl is the nursemaid. Then with regard to the policeman, who was to haunt the square with amorous intent. The tender rapprochement that exists in England between the "bobby" and the nursemaid does not exist here, and the Council ought to have known it. And the reason is very plain. The nursemaid is looking over the head of the policeman, while the policeman is looking over the head of the nursemaid. The unmarried policeman —particularly the unmarried mounted policeman—is looking out for an heiress, while the nursemaid is looking out for a wealthy squatter. They are playing at cross purposes, and, like people who do so, they often miss the substance to grasp at the shadow. These two classes, who are naturally drawn together by the ties of an immemorial tradition, are kept asunder by a too vaulting ambition. One out of a hundred of our guardians of the peace may bag his heiress, and one nursemaid out of a hundred may run in a squatter, but the two sections of the community to whom we are alluding lose much by cutting themselves adrift from old associations. As for the veteran to whom the City Council looked to amuse the rising generation in the arcadian life that was to obtain in Latimer square, ho either does not exist or he carefully conceals himself in the bars of our publichouses. Perhaps he may have a lurking suspicion that the sharp colonial child will not swallow bis yarns with the same amiable gullibility that distinguishes the child in the old country, or it may be that the general atmosphere of a bar room is more to his taste. The result is the same whatever may be the cause, for he seldom, if ever, puts in an appearance in the open. And so all the classes on whom the City Council relied having failed to respond, matters have fallen back into the old groove. The cricket ball once more whistles merrily through the air. If the Mayor attempts to cross the square he is in imminent danger of having his hat, if not his head, carried off by a brilliant " leg hit." The town clerk dodges across the location as if he wore a rabbit rather than a city official. The square is, to use a vulgarism, " a hottish spot," and so it is likely to remain. The Council meant well when it ordained that a different state of affairs should prevail. It wished to establish an Arcadia on a small scale, but it was out in its calculations respecting the shepherds and shepherdesses,