SHOUTING.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2429, 18 January 1882, Page 4

SHOUTING.

[From the • Sydney Mail."] In a Southern oolony there has been raised a crusade against what we know aa '' shoutins;." It might be interesting to inquire the origin of the term. It seems to be somewhat connected with early mining days, or as we know them vulgarly, the breaking out of the diggings. Ooe may suppose that at this period, when drinking was a kind of religion, and when a man who would not drink was accounted no better than a heathen, the bars of publio houses were much orowded, and that those who desired liquor had to call out in loud tones to the barmaid or barman, aa the case may be. After that fervous epoch it was oustomary for the drinking to be done in parties, and the man who paid the soore was the man -who called out to the Hebe or the G-anymede, as the case might be, the order. And calling inferred paying. Consequently to pay was to call for the liquor, or to "shout" for it. So much for the etymology. She moral aspect of the question has, for the most part, a ludicrous expression, for it exhibits mankind swallowing down liquor for no reason at all, but complying only with an insane custom which appears to have deoreed that whether you desire liquor or not you must take it when it is offered you ; and, having taken it, you must return the oomplixnent by offering liquor to him who offered it to you ; and if your friend has seven or eight other friends you must offer it to them also, and that each one of them must offer it to the company ; and as one good turn deserves another the invitation to swallow liquor must go on, if not at that time, at some other time, bo that, in fact, you must never see one of those persons, or for the matter of that, any other person, without beseeching him to take in liquor, and not one of them must ever see you without pressing upon you the obligation of liquoring. It is easy to see that, in this way, life in the main will come to be synonymous with liquor, and that to shout and to drink will be the chief business of existence, and, in more senses than one, the prinoipal «nd of man. No doubt this custom is very good—for hotelkeepers ; but its benefit to anybody else is open to question, and those who have begun to reckon the cost of complying with the custom are beginning to wonder whether shouting money might not be put to more profitable uses, especially as many shouting people shout at the expense of their creditors ; and aa they do not benefit their health, and as they certainly damage the health of their friends and acquaintances, it is asked why this heavy tax should be paid to the publioans ? For a while the non-shouting man will be voted mean; but he will get over this imputation and probably at no distant period we ■hall neither liquor nor invite others to liquor -unless the weather be exceedingly hot and we are desperately thirsty. And even then it is open to consideration whether every thirsty soul shall not pay for his own liquor without being under the compulsion to defray the cost of that of a crowd of other persons.