NOTIONS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 1625, 20 October 1873, Page 2

NOTIONS.

My chum Jack Flint is an iron-hearted old file. Talk sentiment to him and you insult him. All the milk of human kind.ness in his composition has been turned to curds. Jack and myself were strolling in the Greymouth Cemetery the other day. We gazed with wonderment at the extraordinary number of violent deaths recorded upon the tombstones. We saw the history of events more tragic than are wont to fill the page of the novelist. Jack's eye, usually as hard as the material which is his namesake, began to soften as he read. He told me that he felt his opinions anent mankind changing. He had believed them a pack of beings wholly selfish. Before him were unanswerable arguments that all at any rate were not such. For many of the gravestones were handsome and costly, and on them were related that they had been erected by the mates of the deceased in.recognition of their worth. They also bore testimony in homely language pregnant with pathos to the virtues of the departed. There was something very opposite to.selfishness. After much cogitation, Jack came to the conclusion that diggers at least were somewhat unselfish. And I confirmed him in this by referring to the couduct displayed by some of them in connection with the latest victim of violent death I reposing in that cemetery. To even the most unfeeling churl alive there is something touching in the sterling virtues of the survivors which these miners' monuments proclaim to all beholders. Long life and big nuggets to them ! Sic itnr ad astia. In this way men climb fame's ladder right up to the very empyrean. I believe it is not usually thought possible to carry " cheek" to the pitch of siiblimity. Yet, Dr Patrick j Murray has demonstrated that the meanest of human wickedness can be exalted into veritable grandeur. Not content with doing his utmost to hang the men who were only his servants in that now notorious, wholesale murdering of "blackbirds," he has taken another step, and that & very long one, in a similar direction. He is now in London writing a book to show up the monstrosities of that South Sea slave traffic in which he took such a genuine monster's part. This precious treatise is to come out under the wing of the Anti-Slavery Society. Is there not a beautiful sublimity in this action ? He is to be taken under the protection of Lord Shaftesbury and the other Saints to whom the converted nigger is- such an object of affection. Mayhap he will be sent out as a missionary to carry the tidings of Christianity to the South Sea Islanders. If he be, I trust these colored gentlemen will not have 'wholly forgotten their cannibal instincts, Still it would be cruel to wish any beinp with the semblance of a man to feed off such a carcase as Dr Ms. There was once a viper that, following the traditions of his race, bit the leg of a sorry churl. The hapless rep'ile was poisoned by the blood he tasted in biting, and died immediately. lam confident that if the flesh of Murray were distributed among a whole tribe of the South Sea folk they would one ' and all experience the fate of the indiscreet viper afore-mentioned. . I am aware there are some who ridicule the notion of "sweet gjirl graduates. >? These fellows imagine that a female "fellow" of such-and-such a college would be quite a lusus natum. They have an aversion to learned women. They would answer yes to the question of Byron " 0 you lords of ladies intellectual, confess the truth •; have they not henpecked you all ?" They haye a religious horror of anything that might withdraw any members from t^e ranks of stockingdarners and buttoa-sejjrers.-on, To jbhese chaps it will be ill news to be told that the only pandidates at the recent.matriculation examination for the Melbourne University who passed ff with credit" belonged to the femininp persuasion, fhe names of these fair ones #re Je#ny Bromby and Sarah Louisa Burke. All honor to them. May they win as good things in the matrimonial market as they have won in that of learning. There may

be ancient fogies who will look upon them with contempt as a pair of bluestockings, and point them out as shocking examples of what our girls are coming to. But, by the majority of men, they will be regarded as semi-heroines, and by the bulk of their own sex they will be deemed to have added a high and honoiablo feather to the cap of that half of the human race of which Eve was the first specimen.

The Parliamentary ■ session is dead. Bequiescat in pace. This, being translated into the English yulgate, reads f Let it rip." Alas! Sic transit gloria vita. Thus pass away all our pleasures. .What shall we do now for company at the breakfast table ? What can supply the place left vacant by the absence of the .wonted lengthy telegrams of the doings and say-: ings of our legislators, Lords and Commoners. There will be sorrow throughout the length and breadth of the land. It would not be surprising if the nation donned mourning attire, or did a little of the sack- cloth and ashes business, which the old Jews were such adepts at. ' This last in compliment to our Hebrew Premier. There is a sadness in the last hours of everything, no matter ho vv ordinary or contemptible it may be. There was a fellow that knew something anent human affairs in particular and things sublunary in general. And he declared that he would not choose to see an old post pulled up with which he had been long acquainted. Bnt, though dead' and buried, the session will be restored to life, or rather it will have a successor very similar to itself. Its epitaph is Reswrgam. And, perusing this, we ought to 'take consolation, and, [making the best of it, bear our bereavement philosophically. Human affairs are at best but a mournful jest. Parliamentary sessions are a most lugubrious portion of thew. Hence the difficulty of doing without them in playing the farce of life.

I have just consulted my legal adviser. The subject was one of the gravest impoitance.'_ But he, the stony-breasted curmudgeon, gave me very little consolation. He was afraid, yes, really he must say so, that an action would, not lie against the firm. Passing along the .Quay, on Monday last, my attention was caught by flaming placards in the windows of one of our drapery houses. One of them bore the terrific inscription The Lasf Day. All the horrors of the Apocalypse rushed upon me in an instant. •" The day of wrath, that dreadful day, when the whole world shall in ashes lay!" How could they have learned that it was at hand? was the question that flashed upon me. And some demon whispered that they got it by telegram. This was enough. Methoughfc I could hear ths first peal of the trump of doom.! And already I felt myself starting for the vale of Jehoshaphat. I became dumbfoundered, my hair stood up like the quills of a fretful hedgehog, and my voice stuck in my throat. Just then Jack Flint came up, cool as a cucumber, and explained that the announcement referred to a. sale, I confessed myself sold, and felt highly incensed. ' I sought my lawyer, with what result has already been narrated. A friend of mine snuffed the candle the other night and quenched it in " the operation. He remarked, " Whilst endeavoring to be brief I have become obscure." There are others like him. My frighteners are of the class. In the same window with the dreadful announcement before described was this!— No PUFF, no offer REFUSED. There afe not many of our softgoods men w"ho will refuse puff. So this part of the statement wa9 surely not much needed. I have been told by a friend that the wotd reasonable was put in in small pencilled letters before "offer." I could notsee it; Had I been in better temper I should have gone and offered an ounce of whitebait for a bale of blankets. And as no offer was to be refused, of course miioe would have been accepted. Then supposing " reasonable "were inserted. Who can define what is a reasonable .price for drapery. I have asked the question of a dozen housewives, and am as much in the dark as ever. lam inclined to disregard my lawyer's opinion, and put the matter first opportunity to Higinbotham.

The name Henty ia as familiar as a household word in Victoria. The first white man that settled in that^colony was a Henty. The Hen tys are anu merous family. Once upon a time they were jail rich, especially in beeves and r bleate'rs. They have been wont to move among the magnates of the land. But, alas for fortune, the fickle jade. She is an arrant and shameless coquette. She jilts a man when his suit looks most favorable. ; - She sports with men's purses as. the storm winds do with the most fragile of shrubs. She dashes the enp of prosperity to jLhe earth when it is brim ming over with the sparkling essence of what the world deems the highest bliss. Of more than one member of this famous family it may; be said, " He4s the shadow of a great name." Fortune, once ever wreathed in rosiest smiles to lavish upon them, has put on that murky frown she knows so well, how to assume. A Henty whose habitat was in the aristocratic suburb South Yarra, has just compromised with his creditors by giving, them one penny out of every two hundred and forty he owed them. Some foolish fellows on the West Coast would think themselves ill-treated if put off with a shilling in the pound. But what would they say to a penny? Imprisonment for debt is, on the whole, an unjust thing. But to every rule there are exceptions. And the man who makes ducks and drakes of his estate in such a manner as to be able to offer only a penny for every twenty shillings due by him, is surely a meet subject for the debtors' prison.

ft may be a pleasant existence that of ancient maidenhood. The popular notiqn, Jbowever, believes it the contrary. There be some that think it as dreary as that of Mariana, who exclaimed in a burst of passionate despair, "I am aweary, aweary ; oh God, that I were dead." The fair damsel wjjo causpd thp following adr yertisement to be inserted in the fpaipniaiti Jferald, deserves a happier fate than that of perpetuaj spinsterhood assuredly :— " Wanted, by a young lady, a respectable young man as partner in Ufe— must bp a dashing and good-looking young fellow. B^eply by. letter, enclosing photograph, addressed Josephine, Post Qffice, Wailjouaiti." !fhere are not many young men whq ; deem f^emselves o|;her than good-looking. And few believe themselves lacking in the matter of dash. Josephine would then, I suppose, receive

at least a hundredweight of photos, were she known to be herself, endowed with qualifications similar to those she deaires in the other member of the matrimonial firm, and possessed in addition of that only true beauty^ an ample dowery of the substance, which is said to be the motive power of the female horse. I advise her, however, if unsuccessful in her present attempt to procure a husband, to emigrate to Greymouth.

King Death and King Hennessy level all distinctions. These royal gentlemen are no respecters of persons. The legislator and the costermonger, the Governor and the chimneysweep are treated to the same measures. Every cemetery affords ample testimony of the former's impartiality; Many a Bacchanalian orgy has demonstrated that of the latteri The trophies of the former's prowess are innumerable, and tq be found everywhere. Those of the latter's are numerous, and 'few, places are exempt from their presence. The inscription of Sir Christopher Wren's tomb is •* Hi monumenhim reqiwris circumspice." Many a time oft has P.B. been able to exclaim" m the self-same words, " If. you seek a monument look around." In Wren's case the monument was a stately church, soaring to the sky. In the case of P.B. it was made up of a crew of jolly good fellows, grovelling on the floor of some banquet hall. Yes, P.B. could cry out with just as much reason as the great architect, "Si nrmiivmntiwvre* quirk ciratmspice. Look around on the prostrate forms of a dozen of creation's lord's. " Hennessy might say * ith Horace, " A great part of mci is. immortal." Horace made poems and Hennessy has made brandy. Which of the two is regarded by the majority of humans as the more useful man, the poet or the brandymaker? I would nof like to write; the answer. . • ,'^i. Diogenes.