NOBBLERISING.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume III, Issue 156, 8 January 1864, Page 2 (Supplement)

NOBBLERISING.

BY VOKTEX. “ Put your trust in Providence',* me boy, and take a big dhrink,” was the advice of an old Irish nobleman to a sick friend with the gout, and the worthy gentleman’s advice seems to have been wafted across to us, and to have been adopted universally as the soundest and most sensible axiom. If we were asked the peculiarities or characteristics of Victoria society, we should reply—firstly, nobblers ; and we should carry out our assertion by a description of the manner in which people here, day after day, hour after hour, crowd the bars and parlours of the hotels for the eternal nobbier. We should not, however, attempt to account for this, further than by saying that it is a habit of the people —a habit originating in the wild and feverish days of the finding of the goldfields, and eventually becoming a settled and permanent institution of colonial society. We should describe how no possible bargain of trade ; no conceivable transaction between man and man; no business, in short, in which two male creatures are concerned, is satisfactorily settled without the established nobbier. Not, however, that the said nobbier is any symbol of friendship or good feeling. Men who never met before, who will never meet again, but whom chance has thrown together for a few moments, regale themselves with a nobbier; and for no conceivable reason that we know of, further than it is one of those habits which have become second nature; such a habit, indeed, as in snuff taking days induced one man to offer his snuff-box to another. True, the evil of uobblerism is not so flagrant, not so prominent as in days of yore ; but the cause of its apparent abatement in no degree lies in the fact that men have now-a-days less money to throw away upon the habit. I would, however, take doubtful gentlemen to

the Criterion, the Cafe, the Loudon Tavern, and several other haunts of the “upper ten,” between the hours of 11 and 2 o’clock, and show him that, with them at least, the habit has in no way decreased. Jones “ shouts” to Smith, and Smith, as in duty baund, returns the compliment to Jones, and so, forth, and the firey god of nobblers sits up aloft among the bottles, and chuckles with delight, and rum and brandy, and beer, and every abominable mixture is consumed in no end of quantities. Decent society leads the van in this. Hodge, the labourer, has his pint or quart of colonial beer, and enjoys it; but Tomkins and Bobbins, the millionaires, do their cognac and cordial, and so forth, and go home to their wives and families in the evening very fishy about the eyes, and very hot and ill-tempered. And even at home they carry on the same sort of thing. We have heard rare tales of Tomkins —such as we should hardly like to relate of that eminent gentleman ; tales, indeed, which involve the accuracy of his equilibrium ; tales of his having frequently been carried to bed in a state of coma ; tales indeed of a very dissipated and debauched character. But in sad earnest the habit is one which, despite the congratulations of some, has not decreased, but has laid a permanent grip upon society ; and we even see young lads, who, at home, could hardly be induced to taste a glass of wine, drinking their nobblers of gin in the bars and vestibules of the theatres night after night. That it must exercise a very deleterious effect upon society, there can be little doubt. Men who can do this sort of thing are of very little use to the state as respectrri.~ .... .c.. i Uk.lv. j. lie uiaa w iiu pi tiers nls nobbier to the connubial cup of tea, is, in some respects, a dangerous and discontented spirit, and is not of the kind likely to promote, or take, indeed, a sensible interest in the welfare of his country. But the most ridiculout phase in nobhlerisra lies in utter lack or good fellowship or joviality in the habit. We can understand a man who, like Tam O'Shanter, in good company, “ sits boozin’ o’er the nappy, getting fou and unca’ happy but can we explain that insane habit of drinking with every one one meets, without regard to his being a friend, or a good fellow, or a person to whom we are glad to offer a compliment —that absurd habit which induces a man to cry every half hour, to the merest acquaintance, “ Come along and have a nobbier.” It is one of those paradoxes which are are unexplainable,—one of those absurd habits which in every country are more or less prominent, but a habit nevertheless, of no slight danger,—a habit without doubt calculated to sap the foundations of all that is good and virtuous in a community. Let us hope that the evil may soon cease, —that men will ere long see the utter folly and imbecility of their eternal nobhlerism, —and that the reign of the bloated god of gin and brandy will shortly he cut short. And when this comes to pass, we for one will sing a paean. —Melbourne Weekly Herald.