SHINGLES FROM AN OLD ROOF.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IV, Issue 190, 2 September 1864, Page 3

SHINGLES FROM AN OLD ROOF.

BY A FREE AND EASY SHINGLER. THE ORDER OP EZRA. There are few sights, in this motley world of ours, more productive of painful sensations than a shabbily-gloved hand. The ungloved palm of labour is respected, and indeed honored after a fashion. It has had its advocates, its poets, and its priests, continuously since tlie time when Father Adam was summarily evicted from the garden of Paradise. It has been the motive power of all revolutions, anu 01 iriiofinutiou j sncl tlicy who affect to despise it with their tongues, admit its influence by their fears. The well gloved hand of wealth is the Juggernaut before which all men aye, and all women, too—bow with no insincere reverence and humility. Verily, there is a potency in fresh, unsoiled, delicately-fitting kid-skin, which may not be gainsaid—a magic which may not be resisted. Like Charity, it covereth a multitude of sins—like Mercy, it blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. But the hand endued in a shabby glove, with frayed seams and abraded finger-tops, is neither respected, nor feared, nor reverenced ; for it is the outward and visible sign of genteel poverty the

index of carking care and blighted anticipations—the evidence of a fruitless attempt on keep up appearances. It discourses eloquently of a home where the candle ends are carefully 'hoarded, and the tea is sparingly doled out; where the poor worn wife and scantily-clothed children cluster about the faded Brussels hearth-rug, and crowd hungrily around the meagrely furnished table, with its oft-darned damask cloth, and tarnished metal forks, all indicative of the persistent struggle against circumstances—a struggle which becomes more hopeless with the mutations of each successive year. God help them ! for a weary life is theirs. Well is it for them if Love illumines that faded carpet, and shines upon the worn table-cloth, and burnishes the battered forks. There was a time—a nappy, sunny time—when that anxious careworn father, and that mqch-enduring mother, stood hand-in-hand together, and gazed, joyously and trustfully, adown Life’s lengthened vista. Love, the enchanter, gilded the prospect then ; but if, in verification of the popular adage, he has since flown away by the window, very dreary is the penance imposed upon them. God help them! I say again. Man has little pity, and less respect for them they are too high for the one, and too low for the other. Is it the voice of one of those, the echo of which has just reached me, crying aloud from the world’s wilderness of Dunedin, for such frail straws of aid as an old Shingler can cast upon the waters P Clerks and Book-keepers, “ unfit for manuallabor.” —Book-keepers and clerks having “ no trade to fall back upon.” —“ Competent men,” with “ small mouths to fill,” yet “ languishing” for Jack of em-ployment.—Frozen-out ledger-keepers who cannot dig, and are ashamed to beg.—Distressed quilldrivers, who can get no work to do. Ah ! when was it ever otherwise since the present generation came upon the stage? Not alone in the colonies, but at home also—in the heart of mighty London and in the countless cities of the Far West, the same unhappy class struggle against, and succumb to, and are swept away by tlie resistless torrent of competition ; —victims which the genius of our high-pressure civilisation offers up—a perpetual holocaust on the altars of Gentility. Oh ! my friend, that is a very sad letter of yours. Not written in the choicest English perhaps, requiring considerable disentanglement of personal pronouns from stray verbs, and eccentric adjectives ; but containing the pith of the matter nevertheless. It conjures up before my mind’s eye a vision of your past life and present position, which may be taken as the antitype of thousands. Shall I try to limn the outline in shadowy tints, as best befits such a ghostly—l had almost written such a ghastly picture ? 1 see a family, not over well to do in the world, yet highly respectable withal. The father is a professional man in small practice, or a military man with only his sword to depend on, or an official with a moderate salary ; —a poor gentleman, in tact. I know that he ought to lay by something to provide tor those young ones, and he knows it too, and has queer twinges of conscience about it sometimes. But he has an appearance to maintain—oh! the curse of that varnished skeleton, Appearance—and he does maintain it, at the cost of his entire income. He will probably tell you that it is for the sake of the children. Mistaken kindness ! it is their ruin, lie gives his bov such an education as he can afford, after his lavish sacrifices to the favourite fetish—a stinted draught from the Pierian spring—and the youngster emerges from school, the most pitiable of all human beings a half-educated youth, bearing on his shoulders the tremendous incubus of respectability; “sensitive” enough, no dou'U, my friend, but possessing none of the aids and appliances indispensable to a prudent indulgence in sensitiveness. \V hat is to be done witli him ? Clearly he cannot be taught any useful handicraft, for thus to soil his fingers by hangling a chisel, or a lap-stone, or a soldering iron, or a jack-plane, would be a disgrace to that very genteel family. Make him a clerk ; ah, yes! that is the idea. The pen is, by common consent, a respectable implement; and ink-stains leave no blot on the family escutcheon. So a clerk he becomes, and in process of time he unites himself to a fair young girl of equal respectability and average impecuniosity, and goeth forth into the world armed with his puny goose-quill, which in his hopeful and inexperienced eyes seemeth a lance of mickle might. Helas! the first rough encounter with Fortune dispels the illusion. He is unhorsed and helpless on the stony plain, his blotting-paper bucklerpierced through and tlu-ough, his foolscap helmet cloven and smirched, his feathery spear shivered in twain. Better had it been for him had he put his trust in less showy but more useful armour—the spade, the hoe, the saw, or the gavel. Any of these will stand the blunt of Adversity’s rude shock ; aye, and the sinewy hands that wield them can usually beat the fierce assailant back, and thrust him to earth, and tramplo him under foot. But a pen and a sheet of blotting paper'. Mart cle ma vie ! What shall be said of parents who equip their children for the battle of life with such fragile weapons as these? Again I look through the kaleidoscope, and I behold an honest tradesman, or a sturdy farmer who desires—not unnaturally—that his son should mount a step higher in the world. Blame him not, my friends ; ’ tis this very ambition that places our Anglo-Celtic-Boman-Danish-Saxon-Norman race in the vanguard of progress, and gives to the Queen of Nations her ships, her colonies, and her commerce. Only, for every one who succeeds in climbing up a few rounds of the social ladder, there are hundreds who perish in the attempt The vocation is wrongly chosen ; a pen is thrust into the hand that should have held a plough, or flourished the needle, and the result is to swell the ranks of unemployed clerks and book-keepers. It is these pauvres honteux who jostle each other in the race of life with a selfishness born of dread necessity ; who crowd around Government offices, and mercantile counting-houses, when there is ever so little a chance, or no chance at all, of obtaining leave to earn their daily bread, and the bread of their genteel but wofully ill-fed offspring. What may be done for them? Unaccustomed to manual labor, they cannot compete with the hard-fisted stonebreakcr. Few of them have the moral courage, even if they had the skill, to turn their hands to any palm-soiling occupation. The writer of this, when sorely put to it by a series of

mischances, once sought and obtained eraplo}'uient as a splitter of shingles; and when he had fairly mastered the art and mystery of splitting, and his hands ceased to blister by the unaccustomed work, ho absolutely liked it. He never fell in his own self-esteem by that little episode in hia life ; nor did he lose a single friend in consequence ; and he gained by it in health, vigor, a full purse, and—most valued and valuable of all—the habit of self-reliance, that “stalk o’ carle-hemp in a man. Many there be who lack both the physical ability and the mental energy to do likewise; and for such the prospect is gloomy enough. Ah! ray poor complaining brother; you will tell me that I- offer but cold comfort. True, mosu true, most lamentably time. But you see we must have free trade in clerks as in everything else, and the market is overstocked, and you can no more force a sale of your wares, than "the merchant can of his, under similar circumstances. I know but of one remedy for your case, and that is very unpalatable; and neither you, nor your confreres , nor those who will come after you will care to take it. It lies in the one word—Economise. In the time of your prosperity lay by something for the dark hour, when there shall be no work for your pen. Sink your exaggerated notions of respectability; we cannot all keep gigs, you know. At the best of times your earnings will be,very little more than those of the artisan. But he can, and—to his honor be it spoken—does save money. So could you if you would. Don’t ask me how. That cheerless fireside and empty cupboard appal me, and the wan looks of your little ones distress me. But make an effort, my good fellow. The next time you have a chance try to provide for a rainy day. If you want “ a practicable system of combination for mutual relief in sickness and distress,” why there are plenty of excellent benefit societies working very usefully and practically amongst us. And if none of the “ Ancient Orders” are sufficiently genteel—if neither Oddfellows, nor Eoresters, nor Druids, come up to your ideal standard of respectability, why not form a bran-new Order, into which no'ne but clerks and book-keepers shall be admitted, and call it the Order of Ezra, who was a scribe and a brother, in a very good position, and, from all I can learn, appears to have been a very respectable person.