RANDOM REMARKS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 418, 29 November 1911, Page 3

RANDOM REMARKS.

By "Oniooker." One short week from to-morrow the opportunity for candidates to impress the long-suffering public with the fact that "Codlin's the friend, not Short" will be over. The final exhortation to the free and independent electors will culminate in a dramatic farewell at the hustings, and the sadder but infinitely wiser aspirants will go home to seek comfort at the domestic liresids. It is a pleasant thought that the tender love and sympathy of a good woman will have power to sooth the bitt-jr pangs of defeat in the hour of fondly anticipated victory. Woman, at once man's inspiration for good or evil is a3 much a world force to-day as in olden times when it was recognised that the hand that rocked the cradle ruled the world.

The tender luve and sympathy of woman, so much the poet's theme from time immemorial, is apparently not given a free hand until the softening touch of matrimony has mellowed the maternal instinct, and brought to fruition the qualities which are reverenced with wondering adoration by mere man and never fathomed. The girl clerks at Auckland just now are putting up a pretty light in their efforts to preserve their status and independence in the world of clerkdom, and the wondering adoration of man in this instance is chiefly noticeable for its absence. His wonderment is turned in an entirely different direction being chiefly concerned with calculating whether he will be "down and out" before he can get his second wind.

The Government departments are chiefly noted for the amount of knowledge they don't possess with respect to matters with which the progress of the country is inseparably associated. Much delay is occasioned in urgent cases by the impressive officials who automatically promise to "keep the matter steadily in view,'' and carefully pigeon-hole the facts. All this is to be'altnred, however, by the. introduction of the Local Government Bill of 584 clauses, no less. And not one superfluous word. The Prime Minister is the authority for the information, and he further states that Local Bodies are to be given much greater powers than are possessed by them at present. An alluring picture might be drawn of the pomp and circumstance in future to be attendant upon our County Council meetings, but a sportive imagination must not be allowed to toy with such im port3nt. matters. The writer will be the first to congratulate our council upon the acquisition of power and dignities in keeping with its postion in the country, and hope for more to come.

It has long been a complaint of people of all classes that ourFarliament has developed into practically a huge board of works. The Hon. G. Fowlds in a burst of confidence to the public informed an audience that Mr Massev possessed road board brains. Evidently the preacher of new evangels, secure in the complacent belief that his own brains soared above the practicalities of Parliament, and led him to altruistic heights undreamed of by less favoured mortals, thought he was scoring with telling effect on the Opposition leader. To the ordinary vision it seems clear that as long as Parliament is devoted to road board business the best quality to apply to that business is the type of brain which can best understand it. When the Armageddon has been fought and the world ha 3 been cleared and purified of all its present iniquities some smoke-begrimed survivor, undaunted by his harrowing experiences, will be on hand to sound the trumpet note of a new evangel,and go one better.

The political barometer ia a much discussed instrument at the present time. It is the subject of the keenest discussion and is read chiefly according to the taste and fancy of the reader. Its readings, in fact, are subject to such variation that one is inclined to asosciate it in some inscrutable manner with the weather we are experiencing at present. A considerate Government has fortunately decreed that the suspense will be ended early in December, so we may look for a settlement of the weather coincidently with the declaration of the politcal polls. Politics and weather are highly important features in national life and prosperity. Still there are other things. This milo remonstrance is meant more as a reminder than a complaint, and I sincerely trust it will not be provocative of reprisals, either on the part of the political barometer or the standard article.

This is a grievous world to some people; to others it is only a partially grievous world, while to the bright and shining example whom we all love to meet and grieve to part with,it is rarely grievous and breathes of hope and joy and gladness. In a workaday life we have little time to experience the extremes of sensation, and can only admire and marvel at the person who can reach tile heights of joy or plumb the depths of sorrow. To real sentiment the human heart responds as naturally as the child turns to the maternal breast and the spectacle of a Trade advocate at Wanganui being overcome by the heckling of an audience, and the heat of the room, must have caused a pang in many a breast. Evidently the orator had gone unprepared, and without even a drop of the mildest Scotch to meet emergencies. We all have our absent minded fits.