AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING

Mataura Ensign, Volume 6, Issue 335, 29 February 1884, Page 3

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING

«9>» . Bt Cyclop. J hear that the promised— or shall I say threatened — retrenchment has set in. The Colonial Architect's Department is to be reduced to one officer at L3OO or Ii4QQ a year. Ido not know what the expense of the department has been, but %. suppose the saving will be considerable. Other architects will, of course, have to "be employed and paid ; but surely it will be better to have men on the spot attending to work than to have plans drawn hundreds of miles away. Besides the department never justified its existence. Nearly all its buildings have been failures — especially acoustically; and it was only employed on a few chief Buildings. If it Had supplied standard plans to school boards and to town boards and so. haye benefited the ratepayers in a gensible degree, I migh.t have regretted Its demise. The next question is, What will the men whom retrenchment will discharge do P The unemployed clamour for Government : ,fo 'help them, and yet they will rejoice at more being unemployed. Perhaps, towever, the architects were unemployed before, Beteenchment in New South Wales is tp assume gigantic proportions. The

'■ Government proposed a property tax : The luxurious people, who have been i selling off their Crown lands and spend.. : injj the proceeds as ordinary income ; kicked at such a proposal. The Cabinei therefore agreed to withdraw it, and propose to make ends meet by retrencliins to the extent of L 750,000 "a year ! _ Thai is the way to areue the point. It is saying "If you won't pny you must not enjoy." It means Ll per head of man, woman, and child in the colony. It .is as though Britain should retrench L 36.000,000 or New . Zealand L 500,000 in a year. This is the only way to brino: a snondthrift T>eople to their senses. I sun-nose it will result in the Property Tax being carried. I ; Ttte IST. S. W. Parliament maintains its " bad eminence " among the assemblies of the earth. For real out-and-out blackguardism in rlcbnte it lias long been fclie champion parliament. But it is now : entering the prize rin<r. Mr Wisdom Imd made certain statements which Mr Buchanan refuted by giving him two ! black eyes. This fjentlemnn seems to be 1 n walking vp r utation of Solomon, who in , his simnliritv says — "Wisdom's wn.vs i are ways oF nlonsantnosa mri all his paths nvn r^flis of pr>T*o." The oddest part of tho nfffiir ws tlmt after hi" eyes had b^en rWfornd Mr Buchanan should return to the TToup^ -find make n. speech on the Medical Bill above all others. "Experientia docet." Some time ago I happened to be in the same train as a bevy of fairies from the Mother G«ose pantomime This gives me nix interest in them. The poor girls wore mrt of their sta<re- trot-up, and were only less self-conscious that so many members of the Army in full rig-out would have been. It appears that Mother Goose did not get an v cro Id en Cfrsxs, and that she "mounting full soon rode off to the moon " or elsewhere, Ir>nvin<r the fairies without their wings. The poor things were therefore left hundreds of miles from home without a friend. How hollow life's shows are ! How many who could feed them with crumbs from their table envied those happy, airy spirts ! Now I remember the girls travelled second class, even when in full work. INVERCVT?GiLTi has been banqueting aerain. • This time the officers of the man-of-war Espiegle. The people of that town never miss a chance of bribinsr distinguished people to praise them. When . they banquet a man they know he is bound to make a few speeches in which a lot of soft-soap is sure to be expended. That, however, is an article they can •absorb a lot of. The Espiegle is the descendant of a captured French ship of 16 guns._ She is only an auxSliary — a sort of third-class vessel. Her biggest gun is a seven-inch 64-pounder, weighing some 95 cwts. That of course is a mere pea-shooter to the modern guns of twenty times that weight, which, take nearly forty times the weight of shot. The tars were all civil, jolly fellows. They talked readily to visitors and explained anything they were asked to explain. They were mostly short, thickset men with bull necks, who looked as if they_ could be rough if they liked. I think if we keep plenty of them afloat we shall still rule the waves. The Espiegle officers did some slaughter during their stay. A special train conveyed them to' lnvercargill. On the way they ran down, boarded, sank — what shall I say — three horses and two cots 3. Some of the gallant tars had never spilled so much blood before. I confess to a feeling of exasperation at such brutal conduct on the part of a driver — particularly in a special train that had no time to keep to a minute or so. When a line is unfenced I hold the Government are bound to consider the people's property, and not to give a ruthless churl power to inflict a LSO loss on a citizen rather than slacken speed. Besides, what if the train were thrown off and some thousands had to be paid in compensations for injuries to passengers ? Trains remind me of the yarn about the young fellow at Ashburton who rushed into the ticket office, pushed the ticket clerk aside, looked out at the crowd and demanded "Two first class for Christchurch." I wish the public got into public offices oftener, and that r the occupants were occasionally thrust outside to learn by experience what others have to endure. I would like to be selling tickets when about five hundred railway men wanted to book in two minutes. I would have some long bottled-up revenge I can tell you. I have noticed a statement lately that fishermen, amateur and professional, let their fish die just as they would die accidentally cast ashore. They do not try to kill them. Now this is not only cruel, but contrary to the law of Moses, that enjoins the bleeding of animals intended for food. It would be just as reasonable for a butcher to drown his sheep as it is for a fisherman to let his fish die for lack of water. Speaking of fishermen reminds me of a very ancient joke. When Homer, who was blind, came to los he found some fellows whose profession he asked. Said they, "We are fishers." " What do you fish for ?" demanded the father of poetry. They replied — excuse me not giving the Greek, which is very pretty — "What we catch we leave behind, what we don't catch we take with us. What are the fish ?" It is said that Hemer committed suicide because he couldn't discover the answer. I will give my readers a chance for a week to beat Homer or follow his example. So it appears that only about a sheaf of green stuff was stolen from Poverty Stricken Farm at Otama. What a miserable lot they must be not to take more. I'm ashamed to suppose that any of my readers would think of taking so little. I assure them that it is as well to be hanged for a stack as a sheaf. The trouble by-and-bye will be just the same, so I hope tho delinquent will see the folly of his way and take something worth while next time. The Freemasons have had a red letter day. Almost their pomp and circum* stance persuade me to be a Mason. I respect them most of all for showing a certain gentleman that public opinion is not to be entirely ignored even by those who are too thick skinned to feel what it is to be despised. I think there is a powerful lot of humbug about Masonry. The hymns and prayers the other day were the emptiest platitudes I have heard for some time. Here is a sample of Masonic poetry and r-ever.en.ee : " Hail 1 eternal, by whose aid All created things were made." He was only an assistant apparently. I presume the Masons had the chief direc-

tion of the job and merely called in a • little 'aid' here and there. _ To the 1 Queen, however, Masons are fairly loyal, as they sang -apart of the National An- £ them three or four times. An enterprising descendant of Abraham I is reported to be on his last legs—financially — in Invercargill. Rumor has it that he has bested a smart man in the Lombard street line in the same town, I and that he told the Lombard he would • give him " a better billet than he ever \ had befdre " — which billet is supposed to have been connected with small ad- • vances on second hand articles. The ■ Lombard kicked him out.