LESSONS FOR THE COMING GENERATION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 21, 24 January 1873, Page 2

LESSONS FOR THE COMING GENERATION.

Snyder in the Auckland Herald says : I intend at my earliest convenience to write a " Pinnock's Guide " for the use of youth iu our private schools. It will come out in tbe form of question and answer. As a sample of the work I purpose to publish I give the following :-— Question. —How many ounces are there to a pound avoirdupois ? Answer. —Fourteen. For continuation of news see fourth pige.

Q.— Has it always been fourteen ? A.-— No. It used to be sixteen, but from the fact of our morals having been overlooked in the noble struggle for sectarian education, fourteen ounces is generally considered all that ought to go to the pound avoirdupois. Q. — Ho'w many half-pints go to the" quart. ? - A. — Sometimes three ; but as a rule, something less. Q — How many inches are there to a yard. A. — From twenty-six up to twenty-nine inches. Q. — Was it always bo ? A. — Certainly not. Our fathers and forefathers made the standard of weights and measures much higher. But in those days I refer to our fathers and forefathers were steeped in profound ignorance. Q. — Is the adulteration of articles of consumption we eat and drink justifiable ? A. — Quite justifiable. Q. — Can you give me your reason ? A. — Certainly. The reason is that people want to pay less .money to their tradesmen for the things they eat and drink and wear than the tradesmen pay for them themselves. Unless tradesmen do this customers will not buy. And this is why ferruginous earths and metallic substances go into jellies, sauces, coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, and a hundred other , things. Q. — If you gave a three months' promissory note to pay a certain sum of money, what would you do if you were either unable or not inclined to meet it at maturity. A.— l would ask the drawer to renew. Q. — Supposing the drawer would not renew ? A.— Then I should file. . Q. — What is meant by the word file ? A. — It means making a schedule of one's assets and liabilities. It is facetiously termed " filing one's shovel." Q. — And when people "file" do they surrender their assets ? A. — Certainly not ; that would be very wrong. If a man gave up everything he bad, people would laugh and call him a fool. Q.« — What is understood by morals ? A. — It is supposed to be among the lost sciences. Its existence is not known at the present day. Now, to some of my readers these questions and answers may appear too travestic. But I ask all candid men and women if, whilst our legislators are fighting over the moot point, whether education should be general and secular, or religious and denominational, the teaching of morality, the doing unto one as one would be done by, is not altogether being ignored ?

Here is a neat thing in tbe shape of a prospectus. " Permit me to hand you annexed a project for a public company, to which I respectfully invite your investment." But better follows. The promoter is no every-day company-monger, so he pictures his feelings in tbe event of bis'securing valuable support. "I should be proud," he says, " if I could have your name as a provisional director," &c. The project which thus promises to evoke the pride of its foster-parent is a distillery, and may probably be, as he saye, " the finest and best of distilleries ;" but some anxious capitalists, who — strange to say ! — can read and write pure English, want, before investing, to know tbe meaning of this sentence : — " The produce — with the indigenous water and the services of the eminent distiller that tbe promoter has secured — will be inferior to none, and the raw and coarsest spirit will be very superior to the low Dutch gin now being imported in such prodigious quantities at a duty of 4s per gallon higher than that to be paid by the company." After this, wbo could doubt that Dutch gin stands no chance against Aboriginal Gin from Indigenous Water ? — Australasian.

The Dead Alive. — A ludicrous scene occurred at Hadlay the other day. An undertaker is acknowledged by his friends to be naturally of a genial- and convivial disposition. He is reputed to be fond of society — and not nnfrequently indulges in " potations pottle deep." It would appear that recently he had made so free a use of the bottle as to be so completely overcome that he was not able to reach his own home. He was found by two or three of his boon companions in a helpless and almost insensible condition, with his legs in a dirty ditch, and the tipper portion of his body resting: against a wall, which stood within twenty yards or of his house., While in this helpless condition he was taken iiome by his friends (if such a term could with propriety be appliedHb them), who, by way of a practical joke, placed him in one of his own coons«\''/>Tbi_':.'dtoiie; they took ■■■■ their de- : parture. The coffin in question had been prepared for the reception of a body which was expected; to arrive from London in a shell. Hour after hour pasfci and^lthg,^jccupant of the narrow tenement slept on calmly as if he were in his bed. In the

same room was his wife, seated at a table, reading a ponderous volume. The good lady was perfectly unconscious of the close i.. .proximity yot her husband. YHer surprise and horror may be readily imagined when the latter, awaking from his temporary trance, pushed aside the lid, which had been loosely laid on the coffin, and gazed with unfeigned surprise at his better half.— -Sefton's Advertiser. Military Amenities in the United States. — Captain Tom Bugbee, of the United States Army, was out with his company on detached duty. In fact, he had two companies under bis command. He had with him a small brass Napoleon and an ambulance. Captain Tom was a strict disciplinarian, but a convivial fellow withal, and fond of creature comforts, not many of which were obtainable in the wild country through wbich he was marching. The column had just left the small hamlet of Jasper's Cross-roads, below Jacksonville, when the captain observed that one of the drums was not beaten, and he directed the lieutenant to enquire the cause. The lieutenant sought the delinquent, and demanded to know why he was not beating time. The fellow nodded mysteriously, and whispered into the officer's ear, "I've got a pair of roasted chickens and two bottles of whiskey in my drum; and a chick and a bottle are for the captain." The lieutenant returned, and, in a whispered tone, reported to the captain. "Zounds ! " cried captain Tom, with • vehement sympathy, " why didn't the poor drummer tell us that his legs bad given out ? I don't wan'tmen to march if they're lame like that. Put him into the ambulance, sir ! " The drummer was consigned to the ambulance, and not long afterwards Captain Tom arjd the lieutenant went "to examine more particularly " into the nature of his trouble. Mosquito Stoem. — I thought my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamp, to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Missis3ipi forests, had taught me something about these pests ; but I was doomed to learn a lesson which will cause me never to doubt the possibility of anything, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may appear, connected with mosquitoes. It was about 10 o'clock at night, when there rose close to the south-west a small dark cloud, scarcely visible above the horizon. The wind, which was very light, was blowing from the north-east; so when my attention had been called to the speck of cloud by my companion, I naturally concluded that it could in no way concern us, but in this I was grievously mistaken. In a very short space of time the little cloud grew bigger, the wind died away altogether, and the stars began to look mistily from a sky no loDger blue. Every now and again my companion looked towards this increasing cloud, and each time his opinion seemed to be less favorable. But another change also occurred of a character altogether different. There came upon us, brought apparently by the cloud, dense swarms of mosquitoes, humming aDd buzziDg along with us as we journeyed od, aDd covering our faces and heads with their sharp, stinging bites. They seemed to come with us, after us, and against us, from above and from below, in volumes that ever increased. It soon began to dawu upon me that this might mean something akin to the " mosquitoes allowing us to travel,'' of which my friend had spoken some three hours earlier. Meantime the cloud had increased to large proportions; it was no loDger in the southwest; it occupied the whole west, and was moving on towards the north. Presently, from out of the dark heaven, streamed liquid fire, and long peals of thunder rolled far away over the gloomy prairies. So sudden had been the change that one could scarce realise that only a little while before the stars had been shining so brightly upon the ocean of grass. At length the bright flashes came nearer and nearer, the thunder rolled louder and louder, and the mosquitoes seemed to have made up their minds that to achieve the maximum of torture in the minimum of time was the sole end and aim of their existence. The captain's pony showed many signs of agony ; my dog howled with pain, and rolled himself amongst the baggage iu'useless writhings. *' I thought it would come to- this," said the captain. "We must unhitch and lie down." It was now midnight. To loose the horse from the shafts, to put the oilcloth over the cart, and to creep underneath the wheels did not take my friend long. I followed his movements, crept in aud drew a blanket oyer my head. Then came the crash ; the fire seemed to pour out of the clouds. — The Great Lone Land, by Captain W. F. Butler, F.R.G.S.

'i- A Fijian as he is. — A Fiji resident gives) t|e foljqjtyingii' defer ip^ipnvj-of^hlj . aver^ge^Fij ian '-:~ w "Havo^tho^MecepiibleJ maiden ladies and gold-spectacled old gentlemen of Exeter-hall, whose gushing sympathieß condemn so many of Britain's

" curled darlings ". to inglorious warfare in our seas, where} their advent is attended with gilt buttons and a healthy impulse tb the millinery business and religious duties among the ladies, ever tried to realise what ourpblackibrotber s normal condition is? Take a Jull-flavored Fijian. He smells of Araby- the unblest or some other unsaleable perfume; has no filial instinct unless he happens to get paid for work in advance, when be finds himself impelled to go and visit his sick mother; listens to a moral discourse with the smug sanctity of a convict trying the " converted < ; lay;" considers a saint in sulu is twice a saint in shirt, and regenerates himself accordingly off the nearest clothes line. He opines : that white men were created to relieve him bf the curse imposed on Adam. He was invented for the benefit of Darwin and Buckle. In eating, a boa constrictor becomes a rank impostor by comparison, and be sleeps, in proportion; his intellectual recreations are catching fleas and pelting floating bottles; his forehead is retreating — so are his legs in war, when his policy is " masterly inaction" aod annexing pigs and fowls on the line of march. He will steal Epsom salts sooner than let his talents rust; to Government- money he says " siga;" carries a knife with which he eats and scratches himself alternately; never reads " Huxley on Protoplasm," but he sometimes has a knowledge of poker; gives uDgolicited concerts at most unseasonable hours. His pedigree is as complex as that of a decayed Irish gentleman; and he is usually related to one of the first families of Bau. He lubricates himself until the shines like a newly-polished office stove, and then loves*to strike off copies of himself on wall-papering and newlypainted surfaces. He roosts under verandahs, when he holds caucus meeting to arrange the yam and : fowl tariff; carries out the early closing system with integrity; usually drinks water; when "sa mate," gin; and his health is always precarious. He can lie; stupendously, gives no credit, and his 39 articles are— malua. At clearing a hen-roost I'll back him against any champion. Like the lilies of tbe field he toils not, neither does he spin, but there the resemblance ends; he is a Communist socially, a paradox politically, and a cuss generally. I dismiss him. Impunity fok a Female Mtjrderek.-— In San Francisco, on the 30th September, the jury in the case of the notorious Laura D. Fair, charged with the murder of Judge Crittenden, brought in a verdict of Not Guilty, on the ground of insanity. In the absorption of the public mind in political affairs this monstrous verdict has been received with indifference, if not apathy, and yet it amounts simply to this, that a woman with whom a man in the United States has had any alliance of a tender nature, however slight or temporary, may take his life for his desertion or rejection of her. It matters not how depraved may be the womaD, or how estimable, apart from his dalliance with, her, let her pretend that she loved him, and she may be his executioner whenever he shall have grown cold. The circumstances of this murder have doubtless faded out of the recollection of English readers, and may again be briefly recited. Judge Crittenden was a man of high character and social position, eminent at the bar, esteemed in private life, the father of a family, and a valuable citizen. He met Laura Fair — had acted, indeed, as her counsel upon a previous criminal prosecution — and fell a victim to her arts. For many months he maintained a disgraceful intimacy with. her, but broke away from it and returned to the neglected lady who was the mother of his children. In the presence of this lady, in the saloon of a crowded ferry-boat, in open day, Laura Fair shot him dead. The act was so deliberately and carefully planned, that upon her first trial the jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to be hanged. There was a feeling of satisfaction througout the country, with: all right-minded people, that a jury in California had been found equal to tbe performance of a disagreeable duty. But a new trial was asked for and! obtained, and the conclusion of it is that the murderess has been set free. There will not be wanting men and women who will take her by the band as the champion of free love, as having vindicated the principle of promiscuous intercourse between the sexes against the institution of marriage, and hundreds of wimen like her will be encouraged to kill the man whom they can no longer fascinate. It is a sad commentary on American social life and administration of law.