THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 35, 8 February 1873, Page 1

THE WEEK.

One year older. The Province of Nelson haa celebrated another birthday, and has now arrived at the mature age of 3 1 years. By this time a little something should have been done to secure the prospect at least of a happy and easy future. We should be able to look around with contentment upon the little ones that on all sides are growing up into big ones, and being rapidly replaced by other iittle ones, and feel the comfortable assurance that they are well provided for, that is, that by the exercise of a moderate amount of energy and industry on their parts the same, if, not a larger amount of comfort and prosperity than that enjoyed by their parents, who had undergone all the hardships consequent upon the task of subduing a wild country might be insured to them in their native land. But there is an uneasy feeling abroad that this is not the case. What is to become of all the children who crowd our streets at tbe hours of dismissal from the public schools? Are they, not all, but one half, one quarter of them, to find their homes in tbe province in which they were born, or are they in their turn to be sent abroad to earn their living? These anniversaries as they come round, apparently more quickly as we who celebrate them grow older, are not occasions for rejoicing- pure and simple. The responsibilities that we are incurring, the care that presses on us each year more and more heavily, seem to remind us that there is something we have left undone, some omissions that require remedying, some thought for the future necessary if we are to secure for those who follow us the prosperity and success to which we looked forward when we left our old home to make a new one on this side of the world, but which perhaps we have not yet achieved. But I hate moralising. Birthday presents and plum pudding are more in my line on these occasions. And yet, — and yet — there is a still small voice that will make itself heard. Bah ! smother it, silence it, put ife off. The present is all we live for in these days. Forget the past. Let the dead bury their dead. Take no thought for the future. Let the children we see around us and those yet unborn learn to take care of themselves as their progenitors have done before them. That's the correct thing now-a-days. I like experiments. For some years two of the friendly societies in the town agreed to unite in celebrating the birthday of the Province, and they succeeded very fairly. This year they thought it better not to act in concert, and I am not quite sure that disunion was accompanied by success. However experience has been bought, and it is just as well that it should have been so. Bythe next Ist of February the little breeze that created the ripple on the water will have had time to spend itself, and Foresters and Oddfellows, I hope, will be found shaking hands, marching in one direction, and working together like one man. And the outside public will look on approvingly, and express satisfaction at the termination of what, after all, can be nothing more than a lovers' quarrel. The police have a little task before them, in the performance of ~ which they will no doubt take the keenest delight. A house was set fire to the other day, and they have to discover the incendiary. I say " set fire to " because it is not customary with blankets and sheets to tear themselves up into easily iufiammable little bits, and, in company with straw mattrasses and bulrush beds, gravely to descend from their resting places, conveniently dispose themselves on the floor and spontaneously burst out in flames. We shall, however, be called upon to believe that such things are possible if it is not proved to tbe satisfaction of twelve intelligent gentlemen that some particular individual had made tbe pleasant little arrangements which led to the inquest of Wednesday last. The guardians of the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen will never have a better chance of establishing their character for shrewdness than is now afforded to them. A great fuss is made because the Nebraska with the English mail has made a respectable passage from San Francisco, and we are assured that such a thing has never been known before. I was walking through tbe streets the other day and in a shoemaker's window saw a pair of boots exposed for sale to which was attached a ticket bearing the words, in large capitals, " Superb, lOs 6d." This grandiloquent adjective appeared to me to be out of place when used in reference to, a pair of boots tbat would probably go to pieces the first time they were worn, quite as much as are aU the high flown terms of praise that are bestowed upon a mail steamer for accomplishing that which she always should have done, but has hitherto failed to do. I wonder why it is that these, boats sever do arrive at their proper time.,,

"When the' Atlantic portion of the service is performed as it should be, and generally is, they make long passages across the Pacific. When they make quick tuds it is always after having been detained several days at San Francisco. Evidently some fatality attends tbe service. F.