A COLONIAL WEAKNESS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 67, 19 March 1878, Page 4

A COLONIAL WEAKNESS.

Under tbis heading the Maryborough Advertiser makes the following very truthful remarks : — We are more enamored, in this colony, of big names than the American?. Everything must have the epithet "grand" attached to if. We have grnad concerts, grand denaonairatioa!?, grand performances, grand banquets, graml fine arts distributione, and so forth. There nre literally no iimiis (o the socalled " grandeur," p.ud no application of ifc is considered to bo absurd. We scorn such good old titles as "ion,," end •' favern," and pui; " hotei," in their steed, A miserable shanty where dyspepsia, a populous bed and general disgust may be had for three or four dollars a day, is as much aa hotel 88 Scott'a or McDzie's. public dinners are out of vogue; we will compromise for nothing less thau a " banquet," If the table be ill-supplied, and the supply altogether uusatisfaetory, it is a banquet, nevertheless. Better is a banquet without wine and with nothing to eat than a dinner flowing with the choicest vintage of the grape and heaped up with every luxury. Cottages uud country houte3 have verbally been demolished and " villas,'' erected in their sitee. Dressmakers have grown to be modistes ; corn-doctors, cloopodisls; tailors, sign-painters, and barbers, artists. A manager is an impresario — which penny-a-liners usually spell impressario, by the way es if they imagine it had something to do with the prees. The skippers of excursion eteamboats aro all captains ; •while schoolmasters and mountebanks are professors. Long endured incapablee and men detected in repeated nets of dishonesty wqo have been dismissed from position are said to have tendered their resignation j end confessed thieves are permitted to retire from office on account of suspected "irregularities.". There is no end to our big names and fine phrases. Presently do doubt we shall speak of barmaids as dispensers of oejtbetia cocktails and of bugrlars as gentlemen of irrepressible dyrnarnic instinct.