THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 83, 6 April 1878, Page 2

THE WEEK.

During the last week or two the Representative of Her Majesty and the servant of a yet higher Master have taken advantage of special opportunities offered to them to call the attention of the people of New Zealand to the fact that they are trying to go ahead too fa 9t — that they are striving to annihilate time, and to leap at once into a position which in the ordinary course of affairs they could only expect to occupy after a lapse of some years. His Excellency, in addressing the members of the Working Men's Club in Auckland, exemplified this by a reference to newly proposed political measures of importance which very many people seem to think ought to arrive at maturity the instant they are introduced ; a clergyman in delivering a sermon in a Nelson Church last Sunday showed how this desire to " move on," in despite of all obstacles, crops up in almost everything we do, from the construction of railways to the results for which we look in the education of our youths. With such predecessors I naturally feel some diffidence in coming forward to show how in another — and comparatively speaking, very small, respect, the public of this colony are being encouraged to move onward at a rate of which five or six years ago they would never have dreamed. I refer to the pampering of the appetite for telegraphic news. No matter how uninteresting their subject matter may be to those to whom the telegrams are forwarded, the mere fact of the information they contain, such as it is, being transmitted by wire is supposed to entitle them to a place in a newspaper — which, but for the telegraph they would never have occupied— and to justify the proprietors in incurring the expense of obtaining them. Let me give au instance or two, culled from the telegraphic columns of the Nelson papers wifhin the current week:— A message consisting of several words conveys to the colony at large information—" news " would be the wrong word to use— that on a certain day in the early part of the week the water in the Wellington reservoir was some inches lower at half-past two p.m. than it was at 9.30 a.m. Does anybody outside of Wellington take the slightest interest in this fact? Would any sub-editor have copied it from a Wellington paper on the receipt of his files in the faint hope that it would prove of interest to even one of his readers? "It was a very hot day at Oamaru on Wednesday." We surely must be going ahead very fast if we are so eager to know this as to demand that it should be forwarded to us by wire. "Mr Clark, CE., has disapproved of the plans sent in for the Christchurch Waterworks." In days less " fast " than these we might have waited to learn this — if we wanted to know anything at all about it— by the less expensive medium of the post. " The hot dry weather is affecting the grass in the Canterbury district." Really this is very sad, but is it not an evidence of our fastness that we insist upon getting this piece of news an hour after the discovery was made in the district concerned? And now to cap all these. It is flashed along the wires from Dunedin that there is going to be a discussion in a Court of Law M'hether an Act passed in the reign of George 11. is or is not in force in this colony. Considering the number of years that have flitted by since that Act was passed, and that New Zealand has contrived to jog along verycom-

fortably for nearly forty years without Knowing or caring whether this Tippling Act was in force here, we might surely have waited patiently for further information dn the subject without bringing the 1 telegraph iutd requisition to let us kuovv that aonle lawyer down South is going to argue the matter. "Xes, I really think that the Governor and the parson were both of theni right when" they told us that the endeavor td be too fast is the complaint from which we are suiiering most seriously; I think there riiust be a want of gallantry, or, to put it in another way, a lack of appreciation of the fair sex in Nelson. We have have never yet raised and paid honor to a female Bachelor of Arts, nor have we ever elected a lady to a prominent position under the Education or (any other Act. How dif- I ferent in this respect are our fellow-settlers iv the North Island ? One of their ladies was made a Bachelor some months ago, and now another has found a seat on the Education Board of Napier. It was a trying position for the Chairman to be placed in though I An Archdeacon, a Colonel, and a lady had " tied/—w hat sort of a knot it was, does not matter,— but there they were, a " tie," and he had to loose it. What chance the Cliurch or the Army had against so formidable a rival might have been known from the very beginning. Of course the Chairman had to take the lady by the hand, and to lead her first out of the entanglement, utterly disregarding the claims of her fellow-candidates. What else could a male chairman do ? But if ever Miss H becomes Chairman of that same Board, and there should come a time when, in the election of a new member another " tie " occurred between a Colonel^ or even an Archdeacon, aud a young lady, I think I would back the male candidate, especially if he were a bachelor -spelt with a small " b "-—and well provided with this world's goods. I was driving up from the Port the other day with one who is always on the move in the steamers, and constantly visits Nelson, when he rather took me by surprise by suddenly awaking from a meditative mood and exclaming — "Why you people have given over agitating in Nelson" To all appearances he was perfectly sober, and there was nothing of the look of a lunatic in his eye, so I asked him to explain what he meant. " I say," was his reply, " that you seem to have given up those agitations which appear to affect your community periodically." " I don't understand you," I said, •' perhaps you will be good enough to explain yourself a little more clearly." ' Well," he answered, " that's easily done. I notice that every now and then you get up a great row about your Port railway. The newspapers write about it, aud your members talk about it, and the Mayor and some official in Wellington exchange telegrams about it, and the result unusually is that some young surveyor is sent down to gain experience at your cost by laying out a new line. I haven't seen one of these youngsters at work for nearly two months now, and, therefore, I conclude that you have given up agitating as a bad job."— " Cabman," I said, pulling the driver's coat sleeve, " I think I'll get down here." E.