"SHOUTING."

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 253, 24 October 1881, Page 4

"SHOUTING. "

In a Southern colony there has been raised a crusade against what we know as " shouting." It might he interesting Ifco inquire the origin of the term. It seems to be somewhat connected with early mining days, or as we know them vulgarly, the breaking out of the diggings. One may suppose that at thiß period, when drinking was a kind oi religion, and when a man who would not drink was accounted no better than a heathen, the bars of public-houses were much crowdad, and that those who desired liquor had to call out in loud tones to the barmaid or barman, as the case may be. After that fervous epoch it was customary for the drinking to be done in parties, and the man who paid the score was the roan "who called out to the Hebe or the Ganymede, as the case might be, the order. And calling iniened paying. Consequently to pay was to call for the liquor, or to "shout" for it. So much for the etymology. The moral aspect of the question ha?, for the most part, a ludicrous expression, for it exhibits mankind swallowiDg down liquor for no reason at all, but complying only with an insane custom which appears to have decreed that whether you desire liquor or cot you must take it when it is offered you ; and, having taken ii, you must return the eomplimentor offering liquor *to him who offered it to-you ;] and |if| your friend

has seven or eight other friendg you mnst « ffer it to them also, and tbat each one of them must offer it to the company ; and as one good turn deserves another, the invitation to swallow liquor must go on, if not at that time, at tome other time, so that, in fact you must never see one of those persona, or, for the matter of tbat, any other person without beseeching him to take in liquor, and not one of them must ever see you without pressing upon you the obligation of liquoring. It is easy to see that, in this way, life in the main will come to be synonymous with liquor, and that to shout and to drink will be the chief business of existence, and, in more senses than one, the principal end of man. No doubt this custom is very good — for hotel-keepers ; bufc its benefit to anybody elae is open to question, and those who have begun to reckon up the annual cost of complying with the custom are beginning to wonder whether shouting money might not he put to more profitable uses, especially as many shouting people shout at the expense of their creditors ; and as they do not benefit their health, and as they certainly damage the health of their friends and acquaintances, it id asked why this heavy tax should he paid to the publicans ? For a while the nonshouting man will be voted mean ; but he will get over this imputation, and probably at no distant period we shall neither liquor nor invite others to liquor unless the weather be exceeding hot and we are desperately thirsty. And even it is open to consideration whether every thirsty boul shall not pay for bis own liquor without being under the compulsion to dt fray the cost of tbat of a crowd of other persons. — Sydney Mail.