All Sorts of People

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 190, 20 February 1904, Page 3

All Sorts of People

MR. Castle, the manager of the Gear Company's preserving works, at Petone, was in 'Frisco not long ago. looking round for fresh ideas and new wrinkles in the canning line. He hannened one day to stroll into the Golden Gate Park. While wandering around, and wondering how long it would be before the Empire City would be able to run anything like so fine a show, he turned a corner, and, for the moment, rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't back again in "Glesga." The air was full of voices in the broadest of broad Scotch. "Come awa, ma laddie , man ye're a pairfeck beauty." Mr. Castle blushed, for he knew he was a fine figure of a man. Then the voices went on "Weel laid doon, but just a wee bittee slow." " Noo be up wi ye, and for goodness sake take ye're green." "Man' alive, what's come ower ye. Why, ye're just as nerra as the Free Kirk." "Hang it all ye re off to Fruchey!" which is Scotch for Timbuctoo. * +• * Right there, in Uncle Sam's land, he had stumbled across a bowling green, and of course, wherever you strike a bowling green you're sure to light upon any Scotchmen there may be knocking about that corner of the world. That is Mr. Castle's experience, at any rate. Some North Briton must have got elected to the 'Frisco City Council, and persuaded it to lay off a bowling green on the Golden Gate Park. It was no holiday, but all the same there was a full muster of Sandies, and, though the green was a bit rough, and the man who reached within five feet of the jack was treated with respect, there was no mistaking the zest with which those American Scotchman were playing the game. Mr. J. L. Mackie, of Seatoun, who is familiarly known as 'Uncle" to the denizens of the marine suburb, and was the first secretary of the Miramar Feriy Company, is of an ingenious turn of mind. He also retains a vivid remembrance of the fact that he once was young himself, which is by no means a common habit with grown— up people. At any rate, "Uncle" had a birthday last week, and the manner in which he celebrated it has kent Seatoun talking ever since. He invited some fifty or sixty of the young maidens of the district to a party, laying stress upon the point that each one was to bring a Chinese lantern with her. And then, on tne principle that each Jenny ought to have her Johnny, he also invited an equal number of young fellows. * f- * As soon as they had mustered, they were started dancing a set of Lancers, ball-room and music being quite ready. Then, the host went forth armed with a large bag, and strewed the adjacent roads with pea-nuts. When the Lancers were over, the fun of the evening began. Each couple had to sally forth, with lighted lantern, and pick up as many peanuts as they could find until a bell rang to recal them, when the lassie who had gathered the most would receive the prize. They entered into the competition with the greatest zest, and Seatoun— most of it being quite in the dark as to these goings-on — was soon in a high state of commotion. Lanterns and searching parties were moving over all the roads, and even invading private property in the search for peanuts, and some timorous souls actually imagined the Russians had arrived.

At last, however, the bell was rung, and the seekers after peanuts scampered back in hot haste to Uncle's party. When the treasure trove came to be counted out, it was found that one party had collected seventy peanuts, and to the lassie thereof was awarded the prize. The young people enjoyed themselves immensely, and "Uncle's" birthday party has been voted the very biggest success that has ever come off at Seatoun. And it is actually rumoured that quite a number of engagements have been entered upon as the result of the search for peanuts. Under these circumstances, it is only to be expected that peanut parties will now , lor a season, become quite the rage. * * ■• "Elijah" J. Dowie, of Zion City, passed through Auckland by the Sonoma on Tuesday, says the "Observer," and had a good, square, shore dinner at the Royal. "Elrjah" J., who seems to have converted, or at least "captured," the reporters of the "Herald" and "Star," is a short, stout, stumpy man, with a lurid grey eye and a stately step. He has a long white beard and a retrousse nose. His eyebrows are thick and heavy, and a long shock of dark grey, greasy hair hangs downi over his back like a bunch of seaweed over a boulder. He is not otherwise remarkable, save for an assumed, but very pronounced, Amurrican accent. He has with him a bodyguard of three or four stalwart "saints," whose hair, whether curly or straight, resembles the prophet's in being long. They look as if they had served an apprenticeship to the P.R., and in :i rough-and-tumble they would be ugly customers. There is also in the party a fashionably-dressed young lady, but her part in the scheme of prophetic affairs was not disclosed. * * - Dr. A. Temple Perkins, who has been absent from Wellington for six months, had good reasons for going away. Although Newtownites are a fairly healthy lot, one branch of medical usefulness booms thereaway, and King Dick has no cause to grumble, or the "Times" to make leaders on the w amng birth-rate. Dr. Perkins nairowly averted a mental breakdown by leaving his practice in the hands of a locum tenens. His anxiety was increased by the fact that a daughter, who is attending a London college, had contracted a heart trouble. Curiously, unlike most medical men, Dr. Perkins didn't rush off to Paris or Berlin, or work hard to get rest. He stayed in London, and dodged to and fro from "Guy's," his old hospital, and did nothing but rest. Unlike some Wellingtomans who go Home after many years' residence here, the Doctor finds little change in the Old Land. The man who left Home in humble circumstances, and returns — not in humble circumstances — always tells the Lance he is surprised at the extra kind treatment he receives, and he invariably believes that social conditions have improved in Britajn. In England, medical fees generally are about half those charged here, but the money is surei . Lodges are very numerous, and a medical man in England is asked to attend a whole family and supply medicine for Is 3d a quarter ! If doctors didn't love lodges would you be surprised ? Dr. Perkins believes that his daughter will recover, and will be in New Zealand within a year. He comes back able to sleep and eat, and with renewed health. He has succumbed to the clean-shave epidemic, and the loss of a moustache makes him resemble Sir Wilfred Laurier (the Canadian Premier) very strongly. With the growth of Newtown, Dr. Perkins practice isn't likely to decrease. The fact that he makes the troubles of his patients his own is perhaps the reason of his popularity, and also the reason of his break-down, from which he has happily recovered.

Mr. A. J. Wicks, who recently -went up North on a holiday, came back on crutches. Don't know A. J. Wicks? You have heard of the South Wellington Choral Society? Well, A. J. wields the silver and ebony baton given by its members to him. as conductor of that mus cal organisation. When Mr. Chas. Edwards, the Trinity College examiner, from London, arrived here last year he beseeched Mr. Wicks to come to light, and take hold of the secretarial goosequill for the Wellington centre. Arthur consented. The Lance penetrated to the abode of Wicks during a recent thunderstorm, and the aquilinefeatured musician was wrestling with a fat mail-bag. The Lance measured it. It was four feet long by two and a-half feet wide, and was full. High time Arthur came back from the North. * * * By the way, unless you shouldn't know, the chairman of the committee w hich runs the Trinity College musical branch in Wellington is our esteemed Mayor. It isn't, of course, necessary for the chairman to be musical. There aie some extremel" eminent citizens on the roster too, including Chief Librarian Rone, Parliamentary Librarian Wilson, and that remarkable man Mr. Barber, M.H.R Others there are whose eminence is not quite so dizzy. * * * * But about Arthur's trip. He went up to Katikati, gilt-edged Waihi, and Waitekaun (every time). Hs chief recollections of the Waitekauri bush are that he brought a large sample of rheumatic fever away with him, and that he saw men engaged in the perilous calling of gum-climbing. As the first limb of a kauri tree is often three stones from the ground, the gum-seeker has to throw' a weighted rope over a lower branch, and climb. He then crawls out on the branch, and gets the gum — if it's there. If the branch is rotten, a party of bush heroes carry some sections of gum-climber to Waihi for burial. Aithur Wicks baw these things and marvelled. He would rather strike a chord than a kauri bush any day. He gazed on the king of Katikati, the famous Yesey Stewart. Indeed, he acted as clerk of the court when that great man and other Js.P. tried a case. Justice doesn't sleep any up there, you bet. Arthur gave a pianoforte recital in the local Crystal Palace, and raised £10 for the Katikati Brass Band. After a hilarious time, and three weeks in bed, Arthur is again at the old address. The South Wellington Mozart and his Society have heard that the Wellington Musical Union is going to open the Wellington Town Hall w r ith a burst of "melody. Arthur wants to know if the pile couldn't be opened musically a bit at a time, the South Wellington Society taking its share of the musical burden during the first week of the new age of civic grandeur. * * * Baden. Powell, the much-belauded, threatens to come out to Australia and New Zealand. Baden's reputation is mainly a newspaper one, and the slump in war hysterics this side of the earth indicates that Baden might come and go "unhonoured and unsung." Also, many people hereaway would kick themselves 1 for having given Baden swords of honour and jewelled cigar cases. * * * Mr. Justice Denniston gave the people who flock to courts to hear unpleasant details a "nasty bump" the other day. Befor examining a witness, whose evidence was to be of the unsavoury kind, he said "We are here doincr our duty. There are a number of people here (he cuttingly added) who are here to amuse themselves. We need not consider these people, and we need not have the slightest delicacy respecting them." Which would probably "bite" deeper than the bullying style favoured bv some judges who have spoken on the same subject.

Smgle-taxer George Fowlds, M.H.R., left his Auckland haberdashery emporium a week or two ago, filled up his quiver with three arrows, and boarded the boat. George's arrows were Single-tax talk in the South, Masonic Grand Lodge meeting business at Christchurch, and the Congregational Congress at Wellington. Messrs. Ell, Tommy Taylor, Tanner, Laurenson, and himself, all good Ms.H.R., talked land in Christchurch's white elephant, the CanterburyHall, and George, who really should have been the chief and foremost speaker, only got to work at 10 o'clock, and midnight comes o'er soon. Don Fisher, with a sheaf of notes, was waiting for a chance to mount the stump, but G. W. Russell, the exM.H.R., was also waitin- and got in ahead of him. •* * * The single-tax haberdasher was sole?" speaker on the land subject at Dunedin. There was an aged man sitting in the front seat nursing a dog, and looking at George. When the resolution was moved to abolish all taxes but one on land (income-tax included, George having an income), the old fellow jumped to has feet, and the dog turned several somersaults, died of heart disease on the spot, and upset the meeting. "Ask your question " said George. "It's no good now," said the dog-owner, "he's dead." Subsequently it transpired he was going to ask if George Fowlds' coming Government would knock the dog-tax iniquity on the head. * * * Mr. Fowlds' previous statement that the people who were lesponsible for taking the Otago Central Railway through the Taieri Gorge ought to be hung caused a big dust. Caversham's own Sidey and others bearded the single-tax lion in his hotel (we mean boarding-house), and George polished them off, and proved that hanging was quite a mild treatment for the authors of the Taieri Gorge route. George Laurenson, so George tells us, w anted the land-tax campaign at Dunedin to be a musical affair, and merry withal. Consequently, he wrote to a Scotch piper friend, asking him to blow the wild pibroch thereat. The Scot turned up. "A weel, ah got yer note, an' aw've askit Tonal McParntch to come and bring the pipes. A canna come masel, I'm afraid it wad bring the pipes into dereesion!" That particular batch of sacred pipes, therefore, didn't blare single-tax music. The other fellow's pipes could be derided, of course. * * # George Fowlds looks darkly mysterious. Coming session? "Licensing Bill if Mr. Seddon's is here'" raps out George. We clutched the waste-paper basket. "If (here we paled) if Seddon is here?" "Yes; I'm afraid that Seddon will be found to be in delicatehealth very soon, and require a change. But for Africa he wouldn't have come back to New Zealand when he went away." What will he do to regain hishealth ? "Governorship of some of the West Indies, or something. He could have had a very ripe plum if he hadn't put his foot in it in Africa." Oh, George, how could you? King Dick said quite i ecently, in. the words of Mrs Micawber • "I will never leave you." It really was King Dick who said it, and not a Maori chief. * * ♦ The fact that the unfit are fertile doesn't in the least prove that the fit are infertile. The late Sir Graham Berry is survived by fifteen children. Also, the late statesman, who left a more abiding mark on Australian politics than any other public man, died quite poor. A policy on his life for £500 existed, but most of it went for the payment of accounts. Another great politician whose large family disproves the assumption that fertility is not consonant with fitness, was the late Sir Henry Parkes.

Mr. Fortescue Rowley, of the Labour Department, a while back hopped off hi.s -stool in the Bureau, wiped his specs, and said "Enough!" Fact is, Fortescue felt frail, and so St. Thomas's Church had to do without an organist for a while. Mr. Rowley came back to Wellington on Friday last, and at once fell into the arms of a Lance man. it seems he took ship in the ordinary way went to Australia, and touched at Capetown, in order to see the spot where Oom Paul intended erecting a monument to the British who had just "been driven into the sea by a couple oi Boers on horseback with sjamboks. * * * We believe that Mr. Rowley's Mecca was any old church with an organ in it, and there aie some old churches in England that have vibrated to music for some centuries, and don't require new weatherboards yet. He got around in the great metropolis for six weeks and biked largely through the country lanes of dear old England, where the "goodolemotherflag" canonised by Mr. Siddon hangs out. He "biked off the Tiloomin' little island," as Uncle Sam said, and found himself pedalling around the Scotch lochs and other hard words up North. He missed the boat at Loch Katrine so he set out to bike to Astronachlocher. The name is the biggest part of As— etc. * * * There was a little track to As , .and he took it. It got wee and more wee as he scorched until it led him into gorse and fen And bracken, heather and rocks, and there fizzled out or existence. He thought of his little stool in the Labour Bureau, and pulled the prickles out of his legs, and would have sworn if he hadn't been well-brought-up, and an organist. However he bought some new clothes and sticking plaster, and lived to gaze upon the airy, feathery spire of Salisbury Cathedral. He went to Durham to see if the cathedral there compared with St. Thomas's, Wellington, but he absolutely refuses to give the cathedral What lifted him off his feet, and made his hair curl, was the Handel Festival, at the Crystal Palace. When the 5000 voices burst forth m perfect accord, and an orchestra of 500 instruments jumped into the harmony, "Fort." felt that one more step would take him on to the golden pavement. The majesty of the assertion by a large assortment of bass voices on the down grade of the minor scale that "All we like sheep have gone astray" made him want to go on being as good as he, of course, always has been. The soloists were Albani, Clara Butt Ben Davies, Santley, and Andrew Black. At Covent Garden Theatre, he heard a German Opera Company telling the vocal story of "Tristan and Isolde," but he didn't sympathise with them because they didn t speak English. Also, he suffered some grand opera in Paris, but, as they also didn't understand English, he went home long before the shrieks had died away. Notre Dame was closed, because the Pope was dead. Mr. Rowley found that it is as well to take an interpreter with one in England. Every county speaks a different dialect. Curious thing that the "ruling" class all speak alikehaw — whether found at John o' Groats or Land's End. Everywhere the Yankee tourist. Dozens of millionaires offer to buy up cathedrals and beauty spots for transportation to America every day. One Chicago bacon bulhonaire is at present endeavouring to buy "that hull consarned crik, the Thames." He reckons he would use it to paint his pork tins with. * * * Prince Alexander of Teck, who is to be married to Princess Alice of Albany m a day or two, is something more than an ornamental prince. This large son of voluminous parents happened to belong to that regiment of light cavalry (the 18th Hussars) a couple of squadrons of which were the first troops " 'Andsupped" by Joubert and Co. when that gentleman and his merry men were pumping shrapnel into Ladysmith. The 18th Hussars were quartered m that town before the war, and it may be said that every Boer in the commando that captured the two squadrons knew every prisoner personally. * * * With the luck that always chases the large, Alexander and his squadron escaped. The Prince saw much service, and was General "Mickey" Mahon's most trusted staff officer, for the 14st "light" cavalryman is keen as mustard, and a clever soldier. He escaped capture at Koornspruit, and came to New Zealand with the Duke of York (now Prince of Wales). He is not a particularly stand-off aristocrat, this Prince. While in Wellington, he enquired for Wellington citizen George Kells, of a New Zealand Contingent, who had been on the general's staff as despatch rider The Prince captain shook the hand of the ex-piivate. Both are pretty clean hands.

Inspectors are but human, and some of them at the recent Congress of educational sleuth-hounds, held m Wellington, cracked jokes. There was Mr. Bake well, for instance. Mr. Bakeweil is a son of Surgeon Bakeweil, one time an Army doctor, now of Auckland, a surgeon still, and letter-writer extraordinary to the daily press. Mr. Bakewell said solemnly one day, looking at Inspector-General Hogben, who was chairman. "You are well acquainted, I believe, sir, with papers E. 1.8. ?" As the subject under discussion was the stodgy use of the English laneuage, the Inspector-General heaved a laugh, and said : ''Yes. It is the inspectors' report for the colony." Mr. Bakeweil looked grave. "Not being fully acquainted with the transcendent virtues of that important document (here he took a big breath)— I — read it right through." * # # Otago is the hub of education — at least every educational Otagan believes it is. Mr. Fitzgerald, a delegate from thence, in speaking to a motion defining the position of a pupil teacher, spoke of "the pupil-teachers of Otago— er — that is, New Zealand." "Which is the same thing?" queried Mr. Hogben. It may be said that the majonty_o.f the inspectors who worried through the recent session are men of culture, that a great many are young colonials, and that Scotchmen do not predominate. It may be further said that a class of men whose coming is a terror to schoolteachers, and a horror to the taught, are really fairly harmless. We actually saw one of them smile last Friday.