Intelligent Vagrant.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 232, 19 February 1876, Page 12

Intelligent Vagrant.

Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernae crastina summse Tempora Di Suxseri. —Horace. That story about the lawyers eating theoyster and giving their clients the shell has not the charm of freshness. Yet, an account of what happened in Wellington last week mighfc not be uninteresting. Two drunken men were in companionship; one bought a pineapple, and the other incontinently stole it from him. He from whom the pineapple was stolen discovered the theft, in a hazy manner, seized the offender red handed, or pineapple-juice-handed as ifc were, and said that the law must take its course. Accordingly, the thiever and the thieved from went to the police-station, when the latter formally gave the former in charge " for that he did, &c." As necessary evidence he deposited the pineapple. The gentleman in authority at the police-station eat the pineapple and kicked the parties to the cause into the street, which I am prepared to say awakened them to a sense of justice far better than could have been'done by any other course. For the two sat down on the steps of the Athenasum, and agreed in language more nautical than nice, that they were a couple of (printers way of putting in a nasty word) fools. If there are rules and regulations under which the charges on the Queen's wharf are made, I really think that objections to such charges are silly, and should properly be made against the rules and regulations. But then there are some people whom it is impossible to please. One of the wharf cranes toppled over some time ago, and smashed a schooner, and when the master of the schooner was sent in a bill " for the use of the crane," he got unreasonably indignant. The rules and regulations had to be explained to him. Though it was an excellent rule that put a stop to the circulation of penny tokens, it was not without its inconvenience. A number of people now find themselves with tokens on hand, for which they cannot obtain the former current value. Under these circumstances a patriotic idea has seized them. They intend to subscribe the tokens to be melted into a statue of Councillor Gillon, in commemoration of his retirement next September. They think that the mixture of metals composing the tokens will be significantly emblematic of his public career. lam authorised by the proprietors of the Evening Post to state that they have 3s. 9d. worth of tokens which they will subscribe with gratitude.

The man who has a maid servant that is a treasure in his family may be pardoned if the marriage and consequent removal of that servant should cause him annoyance. He who rises superior to such circumstances is a domestic hero. That is what my friend Joskins may be called. His servant,_ a perfect treasure, is about to marry. Joskins says it is comforting to know that there is another man added to the crowd who must stay in the country and help it to develope. A singleman, as he puts it, can hump his swag, get aboard a steamer, and be off; but a married, man, after a year or two, if his olive has branched, is bound to stay. Joskins is more than a hero : he is a patriot. The steamer City of San Francisco is a " splendid specimen of naval architecture." That, I think, is the correct expression. But they charge Is. a drink on board of her, and it is said that all the gorgeous carpets and cushions are rolled up so soon as she gets to sea. Anyway, I know that if people had contrasted her steerage accommodation with that of the Arawata's as closely as they didthe saloon, the colonial boat would have gained immeasurably by the contrast. I do object to being made the means of selling a newspaper from which I receive no pay. On Tuesday evening last a most energetic runner was crying penny papers on the wharf, and disposing of many by assuring the buyers that they contained "An article by the ' Intelligent Vagrant.' " Since a buyer on perusal of tbe paper exclaimed that he could only find "upon the whole a specimen of rhetoric which the learned call rigmarole," and since I had really written nothing in the paper, I think I am entitled to a commission on the sale of its issue, as remuneration for the use of my name. Yet at the same time, considering the smallness of the sum on which I might claim commission, I fear the amount coming to me would scarcely pay for the trouble of asking. The example set by Mrs. Jupkms is worthy the attention of those ladies whose husbands persist in being undomestic. Jupkms is fond of billiards (pools of all kinds especially), 100, and poker. He does not drink, and when he looes he scowls so as to make his fellow-players uncomfortable. They therefore are delighted with the manner in which Mrs. Jupkms re.

claims him when he wanders into testing chance by means of dice or cards. That estimable lady is accustomed to ascertain the hotel at which Jupkins is wooing fortune, and in the midst of his adorations she enters the room where Jupkins and other worshippers are assembled. She does not upbraid him, as some of her sex might be foolishly tempted to do. She merely orders a glass of beer, sits down, and patiently regards Jupkins with a stony gaze, under the influence of which he presently rises and goes home, to the relief of his companions, who do not consider him a convivial party at the best of times.

From the tenor of Mr. Fitzherbert's reply to the enquiry of the unemployed at the Thames, it is plain that he does not think workers are well remunerated here. And yet I don't know. He ought, so far as the pay of Superintendents goes, to be a good judge of the condition of the labor market. When he went to his present employers he was willing, so he said, to take carpenters' wages. I know a lot of carpenters who would have been willing to have received the wages he has been paid since. It is strange that a French writer can never be moral and interesting at the same time. So there are some writers in English who cannot be pointed without being libellous. This places them in a predicament. If they write libel they get scolded by their employers, who have to apologise and pay costs. If they do not write libel no one understands them. Xiet us hope for improvement one way or the other.

The Imperial Dictionary tells me that Asylum means, primarily, a sanctuary, or place of refuge from criminals ; secondarily, any place of retreat and security. And yet I see someone writes that "At the meeting of the Benevolent Asylum held yesterday afternoon the members present were," &c. I have read this forward, backward, sideways, and upside down, and still it puzzles me. I want to know how an Asylum can be said to meet ? Perhaps the writer is recently out of the Lunatic Asylum, and that accounts for it. There is one sensible doctor in the colony. A man who was working at a gas main in Invereargill, got some gas into his stomach, fainted, fell down in the drain, and had to be carried to the footpath. The reporter of the Southland Times tells the rest :—"Fortunately Dr. Cotterell happened to come along the street, and, he having ordered some brandy and water to be given to the sufferer, the man soon regained consciousness, and the partial use of his limbs, and was, thereafter, conveyed home in a cab." I am anxious to intimate that should I ever faint, fall in a drain, and have to be carried to the footpath, my ideas as to the proper medical treatment of my case will be similar to those of Dr. Cotterell, with whom I shake hands across Cook Strait and the Middle Island.

We have all heard of the gentleman mentioned by Mr. "Vincent Crummies, who when he played " Othello" blacked himself all over in order that he might feel and go into the part. I saw a performance the other night at which it seemed to me that an actor was equally enthusiastic with Mr. Crummies' model. That was the first time I had seen the " Cuban Slave," and I am not now disinclined to believe a friend of mine, who saw it some years ago performed aboard ship, on which occasion the energy thrown into it caused the disappearance of the three principal performers into the lee scuppers and the fracture of numerous ribs.

I am not going to say that it would have been right to have tapped beer barrels at each street corner last Thursday night. I fully appreciate the loud resounding indignation of not a fewwho have declaimed against such a proceeding. We may get as tight a 3 owls ourselves in a nice quiet way, but to give the poverty stricken a chance for drunkenness is awful. That is your British reasoning all over. There is no nation en earth that so bravely refuses to recognise the fact that "we are all naked under our clothes." In France I have seen •wine running at the fountains for twenty-four hours on a fete day, and yet at the end of the twenty-fourth hour there was not a man drunk. Does it argue against beer drinking, or against our mode of beer drinking, that there would be danger in extra facilities on a gala night ?