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THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

(From the New- Zealand Mail.) Quls scit an adjioiant hodicrnai crastina suinmte Tompora Di Superi.—Horace. I was pleased at seeing "hares" hanging outside a shop for salts last week. At least they were not hares —they were, more properly speaking, " leverets," which, like "green geese," are even tenderer and more succulent than their parents. I saw some of them hanging outside a shop which has most aristocratic tendencies and customers. In that shop calves' heads assume a floral and benignant air that seems to say they experienced pleasure' in dying to be the food of great people. The quarters of lamb and fillets of veal have as much powder on their surfaces as a popular actress puts on in a pathetic part. Even black and white puddings, saveloys and German sausages, have got a gentlemanly polish about them that raises them above the food of common mortals. The proprietor occasionally cuts chops and steaks in a condescending and artistic manner; but, as a rule, merely stands at his door, and like Tom Quartz, the cat, or Mr. Fitzherbert, superintends. I saw these hares hanging outside this gentleman's shop. He himself was standing in the doorway with a contemplative air, and his hands in his breeches pockets, apparently in doubt whether he should purchase the reclaimed land or stand for the Wellington Country Districts. I asked him where he had got the hares, and he said, with a wave of his right arm which took in zenith and horizon, they had been shot round about the ORimutaka. :. There was a want of precision about this answer that made me inquire more pressingly as to the exact locality j but I only got for answer that " perhaps on e of them coves a anglin' for herring off the wharf had catched 'em." A doubt -as to the sincerity of my informant prevented my negotiating for the purchase of one of the hares, and of this I am glad. For why ? I will tell you. Our Acclimatisation Society not long afo imported six young hares from Melbourne, and sent them up to the Wairarapa to be liberated. On the way three ■of the poor creatures got what the comic ■ singer calls the "nobbles" and'the " colley-wolley-wob-bles," and died. The carrier chucked their carcasses on the roadside, and some simpleminded agriculturist picked them up. The simple-minded agriculturist loaded his. gun and fired at the hares in a heap. Then he brought them into town and disposed of them, under themetaphoricaltitle of "pussies,". to those who supply great people with nice things. It .was the secretary to the Acclimatisation Society, who heard of there being hares for sale, that ferreted out these interesting facts. I do not know how it was, but, as a result, the day after the secretary had visited the gentleman who had dealt with the simple minded agriculturist, the hares disappeared from public view and lay around on dungheaps in back yards. I am afraid I have occupied a good deal of space in telling that agreeable little anecdote about the hares. lam the more sorry for this, as it did not involve a moral in which honest industry meets its reward. But a 3 amends I will tell a story with a moral. Hot long since, in the great city of Blucher, in the province of the same name, a gentleman had the misfortune to stand charged, at the Supreme Court Sessions, with having stolen property from the house in which he lodged. For the credit of. human ■ nature, I am happy to say that the Grand Jury threw out the bill against him. Soon after he went to the house of his accuser, to whom he owed a little money for board and lodging, and asked permission to go up stairs and visit hi 3 old quarters. Owing to some unaccountable prejudice, this permission was at Sr3t denied him. But when he said that, perhaps, if he went upstairs he might be able to pay a portion of what he owed, the permission was cheerfully granted. So he and his old landlord went upstairs, where the lodger scientifically dislodged the back of a cupboard, put his band into a cavity, and drew therefrom what looked like a bit of newspaper that had passed through a chaff-cutter. In his rage he became candid. " Good heavens," said he, " I planted sixteen note 3 there, and the mice have chawed them up." It was not disappointment but a sense of outraged justice that made the .landlord kick him down stairs _ without hesitation.

Mrs. Squeers thanked God she wag no grammarian. I return thanks to the same, power that I am no politician. For I am saved the worry and annoyance which just now distracts several estimable friends of mine. One of them has no topic of conversation but the certainty that the Ministry will beat the Opposition (" if, sir, you can call such a tag-rag and bobtail lot an Opposition," says he), into fits, and.carry through the session triumphantly. " Another estimable friend is harrassed by anticipations of the fate that awaits Sir Donald --McLean and his colleagues, though he is "unable to regret the same. Now, I have my ,„ own. unpolitical idea concerning the approach'"lng; session. It may apply to the Ministry, or it may apply to the Opposition, and it probably applies to both. It is the same as that which we have heard of so often, and which was expressedby a Scotchman who fell from the roof of a ' seven story house. He remarked, en passant,^ to a friend looking out of a window on the third floor,"Eh, mon, what a smash will be presently !" . ■ And ■ whilst I am on politics may T, as an outsider, ask a question ? There is much disputing going on- as to whether Sir Julius has resigned" or no, as to whether he will do this or that or the other. But there is one question which I have not heard asked, but a satisfactory answer to which would, I think, do away with a good deal of doubt. Is Sir Julius Vogel a member of the Cabinet at all ? There are two nice little papers in Westport which bring to bear on the personality of ea«h other's staffs that sarcasm and those reproaches which you, Mr. Editor, reserve for public .. affairs and public men.... One of.therathe other . day wound up a leader, pitching into its rival s editor, with the appalling words " Ne crede Tuecros, et bona ferentes." I have no doubt, sir, that there was a studied irony in those words, which the man against whom they were directed felt as deeply as the fishwoman felt O'Connell's calling her a gasteropodous mollusc. And I equally doubt not that the venom lay in neither writer nor reader knowing what the deuce the words were about, for I am certain no one has ever met them, either in heaven above, or the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. There certainly is the following passage in the second book of Virgil s " Equo ne credite Teucri Qnidquid Id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." But if liaocoon were alive now, he would not recognise anything like what he said in the BuUcrNews. In all services that I know of there is a good deal of complaint as to the manner in which promotion is conducted. But until two days a"0 I never heard a Good Templar complain that promotion in the body he belonged to did not go by merit. Mr. Placid Waters commenced life, as did most of us, by assuaging his thirst at the font provided by Providence for our use. So soon as he could walk alone, he ioined a Band of Hope, and ultimately became a Good Templar. He is now twenty-eight years of age, and until the other day was never intoxicated except by the love of a Good Templaross whom he subsequently married. But the day before yesterday I saw him staggering with drunkenness in the street. Although in moderation myself a wine-bibber and a friend of publicans and sinneru, I did not consider it out of place to remonstrate with him, because it really was grievous to see him, as I thought, going to the bad. But ho explained matters most satisfactorily to mo, with a number of hiccups, which I need not give here. According to him the Good Templars h?d forced the present course upon him. All the honors and distinctions in the order, he said, were given to those reclaimed from drunkenness, and the greater the reclamation the greater the honor and the

longer the alphabetical distinctions. He found there was no reward for life-long teetotalism, and instanced Mr. Backus Swipes, who, after a conversion of only nine months, had been made Right Worthy Chief something or another, and stood on a dais and wore baldrics and things. Therefore • he. (Waters) was, on principle, about to qualify for conversion and the resulting distinction. They say the drafting of the Bills about to be introduced by Government costs a good deal. I believe in the Estimates this kind of thing is, as the saying goes, " lumped," that is, no one (outside the circle) knows how much this Bill cost, in contradistinction to that. But they have a different and a better system in South Australia. In the Legislature there, each Bill bears on its face the words, "drafted by Mr. So-and-so, cost £ . Several recent events have convinced me that to be a schoolmaster in this colony is not to attain the summum bonum. Pilkington is an example to me ; so is Gammell (and, by the way, who is Gammell ?) Then there was poor Hawthorne, who, despite all that has been said, was as surely written into his grave as I am not wvitiDg myself into mine. And last of all is one De Montalk—a man who, in modern languages alone, is one [of a thousand. Yet, if f am informed correctly, he received no encouragement here, and had to go to Dunedin, leaving French to be taught by people like the nun who spoke it " after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe." The meeting of old colonists was, as the newspapers say, a decided success. It has, at all events, decided me to support their claims to land. But I would suggest that in their petition to the Legislature 'they might even go a little further than asking for a grant of land —say, some soap and water now. Judging from appearances, their wants in this latter direction are more likely to force themselves upon public attention than are their claims to compensation. However, as I am about to support these claims, I have much pleasure in handing to Mr. Wallace a letter to him from a Maori friend, which, when translated, runs thus :—" Oh! Wallace, you are the champion of the old settlers, therefore listen to me. I have eaten three old settlers. The taste of them will be in my mouth so long aa the sea waves dash upon the shore, and they were ashard as the rocks on which canoes perish. The sun has risen and set through many years since I eat them, and my hair has become as the flax with which the pakehas make ropes that break. Now, therefore, this is my word to you. If there is to be laud for the old settlers am I not to get that which would have been the portion of those -I have eaten, and whom I came upon when kumeras were scarce ? Let this word of mine be as a big fish to you. Wrestle with it. That is alii From your friend —Te Hoke."

The more familiar the quotation, the better chance is there of its being bungled. Some literary light or another got writing of " Much Ado About Nothing" the other evening, and in order, I presume, to show his minute acquaintance with the author, wrote, as a quotation, "familar in men's mouths as household words." I have a tolerable acquaintance with the various texts of the " Divine Williams," and I never met those words. Several texts give the passage, " Familiar in their mouths as household words "; and those of Knight, Cambridge, and White, give it "in his mouth." But I have no doubt that Shakspere is susceptible of improvement at the hands of one whose la3t consideration in writing on any subject is—that he should know something about it. Little Mrs. B. N\ Jones, who besides being a capital actress overflowed with fun in private life, used to point to the box seats when they were well ' filled and say, "Any amount of ' aristocrayshians' to-night." She should have been here to attend the next conceit of the Choral Society. That is going to be an " aristocrayshian " affair if you like. The programme shows this, for the principal part is taken up by conditions for ensuring respectability. For instance, after reserved seats is: bracketed "evening dress." This would be all.very well only for the differences in opinion as to what constitutes evening dress. I was orice attached to the suite- of a monarch in the South Sea Islands whose evening dress was a shirt collar and a pair of shoe-strings. That would not do for the Choral Society. Again, my friend, "Arry Jones," distributes the seven primary colors in a necktie, and considers it "the thing" of an evening. I do not like arbitrary distinctions. I have no doubt that the Society, by evening dress, means the customary swallow-tail coat, white tie, &c. But is there not something inexpressibly snobbish in assuming that no one but the Society can tell how to dres3 for a concert ? People who are not snobs go correctly dressed everywhere by intuition ; snobs alone make a feature of putting on What they call "evening dress," and think it such a feature with every one else that they must needs give directions about it. I will say nothing as to the rechristening the gallery of the Odd Fellows' Hall has undergone. With the Choral Society it is the "balcony." I remember the righteous wrath of poor Peter Blake, when his daughters insisted on calling his thatched house a " cottage ornee." He said, "The hussies' mother wasn't above rearing 'em in a cabin, and-now they're not content with the name, they must have a cottage oraay. If she was alive she'd ornay their backs with a bunch of nettles."

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTIM18750621.2.14

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4447, 21 June 1875, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
2,417

THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT. New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4447, 21 June 1875, Page 3

THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT. New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4447, 21 June 1875, Page 3

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