INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4512, 6 September 1875, Page 2

INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

(Prom the New Zealand Mail.) < Quis scit an adjiciant hodierna* crastina suninue Tempora Di Superi.—Horace. I sometimes get a, copy of a most agreeable little paper, called the Taranaki Budget. As a rule, I have been pleased by what I have read in that paper, but I am sorry to say this rule is not without an exception. Lately, the paper has said that I have a " down " on Mr Gillon, and that I abuse him. I ! who regard Mr. Gillon as the bright exemplar by whom I am feebly endeavoring to conduct myself. I do not think that any one who reads what I write attentively, will agree with the Taranaki Budget. But, lest any one should be inclined to do so, I present a testimony as follows : "To the Intelligent "Vagrant,-—lt gives me much pleasure to certify, that you have not a ' down' upon me, and that you do not abuse me.—(Signed) E. T. Gillon." I flatter myself that settles the question. And talking of Gillon, who is this other shining light that has been given notoriety ? Gi'lon I know, and Reed of the Evening Star I know ; but who the devil is this Perrier, who says he has not been telegraphing to the Auckland Evening Star. In the absence of more precise information, I am bound to consider him a donkey for having denied that he sent those telegrams. He should have stuck to them, Sir, and asked Ministers for a billet. I do not say he would have got one, but he would at least have established as equitable a claim as that of many another gentleman who I know is considered entitled to one. , A tendency has grown up in the House to ask for returns of all sorts, kimls, and descriptions. Every one now wants returns about almost everything laid upon the table, and Ministers consent. As they do, perhaps they will oblige me with a few returns for for which I am anxious—namely, a return of the number of times Sir George Grey has said that the liberties of the people are being taken away ; a return of the number of liberties that members have taken with the English language ; an exact return of the number of timea the Hon. Mr. Bo wen has said, "Aw, hum—aw ;" and an approximate return of the number of timea he is likely to say it during thepresent session; a return showing the precise weight in grains of the agglomerated conscience of the House ; a return of the number of rails, | their height and accommodation, at present in use by members of the House ; a return of the opinions individually entertained by members of the Ministry of each other ; and a general return of the opinions entertained by the other members of the Ministry of the Hon. Mr. Reynolds ; a return of the weekly washI ing bills at the Ministerial residence, stating whether the washing is per dozen or by the piece. I think, Sir, the above would be useful returns. In nothing so much as in the matter of gales do the Auckland people show a proper apprehension of being governed from Wellington. From every part of the colony except Auckland testimony has been identical as to the value of Captain Edwiu's efforts to warn of approaching storms. But it seems from the testimony of a Mr. Ellis, who has the weather control, so to say, of Auckland, that there at least gales recognise none but local government, and defy sense and calculation. Gales are not the only things in Auckland that do the same. To pretend a pleasure when you do not feel it, is sometimes most kind and polite, but is often difficult to do. When a man on Tuesday last came to the door of his shop on Lambton-quay, and banged a dirty mat against a post, so as just to give me on the footpath the full benefit of what was banged out of it, I was a hypocrite in answering to his apology that I rather liked it than otherwise. That was a very pretty leader the Editor of the New Zealand Times had in on Wednesday, and I was sorry to notice that some one else said it inappropriately described some people as Sally Brasses. Because the description was appropriate. It was Sally Brass that did the dirty work from a moral point of view. The poor little Marchioness only did the dirty physical work of a household. I heard a curious kind of criticism on your speech at the Hutt on Monday night, Mr. Fitzherbert. You were, as it appeared to me, speaking beautifully. There was that bluff good nature in your remarks about your opponents that always distinguishes you. Your reasons in favor of provincialism were as concise and clear, and crisply put as they invariably are. You were saying in five minutes what a loquacious gentleman would have taken one hour to say, and yet one brute who was listening to you, and who was evidently a bit of that bone and sinew of the country to which you often appeal, turned to a friend and said, " Well, Bill, if I was arguing for £BOO a year, blowed if I don't think I could make a better fist of it than that." And it wasn't a bad pace coming back from the Hutt was it ? They say that trains can only run an average of sixteen miles an hour along that corkscrew of a railway. We came from the Hutt to Wellington on Monday night in seventeen minutes. Some timersome people said there would be a smash, and a few bad and malevolent politicians said the provincialists had " squared it" with the engine-driver, and the abolitionists who filled the train were to be thrown into the tide, or as the Yankee man- said, " spilled in the drink." But it was exciting, quite as exciting as the opening of one of the first Irish railways at which I was present, when the driver, who despised petty obstacles, did not stop at the terminus, but, with an invigorating "hurroo," took five hundred of us through the end wall of the station, across a causeway, and on to a safe mud bank beyond. And his passengers, I am proud to say, entered into the spirit of the thing with him, because when a meddlesome English director that had supplied most of the capital for the line wanted to have the man reprimanded, it was unanimously agreed that he should get a testimonial instead, for that it "bate fox huntin to smithereens." Yet, I am bound to say, that there were people who complained on Monday night; but there are a great many persons so constituted as to be incapable of appreciating true enjoyment. Did cases like this, Mr. Bowen, come before you when you were Resident Magistrate at Christchurch ? " On Tuesday, August 24th," I quote from a newspaper report, "Albert Atherton Jones, a little boy only four years old, was brought before the Christchurch Resident Magistrate, charged by his mother with being an unruly boy, entirely beyond her control. Mm. Jones stated that she was a widow, with two children. The boy before the Court was very mischievous, destroying clothes in the house, and when sent on a message would spend the money given him in toys. He was quite beyond her control. Ordered to be sent to the Industrial School for seven years, to be brought up in the teaching of the Church of England." I read this to an esteemed mother of my acquaintance, and she made but one remark. She said : " Why, oven a staylace would have done, if there was nothing else handy." A correspondent of an up-country paper notices a peculiar advertisement. It is this : " Wanted a man to lead Bismarck." As the correspondent says, thoy must fancy that out hero no one could appreciate the difficulty of the task indicated by this advertisement. I scarcely think so. 1' fancy that the advertisement is a delicate nibble from the Kaiser at Mr. Murray, M.11.R. He has read Mr. Murray's new Constitution. He also knows that Sir Robert Peel once wrote to Mr. Murray on the question of deep drainage. (But of course he knows that; everyone who knows Mr. Murray in not long left in ignorance of that.) And he has said to himself, "Murray is the man for me. He'll put a thingummyjig in Bismarck's noso and keep Mm quiet." Somebody says the advertisement refers to an entire draught horse, but that's all nonsense. Mr. John Llllle Gillies has arrived from Dunedin. He lias come to ask somebody for something for tho Otago harbor board. _Be advised by me somebody. Make John Lillie conduct his business with you by word of mouth. Do not get into a correspondence with him. Should you do this last, you will

repent it, as did the Dunedin town clerk. For he got into a correspondence with J. L. G. and is now a wasted being. You see, Mr. Gillies is apt to be too generous, and', the question at issue being a drain, I think Ire favored that town clerk with a brief synopsis of the political history of mankind from it 3 earliest ages down to the present day, and then gave his opinion on the leading topics of the times, winding up with a sketch of the feudal system, and a few loose observations on the social life of the Borneans. s But he never got near the drain. And he * has a contempt for grammar that lends quite a freshness to his composition. And the Town-clerk had to read all he wrote out aloud whilst the Town Council went to sleep. And the Town-clerk is now a mere wreck of his former self. So whoever you are that Mr. Gillies has got to negotiate with, you had better take warning in time. The Dunedin society for the promotion of funeral reform, has got a convert up here. That society goes in for as little ostentation as possible in connection with funerals. So does some one else. Some days ago a lad fell from the rigging of a ship to the deck, and died soon after. There was an inquest on his body, of about as much practical use as inquests generally are. The body was buried, and the funeral cortege, as your reporter delights to call it, was severely simple. It consisted of an undertaker's man and a spring-cart. His shipmates were anxious to attend his body to the grave; but their captain, with a soul above ostentation, made them employ their time more usefully in unloading the vessel. At least so I am told.