THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4559, 30 October 1875, Page 2

THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

(From the New Zealand Mail) Quis scit an adjiciant hodiemse crastina summse Tempora Di Superi.— Horace. Mr. Bunny you are nothing if not coarse. You are, therefore, always doing your best to be something, and you succeed admirably. I have no special admiration for Mr. Reynolds, but really he seems to me to be, after Mr. Richardson, the most inoffensive member of the Ministry that so much offends you. Why, then, do you single him out for attack ? Why not have a fling at the Minister for Justice ? Then people would recognise a cause for your wrath. If I am not misinformed, you have this many a year striven hard to be made a J.P., and have striven in vain. Once, it is said, your name -was on the list, but a Chief Justice and a quill pen for some inexplicable reason blotted it out for ever. Now, it would be a logical sequence if you who are not a J.P. were to abuse the Minister for Justice, but though .the two facts may exist —that Mr. Reynolds is stupid, and you are not a J.P.—I cannot see the immediate connection between them. I am much flattered when I find little bits that I have written copied into other papers, but when they are not acknowledged as copied my pleasure is tinged with regret. I should have been much more thankful if the Napier Daily Telegraph of October 2nd had acknowledged the paragraph it was good enough to reprint, and my thanks would have been boundless if the Day of Plenty Times of a recent date had had the kindness to have done the same. Perhaps this may seem egotistic, but then in regard to each of these little things X have Touchstone’s plea, “An ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own.”

Goldsmithsomewhereoranothermakesayoung gentleman of fashion write to his father : “ The torse which I have heard you talk so much of is at last discovered to be a Hercules spinning, and not a Cleopatra bathing, as your lordship conjectured ; there has been a treatise written to prove it.” Well, now, it seems provincialism has been in the position of that same torse. It' no longer, as the Opposition assumed it was, is a form of government that has served its time, but must not lightly or hastily be destroyed. It is a perfect Hercules in its living power and in its future influence to make New Zealand a great and united colony. And a banquet has been given to prove it. I think the position of the torse and provincialism are equally satisfactory. Under some circumstances sawdust is not an efficient substitute for gunpowder. At the firing of the vice-regal salute, for instance, when the Volunteer Artillery, “with their music-playing chuues,” turned out to fire a salute on prorogation day, they found out the fact that I have briefly stated. The first gun was loaded, and the officer was watching the flag at Government House through a binocular, waiting for its disappearance, to give the order to blaze away. Little boys stood about, and made insulting comparisons between the gunners and kitchen pokers. Two or three young ladies contemplated through a halo of affection the forms of their adored ones in uniform, and all was expectation. At last the officer gave the word, the young ladies shut their eyes, and put their fingers in their ears.

the little boys got ready for a yell-of triumph, an artilleryman pulled the trigger, or did whatever is necessary to fire off one of these latter- . day cannons—and the cannon did not go off. It was tried again with the same result. The officer cried “ fire !” in a voice that would have,kindled a barrel of gunpowder, but it was inefficacious on the cannon. The artillerymen began to perspire with silent agony, and t e of them was only restrained by discipline from chasing a little boy who suggested a they should ram him head first down the gun to find out what was the matter. There \*■ a pause of horror, and at last it was foun mi that they had loaded up with a practice cartridge. This was rezno'-e , little boys in derision called the artillerymen "timber noddles,” gunpowder replaced sawdust, and the salute was fired. i The Rev W. Gillies has been lecturing on a subject which he was pleased to advertise as “The Abolition of the P -s. lam not unacQuainted with the Hev. Mr. Gillies. He and I left Otago about the same time and for similar .reasons.- We each of us-had a call from Providence, and an extra .£2OO a year. Naturally, therefore, I took an interest in the subject of the reverend gentleman’s lectures, which I found out upon reading the report of that lecture meant “The Abolition of the Pnblichouses.” That was all very nice, except to those'who owned pnblichouses; and though an occasional patron of these institutions, I have no fault to find with' Mr. Gillies for advocating their abolition. But I would suggest another abolition question for his consideration —the serious consideration of which during past years would, I am confident, have done the country some good. That subject is “ The Abolition of .the G—■ —s.” A lecture on the subject would supply the letters here only expressed by a line. . A friend of mine, a bachelor, lives in lodgings, ' and gives his washing out. He called at his laundress’s one day last week in reference to a pair of tweed trousers, and asked her daughter—a little girl, some eight years old; who ' was Standing at the door if_ the washerwoman was in. The daughter,'with a proper sense of the respect due to her family, said, “No; the lady’s out.” An original definition of drunkenness was given in the Wellington Resident Magistrate s Court on Thursday. A subject of the Emperor William was had up on a charge of having been drunk. There was some difficulty m getting the prisoner to plead to the charge, but at lasthe admitted that “He had had too much beer —for a German.” _ 1 - Some , member has gone home m new_boots. At least, he has left Jiia old ones behind him. But he need not have left them in so conspicuous a place. They are in a parcel on top of the hedge which shuts off the Government •rounds from Molesworth-street. When I saw the parcel it was lying just as the member had .chucked.it there. -I-opened it, looked at its contents, and chucked it hack again. _The boots are hobnailed, and blacking must have been to them merely a dim memory of the past But that they are or were a member’s boots I ■have ho doubt.. Because they are adapted for pulling on and walking in either way, backwards°or forwards, and this, as we know, is a requisite absolute necessary in a member s boots. - , An East Coast paper tells me that a Rev. A. C. Souter has preached a most eloquent and impressive sermon, the subject being Husbands and Wives.” That is quite pleasant and I can well believe the newspaper when it says the - sermon “ has created quite a sensation in the locality where it was delivered.” But I think the newspaper is wrong in describing the subject as “ a most felicitous one.” There, I think, experience would tell-him that, like Sam Weller, he “ werges on the poetical.”