THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4565, 6 November 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

(From the New Zealand Mail) Quis sdt an adjiciant hodienne crastina sunimio Tempora Di Super!. —Horace. There was very near being a stoppage for an indefinite period of my delightful writing. I have recently been making a public man of myself, and, having sat as foreman of a coroner's jury, and having been chosen a member of the Buunythorpe Municipal Council, I began to have serious thoughts of contesting the Cowheel electoral district at the next general election. I was getting on swimmingly, I promise you, and I knew of two or three who would have voted for me without the smallest fear of being sat upon in print if they had not done so —I was getting on, I say, when the miserable wretch who edits this paper, and whose soul is a little lower than a broomstick, came to me and pointed out that I was now like the gentleman in Lucian's Dialogue, who had to make a choice. He said he had no wish to bar my parliamentary career, but that if I went in for it I must drop my connection with the Mail. He pointed out, in the first place, that I could make plenty of enemies for the paper by means of my writing, without adding to their numbers those whom X was certain to offend if X went in for politics personally. Next, he said, that already the meanest motives were attributed to me in connection with what I wrote. That if Brooks took offence at some little pleasantry of mine, he at once said that Snooks had given me a drink to write it, and that I would abuse my grandmother (if I knew who she was) for half-a-crown. He said that were I in Parliament worse motives would be attributed than these; that everything I wrote would be put down to mere personal interest, whilst so long as I remained simply a writer no one could say worse of me than that I was a scoundrel. He wound up with, some stupid general remarks about newspaper writing being all the more powerful and more effective for good when its author was merely felt through his newspaper, not seen as a personal public partisan, nor indeed as a public man in any way. T reasoned with him, and pointed out the influence in the way of getting Government advertisements and job printing which I would have did I only get into Parliament. But he was firm though kind. He said I must choose. Pive minutes reflection decided me. I have chosen. I have abandoned my hopes of the Premiership, and have got an extra ss. a column. So that, after all, “ out of evil cometh good.” I wish to add my testimony to that of Mr. Travers, in regard to the Lunatic Asylum. A gentleman up there, in a responsible position, has recently perfected an electric apparatus, by, means of which he can communicate with the police station in town in case of a prisoner's escape. The whole thing is very neat, and the first night it was put in working order the police went to bed quite pleased with it. About two in the morning it made an awful noise, and the policemen came rushing to their end of it in the costume of our first parents, eager to find out in what direction the lunatic had escaped, in order that they “ with wings as swift as meditation,” &c. But after the alarm noise had ceased, this was the only message that came from the Asylum : “ Does the apparatus work V* Well, I will not repeat what the police said. Put an angry sergeant at one end of a wire under such circumstances, and draw on your imagination for what he would say, and you will not be far out.

There was a coach accident, the other day, by which the vehicle was spilled in a river, and by which all the passengers got wet. The accident has received vivid description in the newspapers, but I think one incident in connection with it has escaped notice. The proprietor of the coach, whose manners, it is well known, are even more refined than those of the late Lord Chesterfield, was travelling by it at the time of the accident, and bis Honor the Chief Justice was one of the passengers who got wet. The proprietor, who is not usually taken aback, seemed perfectly horror-struck at having put the fountain of law into the water ; arid so soon as he and the passengers got on dry land, began making the most tender inquiries. He said, "I hope your lordship has suffered no inconvenience. / hope your lordshipicill-■ nof take. cold. I hope your lOBDSHIP's FEET HAVE NOT GOT WET." Seeing that they had all waded ashore through four feet of water, the last enquiry might seem to some to be-superfluou3. ■I wonder if Lieutenant Grey, the young soldier who faced death and showed no fear, would have given Colonel McDonnell the same advice about the retention of another man's letter.-aa. was. recently given by Sir George Grey, K.C.8., ex-Governor and present politician. - Lieutenant Grey did not carry on war tinder the advice of lawyers, or by the assistance of plots and quibbles. It seems strange that his more distinguished present representative should have adopted ignoble weapons which the young man would have despised. Age andpblitic3 may bring the wisdom of the serpent, but they fail to couple with it the harmleisness of the dove. As to the letter tself, I am prompted to remark, "A plant" on somebody's part. Creditors are hardhearted brutes. That has ever been my experience of them, and I am sure everyone else will say the same, especially the gentleman who recently made an offer to bis creditors of five shillings in the pound, payable over an extended period of eighteen months and the .creditors were hardhearted enough to refuse it. Indeed, I believe the trustee wrote a very nasty letter, in which he conveyed the" refusal, and also his opinion of the debtor.

I have been told a reason why Mr. Murray and other bores have got so fond of talking in Parliament. It is said that during the sharp struggle which ended in Voge'.'s finally turning out Stafford a vote became of so much importance that the leaders on either side did not dare to put down a bore, lest by doing so they might offend him, and so lose his precious vote. As a result, the bores from being merely loquacious grew confident, and we have more of their loquacity. It is to be hoped that in next Parliament one party or the other will sufficiently preponderate to prevent the recurrence of such a misfortune as "this.*

The members of the Hutt Highway Board have peculiar views of the duties and functions of ; newspapers. A reporter from an enterprising journal attended their last meeting, and created some astonishment by his presence. : Hitherto they have had to trust to reporting of a " vamped" description, as one might say. Therefore they assumed that a reporter was a luxury that would have to be paid for, and one member suggested that their money would be better spent on public works than on a reporter's expenses. When it„ was,, explained to them that newspapers generally, paid the expenses of their own reporters, the members seemed to think that after all the Press was not quite so mercenary an institution as they had been led to believe it was.