NOT “STRAIGHT.”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4574, 17 November 1875, Page 3

NOT “STRAIGHT.”

(From the Queen.) Intellectual, may be, charming in manner, of a generous heart, kind and affectionate, what is that vague flaw which spoils the whole nature of some people, and sets every good quality in a wrong light ? They are not “straight” Whatever they do has some crooked elbow in it; some secret intention different from that avowed ; some pretence which is not sincere ; some undesiguated endeavor working towards a private end; something, at all events, that is not straight or aboveboard, and that when once found out puts folks for ever after on their guard, and spoils the pleasure of the future intercourse. Sometimes this crookedness is to be found chiefly in money matters ; sometimes m small concealments, petty intrigues, absurd mystifications, and a general atmosphere of conspiracy and secret manoeuvres; and sometimes it is due to that two-faced desire of standing well with everybody alike—holding with _the_ hare and hunting with the hounds—which is incompatible with real sincerity, true uprightness, and which, when it exists, gives the fatal impression of crookedness which mins everything. Do you see that man?—the “headman as he would willingly make himself of his place, and as he would be were he to be trusted. No one can deny his ability. Artist, poet, Tnsn of letters, energetic, a first-rate organiser, and of a fertility of brain that seems inexhaustible, how is it that all the best people of his set shrink from him, and decline to be mixed up with him in any public matters, or to visit him in private with cordiality or friendship ? Because he is known to be untrustworthy in money matters, and crooked in *ll his dealings where pelf and private advantage are concerned. Make him the treasurer of°a fund, and the amounts are either never to be got from him at all, or so patently “ cooked” that animadversion and putting them straight must inevitably lead to the Old Bailey. But a few gentlemen who have got up a subscription among themselves for this public benefit, or that small entertainment, do not hire to bring to trial one of their own order who has “ assisted,” and who besides is such a pleasant fellow in his ways, such good company, and such a useful and energetic member of the community! Perhaps too his means of living are manifestly precarious, his family large, his hospitality excessive; on all of which counts the thing is talked over in whispers and passed by, and the gentlemen who have been fleeced simply make up their minds never to employ Mr. Lightfingers again as treasurer, or handler of the money-bags anyhow. So the thing blows over, leaving simply an indelible stain on his name, as a sign for all future wayfarers who pass that way to be wary and not may, however, happen that Mr. Lightfingers is cleverer than his reputation, and, in spite of the broad arrow marked against him, tan so skilfully manage as to catch stray stragglers and , make them disburse under pretexts difficult to disavow. You are in need of something, say, whereto he affirms he has special access, or peculiarly favorable methods of acquiring the best kind at the lowest rate. In an evil hour, you trust and give him the order. In due course you receive your goods, of low quality at the highest figure, perhaps a pound or so beyond the actual market price, and far from being beyond, very much below ordinary merit. What can you dol You cannot return them on his hands. He is a gentleman, not a commission agent, nor yet a general merchant; and if he has done this thing for " you awry, at least he undertook it for pure good nature and to do yon a service. Ho gets nothing by it,he says, with the sublime effrontery of stage innocence. If it is a failure, ho is as much to be pitied as you, and the foun-tain-head of mischief is the person—anonymous—from whom he procured this trash.

You listen, and, if not convinced have to endure. You only know that you have been « done ” and that your friend Lightfingers has but fulfilled the law of his being and been after his old tricks again. He touched gold, and it stuck to his hand ; he saw the possibility of turning a dishonest penny, and he turned it without delay, as naturally as a cat creeps up to the cream-bowl, or an angler flings his fly for the silly unsuspecting trout. It is the same in everything. As captain of an expedition, as leader of an undertaking, as collahoi'ateui', editor, commission agent, what not, he is as he was when treasurer of that little movement—“not straight”—and were it but a pound of candles that passed through liis hands, or a bottle of wine which he had to deliver, he would scrape the one and water the other.

Meanwhile he has been known to keep a poor relation on the proceeds of his dishonesty, in all probability justifying himself as a modem Robin Hood who mulcts the nch that he may endow the poor, thinking a man might do worse than play pi evidence in the matter of redistributing the fortunes of the friends. With another your purse may be safe, but your actions and their motives are not, nor are you ever at the back of his. There is always some secret twist in his mind through which everything is run, to come out in a strange shape and crocked. You, who are straightforward and not suspicious, never see the drift of his small manceuvres till you are landed in some bog-like misunderstanding, wherein attempts to extricate yourself only end in your sinking deeper into the mire ; or you find yourself implicated in some matter which comes upon you as suddenly as a mine sprung under your batteries. You had. no idea of the little underground manceuvres going on. When you accepted that invitation, you were not aware that it was given in order that you might meet someone whose confidence in your crooked friend would be established by the very fact of your presence. It had been told the poor fly for whom the spider had prepared his parlor, that you knew all about it from the beginning to the end ; but if the fly had perspicuity, he would have observed that if by chance he come near the main purport of his visit, the spider brushed him off with a steady sweep, and never let the subject in hand between them be so much as mentioned. You, the decoy, would have blown the whole thing to the ■winds had it been brought before you. You would have understood no hints, no frowns, no falsehoods. You would have said right out that you were ignorant of the thing, whatever it might have been—the state of those Spanish mines whereof you were set forth as a large and well-contented shareholder ; the character of those people of whom you have been paraded as the intimate friend and social sponsor. It was never suffered, however, that you should tear asunder the veil; and the small crookedness of your friend who is not straight in all probability accomplished Its purpose, and caught the fly for whom the net had been spread. No one is safe with a person of this kind. Quarrels, misrepresentations, ignoble little intrigues, all come like hailstorms on your head after a short experience of friendship with a man or woman given to crooked intrigues and underhand ways ; and it takes time and cleverness to find out how it all has arisen.