THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5142, 15 September 1877, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE INTELLIGENT VAGRANT.

(From the New Zealand Mail.)

Qui acit an adjiciant hodiernal crastina snminse Teuipora Di Super!.—3to uacio Aa one result of 'the recent Municipal elections, Sir George Grey has given notice in the House of Representatives that he will move “ That in future this House will not sit on Thursday afternoons.” The object of the motion is to permit Mr. George Fisher to attend the meetings of the City Council.

And in reference, I presume, to these same elections, I noticed a curious, paragraph in the Evening Post. It said. “ Mr. Moss has started for Lambtou Ward.” This gives rather indefinite information. I want to know where Mr. Moss started from, and whether he has got to Lambton Ward yet.

A gentleman from what newspaper reporters would call “ the agricultural districts ” came iuto town on Wednesday for the purpose of registering his dog. Thinking that the Supremo Court must be the appropriate place at which to obtain all kinds of official legal information, he went there and asked a barrister who happened to be standing on the steps where he should go to register his dog. The barrister having a fine sense of humor, pointed to the office for the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, and so soon as the countryman disappeared therein bolted. The countryman’s interview with the Registrar could not have been a happy one, for no sooner did he return to the open air than he began to impure wildly of the passers for “ that scoundrel who told me to go in there and register my pup.

A clerk attacked to tke Legislative Council went into tke public gallery tkere one day last week and fell asleep. On awaking he found himself locked in with another gentleman popularly supposed to be a lunatic. He had a “mauvaise qnarte d’heure" until an attendant happening to come into the Chamber and look up, saw and released him. He is in general noted for what the writer of fashionable paragraphs for the Evening Post would call his “tout ensemble,” but when he got out of the gallery they say that he and his clothes could only be described by the term “ limpA correspondent -writes, “Is not tbe junior member for Wellington tbe wrong man in the right place, for are not all his actions a tot t et a Travers I"

In answer to another correspondent, I may say that I think 700 tons of railway iron and 38 tons of gunpowder most appropriate cargo for a passenger ship, that is, if the passengers are anxious to get out of this world either by going up or going down. It is not given to everyone to know what is going to be the leading article in to-morrow s evening paper. I only know of one man who has been so favored. He met the Mayor in the street one Monday lately and said, “ Your Worship is going to get beans in ‘ The Evening Boast ’ to-night.” Mr. Hutchison asked how he could possibly tell that, and he answered, “I live next door to the Drainage Engineer, and was an unwilling listener to a conversation between him and the editor yesterday, in which the leader was gone over and over. 3Tor some reason or another both parties talked as if they were half a mile distant from • each other, so I could not help hearing what they said.” The story is an old one in Otago, but being reminded of it by an old Otago friend, I am tempted to repeat it. Mr. Kauldkail had put on Mr. Hotbrose’s run 3000 sheep on terms as to increase and profits on the wool. Both gentlemen being pillars of the kirk, Kauldkail never inquired about his sheep for three years. At the end of that time he arrived at his friend’s homestead one Sabbath night too late for tea, but just in time for family prayers. Weary as he was, he might have been excused for not paying particular attention to Hotbrose s exhortations. But self-interest soon . compelled him to be an attentive listener. For Hotbrose began at once to pray that his dear fellowworker in the Lord, Kauldkail, might be strengthened under the afflictions which Providence had sent upon him, which involved the death of all lambs horn of his sheep, and the subsequent loss of the sheep under a Scab Act. At the same time Providence was thanked for the peculiar manifestation of its bounties which enabled each of Hotbrose’s ewes to bear two lambs, and all tbe lambs to survive. In an evil moment I made that little joke about the special telegrams of the Evening Post, whereupon the New Zealand Times was abused in a leader so loudly written that a deaf man could almost hear it. This rather frightens me from writing any more about the Post, or anything belonging to it; bat despite consequences, and deprecating the wrath that is to come, I cannot help noticing some little things about it. The first is the enterprise of its proprietors. I remember that on the day when the telegraphic wire was conducted into the New Zealand Times office, one of the Messrs. Blundell became quite enraptured with the affair, and declared that the Post should have a wire of its own the next day. On the next day the firm in consultation decided they would not have a wire, Its rent—£lo a year —was too much. . The next little subject for comment is tbe exquisite care in matter, style, and printing which the Post exhibits. The other day it announced that the new Land Bill provided for the renewal of tho Canterbury pastoral leases until 1990—which, I fancy, was news to everybody., - Its stylo is modelled after that of tho late Lord Macaulay; and it is just such a style as the late Lord Macaulay might have possessed, had his reading been limited to a perusal of “ Fistiana.” The manner in which it is printed is on a par with the rest of its excellence. Each evening it gives a blank border, adapted for wrapping sandwiches in. But the crowning point of its glory was attained on Thursday, when its leading article was a reprint of tho memoir of M. Thiers in “Men of the Time.” There was an audacity of plagiarism, a thick-skinned impenetrability to decent opinion, in this matter, that was positively refreshing. And now, having said thus much, I bow my head to the literary lambasting which is certain to come for me. I am comforted, however, by tho reflection that all the personal abuse, and all tho concerted insolence in tho world, will not do away with the few facts I have stated, and which are put as politely as possible. I forgot one item however. The special correspondent sent by the Evening Post to tho seat of war went home In the ship Kapass.