THE CRITIC.

NZ Truth, Issue 84, 26 January 1907, Page 1

THE CRITIC.

. Who can undaunted brave the.Oritic's.raga ? Or uotennmoved nig mention m the Critic's page? Parade bis error m the public oye ? And MothorQrunciy's rage defy? ■ ■ ' . Man is the creature of habit ; mostly bad. • , , ;. ';.•:'• • « There's many a slip 'tween the wharf and the ship. . * That pjous palmist, j. j. north, wouldn't miss his "Truth" for a whole Sunday's pla,te. ■ ■ ■ .» ■ ■•••.■' • The last census didn't state how many grass widows there were m Maoriland. Which is a, pity. „. '•'■■-■•■■:.■ -S": •. ■ '•"•*.'«'.>.-•.-■".-" •- --■■ ■'■ j.People who "ain't no scholards," and who can't read, are generally able to make out the legend on a bank note. '■••.■• . • • From, the. sublime to the ridiculous—the Besses o' the Barn performing m opposition to the buck-jumpers at the Zibishun. They have , two sorts of' seals at the Zibishun— the great seal of England, and the seal that like fury m a pond. '..■■.■•■•:*,■••»• Mail bags, containing, matter worth perhaps hundreds .or thousands of pounds, seem tp receive as much care m transit as a cargo of old scrap-iron. ■■■..'•.■ "- ; ;■».•■"■ • . . . ; There was a young girl of Boulong Who treated, the crows to a song ; It- Wasn't the words . That frightened the birds, But the stren-gth of the douWe entc-ng. A hungry Invercargili youth was lately police 'celled for stealing some butter and sonie' plum. duff. Surely it was punishment enough for him to have eaten the dough instead of being prosecuted by the maker. ■■•'.■■'■■*'■■■• '•■ ' '••,•■' Mr •Ernest H. Parkes, the young Wellingtonian ' with the magnificent bairitohe (or basso contando) voice, is singing at the Zibishun and has knocked the crowds with the tone, volume and easy production of his fine organ. Bully for Wellington ! I • ■ ■.• • . ■ • • Consider some of the evidence of a railway man m regard to the speed of a mdto car driven by "Nicky" Gates, of Ohristchurch, round the dangerous Bank of New Zealand corner,. "What speed do you think the trams go at round that corner ?" asked Day, S.M. "About three miles an hour." "Well, would it surprise you to know that they travel at the rate of six miles an hour ?" The witness felt small. He made the awful excuse that he only knew about trains. The difference between trains and trams isn't very, apparent. Who is good judge of speed, anyhow ? •■.• • ■ • ' The "Times" of Wednesday solemnly announced as an interesting item of news, that a dozen- memers of the y.M.C.A. had ridden on the train on Tuesday and walked a bit among the hills. It omitted to mention that over a large number of the Wharf Laborers' Union got stifi, stark, speechless, paralytic drunk on the holiday and reported the experienoe as being highly enjoyable. : Let us warble .— . •. Twelve pious, members of V.M.C.A. ! Went jauntiT"- forth on Anniversary day. .■■•■:■ They took a train— the wind might have been worse ; Bad as it was they uttered ne'er a curse. These pious travellers ; scaled the Rmiutak'as ; The hymns they sang scared hell ' out of the kakas. . And coming home by train, to close their caper, They kindly sent the facts m to the baP o Ki '

The average woman likes, tot ■v- ■ ■■••••■••■• ♦ ■ . . „ # "Times" wrote of "the La Carabine Cup !" The' the Cara/bme Cup. • • • p Those touring gypsies have made ' , tracks for Brazil— where the nuts " : come from. As representatives of 1 1 Brazil they are hard nuts themselves* ; I # • • , )i A spectacle to excite the. grim : laughter of .the apes. : The . rotten, . immoral, drunken, lecherous, obscure- [ ly-sired 'Ouse of Lords decrying a . secular- Education Bill, m the cause • of religion. ■ * ■•'■«■■ ■ There was a cjay spark of Petone • Went to Trentham to bet on a pony, But tihe vprad'l'et ran stiff And he pot such a biff That he had to walk home— he was : .stoney. . ' • ■ • « 'Rail for Auckland! , Logan>-built Rawhiti won La Carabine Cup at Melbourne and- was also runner up for . the Sayonara Cup. Aucklandbuilt boats haye for the j>ast thirty years, or so, been thorns m the ; side of the Australians. One banner at the Peers' meeting m Trafalgar Square bore the device "The' Church claims her right to 1 teach .her children the true faith." Now, Hyhich of "the two-and-seventy jarring sects'" is the true faith? Ask jim gib or jackass jay north. « • • In the Sodomite ''tree-planting camps," where all sorts, of longsentence sex-pervert prisoners are mixed. with poor devils of first often* ders, the pious authorities allow a}l papers to enter bar "Truth" and Auckland "Saturday Night." What a compliment to the proscribed pair. ■ ■ ■ • . •• '•• Very embarrassing for i that Wellington damsel, Miss Rowe. who was being, ," saved! I from 4he alle^d 1 • fite' by „an imitation, nr^maii v ., -at. : . the Z-itiishun, masked and incog., to be so disastrously revealed by an accident that could never have occurred had proper supervision «been exercised over the gear of the slide. Miss Rowe seems to have been rowing;, her own boat, and no^» she'll be pulling hard against the stream of parental indignation. •*■ • ■ ■ The wife of a well-known sporting main is earning a name among the domestic servants of Wellington ' by heir cheerful little way of making life unbearable, with the aid of her mother, and then saying "You pan go— if you like after a few days, bullying has got the girl's temper on edge. She generally does go and because of the "if you like clause," she has to' go without her wages. This is a lovely way of getting domestic 'help free of' cost, but it is devijish rough on the poor girls. ."'■', : .» . ■ • . • ■■ ■ So the , Abbe Delarne, the French priest who slung his job and bolted to Berlin with a weak, silly eigh-teen-year-old school teacher, who had "been one of my- pupils, whom I had trained and learned to love," has turned dog on the poor, innocent victim of his devilish crime, has turned her •loose to fend for herself, and is crawling to be taken back to the. bosom of "holy mother church." The unspeakable dingo. Makes one really hope there is a heU where curs like Delarne the priest and four, eowstrdly seducer, can roast for ever and ever, amen. '- . • <• •. A stable used by the proprietor of a Cuba-street fish-shop constitutes a nuisance and an offence against the Act. It has no floor as required by the Act, and no \*«ater meter, only an ordinary tap supply. Also it stands . quite close to a fashionable eating house and should not exist longer. Wonder where the inspector gets his bi-weekly supply of fish? Certainly no poor man would be allowed to use this stable, and as a fact one person was, previously, refused permission to stable his horse there one night a week; but circumstances alter cases. » • . •• There was a married women's race got off at the Sumner (Christchurch) gala, and a couple of dozen lined up inside the ropes - and were hamdica.pped according to size and obesity. There were far too many starters ; the show should have been run m heats m order to give the backmarkers a chance. It was a queer sight ; some competitors, who were de a d after the chest of tea, pinned their dresses up behind, dis- i playing fancy petticoats and thingummy's ; others took off. theit |] , stockings and boots and exposed i . their iig trilbies to the crowd and!: to the smiling sun, which reddened : 'em ■ something considerable. It was a seventy-five yards sprint, and the way dresses flew m the air, revealing :; flimsy draperies m some cases, and ; ; m others none at all, nothing but nude Iprs, was a fair caution. Ama- : teur photographers are said to hove got some good snapshots of the 1 circumstances. The contest wn.s won by . a thin, wiry sr,inp:er-hPfidf*d lady, 1 y.ho evnressed the opinion on arri'v- : ing th^t it was a darned long seven- ' ty-five yards. ■ i

~to *• thirsty travelers: by advertising the fact that it has a water tower as pne of its chief attractions ! « ... * • * . . •• The hotel proprietor who advertises that the proximity of his hotel to the railway station offers patrons the excellent facility of being able to leave by an early train, rather clumsily expresses , his meaning. ■■*'*' * ■ ' . , The feminine portion of dour Dunedin fairly rushed the gate at the Fijian firewalkers' show last Saturday. The chance to see a bit mbre : of a real live man than the dictates of civilised society ordain proved too strong to be resisted. Needless to relate, the hotelkeeper who announces on his list of rules that "a charge will be made for all lights burning half an hour from goins: into bedroom" (said lights consist tin^ of paltry wax candles) carries on business m Dunedin. * » « Idiots that venture out into the open straits m cockleshell boats, While a shrieking 'nor'-wester is blowing off tthe land, are- not much worth wasting coal and time and risking a steamer over. They must be imbecile for a start. ; . • . • ' • • \ ■'■ Manager Munro told a "Press" man recently that after tihe iZibishun was bver he intended to proceed 'Ome, where he hoped the reputation he had gained as 'general manager of the show here would enable him to secure a lucrative position m Lunnon. So long as this boor gets out of Maoriland, probably no one will mind much what happens to him. Things are getting tolerably sultry at" that Zibishun. The other day the manager of the Besses -o' the Barn band was compelled to, pay a bob to hear his own band play. 'Also' 'the .chairman of the Sports' Committee, was^ fsfusM" p^fmissdon to' enter his sports ground tititil' He' parted up, and the officials who were arranging for the Axemen's Carnival were going to clear home sooner than pay at the instance of G. (greedy) Munro, but the Minister m charge interfered arid told Munro that -he ought to have more sense. But the fellow has no sense or tact. Munro takes fine care that Munro doesn't pay for anything, however. • * * A i>ork butcher was summoned at Christchurch for keeping his shop open when it ought to be soldered up. He admitted the offenoe, but observed that he only opened his door m the evening to get off a stock of pork pies which lay seductively m the window • . He complained that the ctian next door, who ran a refreshment .business, need never shut at all, but could .sell pork pies both day and night. "Why, I went m and bought one »t ten o'clock last night, just to shdw your Worship," said defendant, and he plunked a pie dowft-s on the table. But the" bench wasn't taking any pig and signified the same m the usual manner. \ - ■ ■ • •• * • ignominious inhabitants of the other three centres will have tp cry halt to their boostings and barrackings for their respective townships m view : of the following by a Dunedinite m the Otago "Times." He babbles : "We have the fairest city m the colony and we have the most beautiful proviribe. We. claim the largest proportion of the names of men who have risen to eminence m the colony. Of the seven Judges on .the Bench, five are claimed by Dunedin. We are the foremost manufacturing city m tihe coloriv. - Dunedin firms have practically built the other cities m the colony. We. hold the blue ribbon for education. We have led the colony m all great national movements. The generosity of the people of this province is without parallel m the colony, Scotch though we be ! . .I . And we are the best built city m the colony." Dunedinite modestly disclaims any idea of boasting, but it must be self-evident that dour • Duned,in possesses THE people, never•rfietess. The escape of those three lions from a "forty-foot" circus, at Bateman's Bay, N.S.W., is no frivolous jo?se and goes to /bear out an argument often promalgated by this scribe : that these countries have no use for suoh noxious insects as lions, tigers, leopards, etc. We have' imported quite enough pests m a smaller. way without risking breeding from suoh song 'birds as the escaped' lion and lioness. . Once free, m such a back-ooamtry as N.S.W. possesses, there is no saying where such a contretemps might end. The natural instincts of the carnivora lead them to nature's fastnesses and Iher? are fastnesses m Australia' from which all the hunters m -he land co'ild not oust them once they started multiply m ir. and from which they could issue to raid the immense flnnlcs and herds, and cut off unwary travellers at their leisure. j Menageries of wild pnimals ought . to be rigidly barred. It is good to hear, however, that th* lion and one lioness were re6apturcd nnd the othrr lioness killed after she had wounded one of her pursuers.