PUBLIC OPINION.

Patea Mail, 19 January 1882, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

Contributions, Letters, Inquiries and Answers thereto, are invited on Farming, Commerce, Politics, and matters of interest to the Patea district. Names of writers need not be Printed. no backbiting: There would have been a nice kettle of fish if Mr John Black bad been elected Town Clerk of Patea. The way he i 8 attacking and defaming the Mayor shows one thing, .that.instead of .the Town Clerk working with the Mayor, the Clerk would have been working against him ; and our borough , business would have been muddled by these two officers checkmating each other. I am told that when Mr Sherwood was elected, he was accosted by. Mr John Black, who congratulated him by saying that no one; in the town felt more sincere pleasure than he did at Mr election to the Mayoralty. This appears to be the same John Black who iajpentioned in to-day’s paper as the real a’afnor of that telegram which says “ startling, revelations respecting Mr Sherwood are expected,” It is also the same John Black,. I suppose, who is bringing those “ important witnesses ” from New Plymouth and somewhere else to startle us all with some revelations which were known to John Black before, but are now to be revealed to everybody.

If the?o revelations are to startle ns all, how is it they have not startled John Black ever since he knew of them ? And how is it he could apply for an office in which h.e would have to work with and under a Mayor about whom he knew things which would startle the ratepayers* if revealed by important witnesses known only to John Black ? <jfohn "Black holds public positions, else I should think his doings did not concern anybody. It is pretty general!}' known that John Black has been “ wishing to God ” he conld get into the box .to prove some startling revelations respecting the Mayor. It is difficult to understand a person who pretends to be “sincerely pleased” at the Mayor’s election, and then goes behind his back and “wishes to.God ” he could get into the box to prove some startling crimes known only to John Black. Candour.

WHAT LINDLBY MURRAY SAYS. Seeing my name taken in rain, it is time to speak for myself, now that the school holidays are over. Yon Taranaki boy, stand up arid show me your exercise book. I see it is dated December 14. Bh, what’s this ? As a question is opened in which the public are concerned, it is right that it should be referred to.”—-Now, boy, which is the it referred to ? Do you propose to open up the public by a surgical operation, and if so where will you begin the opening ? Boy, yonr holidays must be shortened if yonr grammar be not better attended to in . future. Here is another example: “ Forgetting, the limit of his responsibility, the Mayor chose to act on his own behalf, and on the Friday in a hurried manner- called for tenders for publication bn Monday night.”—Boy, I must ask whether you irieant that the tenders were to be published on Monday night; because if you meant that something. else was to be published, you should have said so.

Here is a mixture of ideas which I am shocked to find in a pupil from a Taranaki school. Leave off scratching your head, and listen to this': ‘ The Mayor, for reasons which will probably come out at the next Council meeting, opened the tenders without consulting the committee appointed with him, and accepted that which it best pleased him to give it to ” —Boy, are yon really unable to distinguish between the several conflicting propositions which this sentence contains ? Wipe your nose, and listen 1 You say the Mayor opened tenders ; and this is the only grammatical clause in your sentence. , For yon say also that having* opened tenders without consulting the. committee, he accepted that —accepted that committee or that .tender ?—which it —which the tender or which the committee ?—best pleased him to give it J,o. Did he give the committee to the tender, or did he give the tender to the committee, or .did he give the committee to it. And is it the tender, is it the committee, or is it something else ? ’ ’’

Let me reconstruct this muddled sentence for you, to show how a Taranaki boy should write The Mayor opened tenders without consulting the committee appointed for that purpose; and, for reasons which will probably come out at the next Council meeting, he accepted that tender which best pleased him, arid thereby favored the tenderer to whom he wished to give the work.—Now, boy,, I will give you till next Christmas to pick that reconstructed sentence to pieces, and to show in what particular it is defective. In thirty lines of your exercise-book I have dissected six p'eriods, and have pointed out that three of them are not constructed grammatically, but are so put together as to express a confusion of ideas. Your exercise * six other periods, and in those I find four other distinct errors of grammatical structure. There are also three errors of spelling, and two errors which reveal ignorance of the riieaning of common words. You are a dull Taranaki boy, and .you provoke me the more because you pretend to know that which you do not understand. Go and sit down !