PUBLIC OPINION.

Patea Mail, 2 March 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. HARD HITTING. I ho Hospital investigation has ended strangely, I am told. Charges and counter-charges were made all round. The affair resolved itself into a threecornered duel. The Steward stood at one corner of the triangle, pointing his shooting-iron at the County Clerk, who acts as keeper and doler-out of Hospital stores. The Clerk, he (never mind the grammar) pointed his weapon at the Surgeon, and hit him (it is said) in a soft place. But the Surgeon was not so easily killed off, for ho quietly loaded his blnnderbns with old bandages from the Hospital cupboards, and banged off at the Steward.

This three-cornered arrangement worked slick. Each combatant had a sort of rear-view of the other fighting man, and could blaze away in blissful ignorance that another warrior away behind was loading up to riddle his Sunday coat. Each warrior got winged. They rammed in all sorts of ammunition old bottles, empty cases of brandy, a good deal of ill-temper, some virtue, one or two leading articles, and a little second-hand scandal.

The Steward “ charged ” the Clerk with handling the Hospital liquor in a manner calculated to. ornament the tip of a tippler’s nose. lam told that it was proved, alter much investigation, that the Clerk’s nose is nob ornamented ■; —leastways itrisviiot so red as it plight be for-a Clerk” Yet a quantity of liquor has gone amissing : to wit,.three gallons of brandy, and one .gallon of wine. The Clerk knows it. The Steward says the Clerk nosed it. lam not a Good Templar, and therefore don’t understand these things. The Clerk replied to the Steward, “ You’re another hot instead of proving it, the Clerk rounded on the Surgeon, accusing him of making free with Hospital brandy by giving it to private-patients, and also with treating friends at the Hospital to surgical hospitality—a wicked wanton waste of what wasn’t his’n. The Surgeon admitted giving brandy in one desperate case to a fainting patient, although it was only a private faint which the Surgeon was fain to assuage at the public expense. This unblushing confession of giving Hospital brandy to a fainting man is unprecedented in the annals of hospitality. The investigating committee must have felt that the Clerk had scored a hit,'and that the missing three gallons of brandy were folly accounted for. As to the other gallon of wine, the Clerk is not a man to whine about a trifle like that—if he nose it.

The Steward had hit 'the''Clerk, and the Clerk had hit the Surgeon His turn came last, for being called on to report, {report is the after-clap of an explosion, as per- dictionary) he sent a letter to the investigating committee stating that the Steward Js .a good sort of soul, but harsh in manner to patients without intending to be sc ; etcetera. This hit the Steward, and the Council (I‘am told) thought there would be no peace among the three Hospital officials until one of them went for a long holiday. So they are giving one leave of absence.

, All this is odd, isn’t it? The ways of Providence are mysterious. I cannot help thinking that if the Steward had the same knack of smoothing down that the Clerk has,- and had the ear of the Council as he has, it is the Clerk who would have got an extra holiday. But I do agree that a change was needed among the lot, and perhaps the Steward will feel the judgment less severely than it the Clerk had been required to account for the missing liquors. Out Patient.