PRACTICAL JOKING.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 82, 27 August 1873, Page 3

PRACTICAL JOKING.

“ Cameo,” thus writes in the Auckland Weekly News : —Very vague rumors have been circulated regarding the nature of a rather ludicrous inquiry which, it is reported, the Major commanding our gallant Volunteers is at present engaged on, in conjunction with various brother officers. I happen to know the facts of this case, but it is of a nature so curious that one pauses to record to. It appears that some rascally wag and practical joker was at the bottom of the mischief. Perhaps with the view of saving public money, by breaking off the Government clerks employed in the storekeeper’s department of the habit of reading shilling novels in the little summer-house, this vile joker had spread the seat commonly resorted to by those engaged in the department with a chemical solution that possessd all the pungency of stinging nettles when applied to the human epidermis. A civil service swell, with extensive views his own importance, was the first to occupy the country seat after the plot had been duly laid. He sat down with conscious dignity and a sense of repose, but rose again with considerable abruptness, and left the vicinity with a despatch previously unknown, no doubt greatly expedited by a feeling as of a thousand pins goading him to distraction ; a sensation which continued with unabated force for somewhere about an hour. So gross a breach of military discipline could not be allowed to remain unpunished, and the matter was duly reported to the Government at Wellington ; hence the inquiry. Several children, who are supposed to have seen the villain at his dark work, have been taken before the Commission, and, striken with terror at their awful position, have disclosed what they saw. The whole of this dreadful tragedy was enacted close to a blooming field, and it may therefore truly be observed that the beauties and grandeur of nature exerts no mollifying influence upon some hearts. As it is deemed the correct thing for members of the Assembly to call for all sorts of returns and correspondence, perhaps one of our legislators, who has no other matter in hand, will call for the production of the correspondence relating to the wounding so severely in his scat of honor a Government servant in these piping times of peace.