ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2129, 19 January 1880, Page 2

ECHOES OF THE WEEK.

People with what the Yankee humourist so aptly called “ a constitutional susceptibility to the alcholic impression,” arc by no means few and far between in Timaru, if one may judge by the number of “ drunks ” that have lately put an appearance before His Worship at the E. M’s Court.

That unfortunate “first offender” whose adventures were chronicled in your columns the other day, sir, and whose name your reporter discreetly omitted to mention, must have been a bad case. The innocent mistake he labored under, in supposing that the police-station was a post-office, betokened only too plainly, that he had been liquoring up, not wisely but too well, and to bring conviction to his mind, they run him in on the spot, and he got fined !

By the way, sir, some of the police arrangements in this country, like the ways of that oft quoted Heathen Chinee, are peculiar. Walking in the neighborhood of the police station the other day, your humble servant Avas accosted by one of the police officials, who in the most off-hand manner requested his assistance. “ What for ? ” said I, by no means sure from the official manner that I was not “ wanted ” in the professional meaning of the term. “Oh a mere matter of form,” was the reply. “ You sec, a man Avas assaulted and robbed last night, and we have got a couple of men, on suspicion, and avc, want you to help make up a crowd, so that the man who Avas assaulted may identify his men from among you.” That was all; only to stand by the side of a ruffianly pair of highway thieves, while the robbed one narroAvly scanned your features in the hope of discovering his assailants ! To use a vulgar phrase I felt it was not good enough, and politely but firmly declined the invitation.

Joking apart, I do think that this system of sticking up respectable people, and subjecting them to this indignity, is an insult on the part, of the police, and that it is high time that attention Avas draAvn to it.

A story much too good to be lost lias just come to my cars. A woll-knoAvn resident of a certain Xcav Zealand seaport town Avas reading his paper the other morning over his matutinal chop and coffee, Avlien his eye lit on the report of the Borough Council meeting held on the previous evening. After twice scanning the names of the municipal representatives present, he glanced over the top of his paper and remarked with a puzzled air, “ Well, this is most extraordinary ! Here I find six men present at the Borough Council meeting last night, and they arc all named Christopher!” It Avas some minutes before his friend could make him understand that the prefix Cr, stood, not for Christopher, but for Councillor.

I love a really good pun. But good puns, alas! are now-a-days almost as rare as twenty pound notes. Punning admits of no mediocrity, and perhaps the next best tiling to a very good pun is a very had one. A man was offering to bet on one occasion that he could make a pun upon anything, no matter what the subject. “Make a pun upon the Japanese,” suggested a friend who was present, thinking that he had “got him there.” “ You couldn’t f/ivea/japaneasier thing to do,” promptly replied the punster. Bad as was this pun, it was not half so bad as that said to have been made by a police magistrate on one occasion. I will not vouch for the veracity of the story, gentle reader, which is, as you will perceive, just a triHe improbable. Let, however, the attrocious pun it contains be my excuse for its introduction. A rough fellow was up before his Beakship, the mayor of a township “ out west,” for beingdrunk and disorderly. “ £2, or 48 hours,” said his Beakship. The accused threw down the money and walked moodily out of the court. Then suddenly he returned and addressed the magistrate in the most forcible terms. He then reretired .precipitately, but had not gone far, when a stout policeman caught him by the collar and marched him back to the table. “£2 more,” said the Bench. “If you had used more chaste and relined language,” continued his Worship, waving the fellow away, “you would not have been chaste and refined." I am not at all surprised, for one, to hear that the man immediately expired. Fining and re-lining he could bear, but but the relined torture of a bad pun was too much for him and he succumbed. QUILP.