Random Notes

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 38, 16 December 1893, Page 9

Random Notes

“ Coming events cast their shadows "before,” said the poet, and the truth of his statement has been fully illustrated during: the past week, when the first faint glimpses of the approaching holidays met our expectant eyes. You, my courteous reader, were doubtless one of the numerous and mirthful crowd of spectators who thronged to the “Show” on Wednesday. To our country cousins we anight well apply Hamlet’s happy couplet, modified to suit the exigencies of the moment — —“ The show’s the thing To make our Southland damsels’ hearts to sing.”

Ostensibly, the good folks of Invercargill and our multitude of Ibucolic visitors go to our annual agricultural outing to study the points of the “ pigs, the poultry, and the implements.” Certainly such is the object of a small knot here and there among the crowds congregated -within the confines of the Park Reserve ; which fact is occasionally evidenced by the glowing countenance of a burly farmer who might be seen amid a circle of admiring friends listening to their hearty encomiums, couched in such terms as these:

“Oh, Jock, man, I kenned, yer beastie •wad stan’ high,” and so forth ad infinitum. Bat, to the great majority of those who crowded into the field, iihe chief, if not the sole, object of the day’s proceedings, was “to see and Ue seen!” Comments on the style of costume and hat worn by the ladies wending their way slowly through •the grounds were quite as frequently Ueard as the praises of the prize pigs and poulfoy. And this is just as it should he ! Modern civilisation can3iot submit to the partial isolation which agricultural pursuits impose upon those who follow them, and the annual show is looked upon as the means of “ forgathering with” our fel-

lows with the happy smile upon our faces and kindly greeting upon our Ups, our persons being fully decked with our “ summer braws,” as the Scotch so happily phrase it. “ Long may show-day flourish,” is the wish of all good citizens.

High jinks, too, was the order of tlie day in some of onr public schools. Prizes, so dear to the heart of the school-boy, brilliant in gold, and scarlet and blue, weie in evidence, and speeches, a commodity, not so palatable, had to be submitted to. The busy hum of the school-room no more will be heard in the land for, at any rate, the ensuing five weeks, and the dominie, happy mortal! shall have gone on his peaceful summer rambles. Who would not be a teacher in these happy times P His life seems as if “ all the year were playing holidays.” But—(that awkward but ever comes in) in scholastic affairs distance may lend enchantment to the view, and while the outsider may see the apparently delightful side of the teacher’s life, he, the poor dominie, may find that his course is not all ■“ beer and skittles.”

The statement, uttered of old, that •‘the prophet hath no honour in his own country,” has for long, in the old world at least, been accepted as a truism. Here, in the antipodes of that portion of the mundane sphere where such old-world notions are accepted, we have inverted the order of many things, and have adopted as a new reading of the old text something like this—“ The prophet hath honour only in his own country,” at any rate, where the term “world ” connotes what is implied in the phrase “ musical circles.” If all Invercargill were not present at the production of Handel’s masterpiece on Wednesdaylast, there was certainly a thoroughly representative gathering, and their reception of the oratorio showed how the efforts of the Union are appreciated. “ Good wine needs no bush,” and as Vox does not pose before the public as a musical critic, he will retrain from praising the efforts of the

artists. This, so far as local soloists are concerned, has been already fully done by the musical scribes of our dailies. What I here purpose noting is the justice (?) meted out to our visitor. This is not the first occasion on which a visiting artist has been, as the saying is, “ put through the mill” by our knowing ones. I have yet to learn that the function of the critic consists in sitting with score before him and ear pricked up, intent upon finding some note lengthened by so much as a demi-semiquaver or flattened by even a semi-tone, and on such “ errors ” being discovered, to gleefully rub his (the critic’s) hands over the prospect of being now able to write a slashing critique, at the same time disclaiming “ all desire to be hypercritical!” How many of Wednesday’s audience (though quite familiar with Handel’s work) observed the fact that the tenor soloist on one or two occasions varied slightly from absolute fidelity to Handel’s score ? But one, I opine, and he, the hyper- critical critic, who, when' attempting, to be just to our visitor, certainly failed in that generosity which is so characteristic of good breeding. Vox.