Random Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 50, 10 March 1894, Page 9

Random Notes.

Our City Fathers are sedate go sedate as not even to furnish a topic for a note. It : is far otherwise up Dunedin way. There the giave and solemn seiguors have “raised Cain,”' Cain, in the present case, being the ire, deep, and deadly, of several of the itinerant religious Bodies. Here, in Invercargill, our streets are wide enough to enable those who. object to the boisterous Christianity of the- “ Army ” to copy the Levite, and pass by on the other side, where they are sufficiently far removed from the blare of the brazen instruments as to enjoy comparative peace. The “ Army,” too, practically enjoys, in our quiet and easy-going city, a monopoly of street corner display. Further north, however, there exist both narrow streets and competition of the keenest, and the “ ruction” in New Edina originated in the friendly (?) rivalry of two opposing sects, their exact definitions having at this moment escaped my memory. The City Fathers, wishing to preserve the good name of their fair city, incontinently framed a by-law on the same lines as the now world-famous Miltonian one, whose force “ Colonel ” Bailey put in operation some time ago. Doubtless Mayor Fish and his wise men deemed that their action would bring peace, and peace with honour. They reckoned, however, without their host. The original appeal to the civic functionaries was not made because the plaintiff sect loved those of the opposing camp less, but because they loved the key of the street more, and the consequent cash which a large fortuitous' concourse furnished them. Thus they see not the enemy routed, as they fondly hoped, but all reduced to the same hopeless exclusion from the kerbstone—the pulpit of the peripatetic preacher. Sine, as the Romani phrases it, illae lachrymae, or in our more familiar phraseology —■“ hence these weeps!” the said lachrymose display occurring several days ago, when an indignation meeting, not a little boisterous in character, was held to discuss the iniquity of the obnoxious by-law. Public meetings generally do not take either a wide or a logical view of ths matters submitted to them. The Dunedin meeting was, however, the exception which proves the universality of the rule. Having met to discuss the obnoxious and tyrannical by-law of the Fish regime, and, after discussing said by-law with wonderful virulence and unanimity, the meeting straightway settles down under the guidance of the great J.A.M., M.H.R.. &c., &c., to discuss the city fathers themselves, and the question as to whether their continued existence should be tolerated| How these august persons must have trembled next morning, when they learned that the arm of the mighty one was raised against them ! In effect Mr M.’s resolution amounted to this —“ All the citizens and citizenesses must obey the by-laws of the council, therefore, the said citizens and citizenesses ought to elect those who will frame such enactments as the said citizens and citizenesses will feel inclined to obey !” There were some who had the audacity to beard the lion and oppose the resolution, but, in ifankee parlance, they were soon squelched, and the hat has gone forth that the oae person one vote, must rule in matters municipal, as well as affairs political! Vox.