Random Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 1, 7 April 1894, Page 9

Random Notes.

Our Wednesday half-holiday has become quite a settled institution, and it is now, also, a foregone conclusion that all our “functions/’ public or semi-public, are assigned to this, the red-letter day of our local To-day we have enjoyed a plethora of sweets, a veritable e: iil> ai riis de : c/ca-vc. What with football, the regatta, and the inauguration of the “chimes, we bad more than enough and to spare. Our Mavor and our members had all their hands full, and as was to be expected, they each discharged their onerous duties manfully. The official ikick-off was, by those concerned, performed most gracefully, and, as could bave been surmised, was cheered to the echo. Except to nautical men or the intimates of craft-owners, the regatta is—well, just a little tame, yet the proceedings to-day were quite up to the usual. But the feature of to-day’s sports was the “chimes!” At last we have something to make a boast of. We are, as a community, growing! We now require, as an ex-mayor so appropriately hinted, but the introduction of a throne and, a crozier into St. John’s, and our urbane archdeacon robed in apron and gaiters, to be a full-fledged city, wanting not even in any thing’, that is, if our rabid prohibitory temperance folks will permit us to retain the harmless, necessary pub !

Those banquets which are so indispensable to the success of public functions are usually the scene of highly laudatory elocutionary efforts. I, in this column, am not expected to furnish a dry-as-dust report of such proceedings ; that is left to our dailies. But the ordinary reporter is by no means infallible, and everything said, or meant to be said, does wot reach his ears. I therefore try to make up for that gentleman’s deficiencies. Consequently, though he did hear one or two poetical quotations, he failed to Catch one which, to me, seemed to echo from His Worship’s lips as our chief citizen cut the unresisting cord and set the bell a-pealing-. ’Tis a somewhat hackneyed quotation, I admit, but new set for the occasion:— “ There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken on the proper stroke of time, enables to to kick a goal!” Possibly the freshness of the air, the strength of the fluids, or even the mixture of amusements, may account for this slight derangement of metaphors. But, at any rate, the quotation fits.

There is one name connected with H.Z. journalism which is awe-inspir-ng from the lofty pinnacle on -which its owner stands, since before his frown Cabinet Ministers are said to tremble. “Civis!”- —what terror is in the sound—to the peccant political partisan. Civis, however, sometimes unbends and rims his keen-pointed shafts at lesser game. Each year, soon after January 25th, we find him embalm in a passing note some new (!) thing on Scotland’s patron saint. Yet a second time this year he has returned to the charge and poured the vials of his wrath on the immortal Rabbie for the mongrel dialect (?) in which he {the poet) wrote, taking as his text the irresponsible utterances of a member of that species of mortal —“ the funny minister.’' A greater even than “ Civis ” has said that Burns “ possessed a brilliant light, but concealed it in a dim lantern.” Yet, this notwithstanding, is it true that Burns is not read now-a-days ? Possibly in the colonies, where we are inclined to despise our Scottish forebears and their uncouth dialect; but I have known many to whom the poems of the Scottish ploughman were familiar in their mouths r.s household words. If the test, as “ L ivis ” seems to imply, of a poet's popularity is his transparency of meaning and the absence of the requirements of a glossary, then even Shakespeare must be consigned to the dust-laden shelves of forgotten tomes, for do we not find in the works of him who was “not for an age but for all time,” words and phrases which, now

grown unfamiliar, require glossarial elucidation P But surely this trouble does not detract from our enjoyment. Just a few quotations from Shakespere (to whom, by the way, “Givis” is not infrequently indebted), taken-almost at random, to illustrate. Will “ Givis ” explain the purport of each ?—- “ Sometimes Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground, I have tumbled past a throw; and in his praise Have almost stamped the leasing .” “ Banks with pioned and twilled brims.” “ To think o’ the teen.” And these are fair specimens of what may be found on every page of the first of English writers. What was the liquid, too, that Hamlet suggested, when he proposed “to drink up esil ?” and what, too, did Macbeth mean (and “Givis,” who likes the phrase) when he exclaimed “ aroint thee, knave !” Do not such words and phrases require, in ordinary mortals, the use of a glossary ? Vox.