Random Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 8, 26 May 1894, Page 11

Random Notes.

And- so Parliament is to meet on the 21st June. If times are bad now -Alley will be worse after Parliament meets.*' The cat comes out of the bag' then, and the Opposition prove to their town satisfaction that the country is ,-going to the dogs. Everybody flings ’bills on the table of the House, each which, if passed, will put the country over its troubles; then there is row after row ; the end comes at last; Estimates put through with a rush ; members return to their constituents, ,go on the platform, and unfold to their the horrible story ; tell what they would have done if the other fellows would only have let them — but wait until next session and then they will see, etc. In the meantime everybody is going on — growing wheat, and oats, and potatoes, buying and selling, and freezing rand shipping mntton, as though Parliament was not in existence. But I pappose we must have a Parliament something must be done for the unemployed. What rare chances there were in the very early days of picking up a Isit of land for a trifle. The reflection ■£g suggested by the remark that fell an old resident of the Bluff some ago. “ W bat a fool Ive been I said he. “Do you know that -when I first came here I could have bad all the land from the Pilot Station right Tup to the Grreenhiils in exchange for st, whaleboat that Bloody Jack, the Sfaori chief, had taken a fancy "“And why didn’t you close with him ?” was. asked. Well, I wanted the whaleboat, and I thought it would he a bad bargain —never di-eamed there would be any settlement here to speak of.” What a “might have been ” the old fellow can look back to, but 'so, for that matter, can most of ms.

Locally, with regard to educational affairs, so far as an outsider can judge •fclrem, as with municipal matters, *he Ijarometer stands at “ set fair.’ lar otherwise is it up Dunedin way. Mere, though we may have rival candidates for the educational throne, the first of the curule chairs of colonial political life, still one or other gracefully retires in favour of his -equally courteous opponent. Possibly tffis is due to the fact that our “ magmificent distances ” give breadth of •©few to our public men ! In Dun--■edin we often find a tempest in the teapot over municipal or political affairs, and the storm not infrequently is found brewing in the Otago Educational coffee-pot. Perhaps this may be accounted for when we remember that almost every member of fthe Board up there is a “ Man with a Mission.” [capital m’s please, Mr Printer.] Jaded readers have but lately waded through the Macgregor Central Seventh School proposals without speak for myself) gaining even a ikazy idea of the sort of thing our mentor proposes to hatch out, when 15®I —the poetical doctor gives us a , ©old douche of four solid columns of larevier of the 0.D.T., containing his panacea for all our educational evils ! According to the learned lecturer, neither State nor parent properly understands their respective duties, .- and. he therefore sets himself to instruct both! I fear me that the i'sngth of his advice will militate : against it being acted upon. Quite a •formidable array of authorities does •the worthy doctor quote (pedagogic literature is apparently voluminous !) ,:and the sura of his argument seems to be —“ Don’t admit children to .seliool under seven years.” Possibly fifctle literary _ information is assimilated by children under that age, but certainly less undesirable knowledge will be obtained by such children in ■&he schoolroom than would be gained <ma. the streets by boys of six if excluded from school and turned loose to he out of mother’s way,” as would inevitably be the case were the aw.lvi.ce of the medical votary of the Pierian Maids generally acted upon. Vox.