Random Notes.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 20, 11 August 1894, Page 9

Random Notes.

The spring poet is again in evidence, as my readers could see from last week’s Southern Cross. With my usual retiring manner, I made way for my poetical friend, and my readers were doubtless thereby highly gratified. “ Bush poet” evidently feels much alarmed at the present movement of the fair sex, the newest of our daughters, as Mrs Linton puts it, or u the advent of the New Woman,” as Sarah Grand will have it. My good fellow, don’t be alarmed ! There’s absolutely no occasion for you to clothe yourself in sack-cloth and take up your station on the ashheap. At any rate, I have no intention of keeping you company in that needless and somewhat absurd occupation. Nor indeed does Mrs V. consider it at all necessary. “ Scotch Thistle,” the canny contributor, seems to me to possess his full share of that decidedly Scotch (I prefer Scottish) characteristic, —perspicuity. He understands my domestic circumstances to a T, and fellow-feeling consequently makes him wondrous |kind. I have not the least doubt that, as in my own case, the feminine element of his household occasionally contributes a pichle to his “ Wheen Thochts.” “ Scotch Thistle ” doubtless understands the difference in the Scottish idiomatic use of the word “ pickle,” from the ordinary meaning assigned to the word in literary English.

It is seldom that our local police court proves the attraction it did on Monday last, when there appeared before the grave and reverend and unpaid occupants of the bench, a local dominie, charged with using his “ tawse ” both “ wisely and well.” It is a number of years since such an incident last occurred, and it is gratifying to the quiet and well-meaning residents of our town and district that the decision of the presiding justices in the present case was consistent both with the evidence and with justice. As I have oftener than once plainly stated in this column, there has been during recent years far too much sentimentality (of the sickly kind) shown in our dealings with the offences and misdemeanours of our juvenile population. We have too much neglect of the Solomonic injunction, and in not a few cases by refraining from the judicious use of the rod we are spoiling our children. More power, then, to the elbows of such teachers as Monday’s defendant, who are willing to incur the odium incident to whipping out the offending Adam in some of their charges.

On whom should the mantle of our political Elijah have descended when the late Hon. J. Ballahce finally departed from this terrestrial scene? We evidently had two Elijahs, each anxiously waiting 1 to envelope himself with the flowing robes. Unfortunately for him who might fairly have claimed to be Elijah Eo. 1, with precedence, he had at the time withdrawn to the cold shades of private life. This, of course, enabled Elijah Ho. 2 to seize upon the prophetic garment and swath his burly form in its ample folds, accompanying his proceedings with repeated asseverations that “ Codlin, not Short, is the man !”

Eecent revelations at Wanganui, as we learn from our local dailies, promise to secure some interesting developments in the House, with, pos-

sibly, exchange of compliments between the two principals concerned.

We have yet to learn that the leadership of the “ Government of the colony,” or even of a “ party,” is an heritable property, although this seems to be the opinion of not a few membess of the Great L.P. History furnishes with examples of offices, which have at one time been elective, becoming hereditary, but in almost every such case the change has been detrimental to the people concerned. It is therefore, to say the least of it, unseemly to hear our past*and our present Liberal leaders clamouring that each was the leader-designate, and that they, each and both of them, should now be wearing the prophetic (should the word be spelled profitic ?) mantle of leader of the G.L.P. Yox.