CURRENT TOPICS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 439, 22 January 1890, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

(By Zamiel in the ‘ Auckland Star "

The proceedings at some of our bankruptcy meetings are such as to lead one to the conclusion that the bankrupt- y laws are far too lenient to men who speculate with other people’s money. Men go through the Court who have squandered in good living or dissipation the money which should have gone to pay their creditors, and have lived on the “ fat of the land ” while their creditors' 1 were pinching and straining to keep their heads above water. Plenty of these men keep no books of any kind, know nothing of their affairs, and go through with an airy nonchalance that is truly beautiful to see. And the poor creditors can do nothing in most instances. Everything is put down to hard times, and they' will be called cruel, hard-hearted brutes if they ask the bankrupt impertinent questions as to what he has done with their money. Frequently also they know him personally as a jolly good fellow, and they don’t care to bother him too much.

The result of all this is that we have come to look on bankruptcy as no blot on a man’s name, and the bankrupt, of whatever class he may be, goes about without the least thought of ever paying off his just debts. Most men take no thought of their accounts and “ let things slide,” till some sudden emergency shows them that they must go bankrupt. Bub that fact gives them no bother, for they will be able to start next day with a clean sheet, and as good a chance as ever, Now, this state of the bankruptcy law is causing a very low commercial feeling among our people. People may say, ** Oh, if you are fool enough to trust men, you must suffer the consequences.” But the main part of our business is carried-on on credit, and it is surely a poor state of affairs when one has to consider every neighbour a rogue. The punishment for careless and fraudulent bankruptcies should be made more severe, and it should be the duty ot the public officer, the Official Assignee, to see that all bankrupts give proper accounts, and if not to have them punished.

Several times in these columns I have drawn attention bo the nuisance at the thea'res and other’places of public amusement caused by ladies wearing their hats. Ladies’ hats have been getting higher and higher every year, but the ladies will never have the sense to remove their headgear, and the resulbisthat man, proud man,goes on his way cursing. It is not often that the masculine gender offend in the way of keeping their hats on to the obstruction of other people’s view, though semetimes an old man, or a “ayoung man from the country,” will pub on his hat abstractedly in the midst of an interesting part; as the old lady pub up her umbrella once to the consternation of all around her, when she heard the mimic rain pattering on the stage.

But there is one article of male dress in which some men are almost a 3 absurd as the ladies, and that is the collar. Collars have been getting higher and higher for a long time back, until at last, from being a nuisance and discomfort to the earsof their wearers, they have become a nuisance to the public also. This was shown very plainly at the theatre one evening this week, when agentleman walked into bhestalls wearing an abnormally high collar. The pittites hailed this collar with delight, and while he was getting a seat asked him several interesting and facetious personal questions, suggesting that he wore his collar bo hide his neck. When he sab down things were not much improved, for the tall collar waved above everything ; and the climax was reached when the curtain rose, and a voice from the pit yelled out, “ Take off your collar there in front ; we can’t see.”

This New Zealand Jubilee of ours which gives every promise of being celebrated in the near future with such eclat, notwithstanding “ the windy suspirations of forced breath ” from the Empire City, engenders many sad feelings when we remember the band of gallant pioneers who struggled fifty years ago to found our present beautiful colony, and who have now mostly passed from remembrance. Yes, dear reader, there are indeed sad remembrances in this miserable little world of ours, and if we only stopped to think of them, surely we should never be done wiping the tears of pity from our eyes. But. fortunately, we are busy, we have to eat and drink, we have to work for these necessaries of life, and we have to attend picnics, marriages, funerals, et cetera ; these in a measure keep us from thinking, and consequently much of the grief we ought to feel is lost to us. & # # Yet jusfc imagine the number of people who have died in Auckland alone within the past fiftv years, and you have never heard of them. You pick up your Star and read “ At such a number, such a street, Mrs John Smith, of a son. Both doing well.” Fiftv or sixty years hence, somebody will pick uptheSTAR and read “Atsuch a number, such a street, died John Smith. Cremation at four a.m.” To the outside world that is all that will ever be known of him. In the interim he may have been a source of joy or a veritable scourge to his parents, ho may have filled the highest offices in the land, or he may have taken ud a prolonged residence in one of our charitable institutions or the gaol; he may ha>e married, been divorced, and died, with his blushing honours thick upon him in the shape of a nice fat insurance policy. It is strange when one thinks of the millions who have lived, died, and been buried, and it sets one pondering when he thinks how utterly resultless the bulk of those lives have been, and how ill-luck has con-istently dogged their footsteps, even to the verge of the grave.

Take, for instance, a sad case of suicide that occurred sometimesince in the country. I had never, heard the full particulars, and so when 1 met la3t week an intimate friend of the deceased settler, I ventured to ask the reason of the rash act. The reply was that “ he was down on his luck.” Subsequent inqu : ries elicited the fact that' the deceased had a nice deserving wife and neat little farm, bub one day, becoming despondent, he went down into a barn and shot himself. I remarked that it was a sad ending, when my informant exclaimed “Sad ! The man was an idiot, sir,.! What do you think he did ? Came up here to Auckland and paid fifty shillings fora pistol ; then came back and blew his brains out with it. He knew as well as possible that in the next barn I had a pound of strychnine for killing rats, and if he had only mentioned it he might, have saved the fifty shillings, and just for the asking have had as much strychnine as he wanted. Anyhow I sold that pistol for thirty shillings, and that was something .for his .poor wjfe." )YJ]at a streak of luck !

But I must tell you of a young couple who met by chance at; VVaiwera the other day. He was particularly smitten by her manifold charms. He thought it was love that made her so sweet to him. It was nothing of the kind. It was loneliness. There was nobody else, but *• somebody ” was expected down that Saturday evening. They had a dance at the hotel, and after he had helped her through the “Lancers” he led her to a, secluded corner. She was somewhat dis traught. .It was slightly different down on the beach, but now she didn’t hear his muffled prattle, nor did she vouchsafe any reply to his query if she didn’t think it curious how opinions were formed on meeting people for the first time. “ First impressions,” he continued, “are like the negatives in photography. The plate in the little flash of light takes in every detail, bub you only see everything clearly when- the plate is developed. That’s why I think first impressions are correct and reliable. Now toll me, do you believe in first impressions?” Up to this moment she had not vouchsafed one word, but now she seemed to rally. She didn’t know what he had been balking about, but now the “somebody” she had been waiting for arrived, and instead of coming right over to where she was sitting he had begun a desperate flirtation with her greatest enemy, a good-looking girl in “crushed strawberry.” As her soul flashed into her eyes at the idea of such a slight, he in the corner asked in a hesitating way: “Talking of first impressions, what did you think of me the first time you met me?” Turning on him the blaze of a magnificent pair of eyes, she said —“ Think of you ? I thought, and still think you a perfect fool.” Just then the pianiste played the prelude to a divine waltz, and “ somebody ” flashed by me with the lady who had been waiting for him so long, and whose impressions of him were evidently of a lasting, not to say trustful nature.

Have you ever noticed how a man generally objects to marry the girl the family want him to, and how, generally speaking, the girl agrees with him ? I have often thought if parents would only throw at men’s heads the girl they don’t want him bo espouse, and dexterously keep back the one they do want him bo take for better or worse, they would made a gigantic success every effort. My contention-is supported by asingular piece of history that has just come into my possession, and which would make an excellent plot for a comedy. A family of three had reached the age when strangers could not take them in their arms and kiss them, and say “ What a pretty little girl ’ —in fact, the youngest was just sixteen. They all joined a society—no matter what name and soon a very eligible youth paid attentions to the who e trio.

The parents’ hopes were that his affections would be centred on the full blown ffower, but,like the inexperienced butterfly he lighted on the pretty young bud. Bv-and-bythe Society had in rehearsal a real play, and the pretty young bud was cast for the heroine’s part, the hero being played by her beau, and another indispensable character—the mother—by the eldest sister. As a finale to the rehearsals the young man was very much off with the old love (the bud), and very much on with the new (the fuli-blown flower), a proceeding that was as agreeable to the one as it was distasteful to the other. In the play the young bud had to tell “ her mother ” tearfully how the other girl in the play had stolen her lover’s heart away from her and won him for hersolf. She was supposed to get very, very mad, and then threaten to scratch and tear, and kick at her misfortune. I leave my readers to imagine with what vigour and earnestness the bud entered into “ the fun of the thing.” The young man was just in time to a'mid a denouement that had never been contemplated by the author of the play, and although the audience were “ thrilled by the powerful acting,” the lover was pleased when the curtain was rung down on what he afterwards told me was “a very near thing.” However, he has now been married to the full-blown flower some.time, and the young bud has been grafted on to another congenial stock, and so we leave them.

Baby-shows had a good show from me some little time ago, when the genial Mr Maccabe held his human display in the Choral Hall. Wellington has just been having its turn, and the Wellington mothers are now sore at heart, and are ready to rend a certain man limb from limb. With ways that were child-like and bland, he offered large prizes for all classes of babies and had fine entries. When the show opened he was there in shining bell-topper and with a cherubic smile on his handsome features, and all the mothers voted him “ such a nice man.” For three nights was the show to run, and the prizes were to be distributed on the third evening. But on the third day the direct steamer left Wellington for England, and by the evening the babies’ friend was far from the ignoble strife of maddened mothers. They came as usual to the exhibition, but came in vain ; and it was long before they could believe that the showman was gone, never to return. The moral is that mothers had better exhibit their babies to admiring hubbies and friends, and nob trust them bo itinerant showmen.

I, Zamiel, a respectable bachelor, do not very often patronise the theatre—wild bun' scuffles and church choir picnics are more in my particu ar line of amusements but the other evening, moved by an irresistible uncontrollable impulse, I brushed up my few and straggling tresses and wended my solitary way down to the Opera House to behold the jovial Charley Warner in “Never Too Lite to Mend,” Reade’s “ moving and impressive drama,” as the reporters call it. Perhaps the nice highly moral title of the play had something to do with my unwonted visit to the theatre At any rate, I was highly gratified with the piece, and I hereby give Mr Warner carteb'anche to use the name of Zamiel as one of the shining lights in Auckland who pronounced the show “a highly moral and intellectural performance.” The play is one of the good old-fashioned sort—none of your new-fangled great-tank-scene sort of melodrama. There you see in all his glory, built on the good old Lines, the heavy villain, in frockcoat and velveteen pants, who grinds his teeth and hisses—“ I hate him : curs-se him.” He works his own wicked will right through four acts, and is unmasked at last, tothe huge delight of all and snndry, just before the curtain falls.

Then there is the innocent and village maiden, in loose gown and particoloured curls, who flops on to her long-; suffering lover’s shirt front, and sobs, “Adolphus, I always loved you.” Again comes the hero with fiery moustache and moonshine eye, the unrelentt irig uncle, the red-shifted and ferociouslybearded gold diggers, the cruel gaol governor with the patent leather shoes, the thin, pale, good clergyman, who gains the applause of the Ber-ritish public by his

moral speeches, and the good,little boy wh dies young. The affair was immensely appreciated by even a number of whitechokered local parsons in the house, and yet people question the morality of the stage ! There are enough moral sentiments in the piece to stock a tract publisher’s office, and you always know when a noble sentiment is coming, because the player turns and speaks it to the “gods,” and the orchestra plays a bar of slow music.

Then some light comedy is introduced into the play by a jovial thief—to put it plainly —who laments the theft of a few turnips from a farmer’s field as a degradation to the “ profesh and by a fantastic Australian “nigger,” fully attired in the orthodox waist cloth, who uses, I am sorry to say, much bad language and white man’s plang. Bub the effect- 5 of the swear-words of the degenerate blackfellow, who addresses his own tribe of scantily-attired cannibals in the same bad English, are counteracted by the moral speeches of the virtuous ones of the piece, and the concluding address is a sermon in itself. Oh, yes, ma freens, the stage is highly moral nowadays—as we see it in Auckland, at any rate.