CURRENT TOPICS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 468, 3 May 1890, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS.

(By Zainiel in Auckland Star.) It is just possible that the contretemps between Mr Henry Varley and the reporter may have one very salutary effect. What' ever good the evangelist may be doing a his meetings, there is no doubt that he i apt to overlook one important fact. He expects and relies upon courteous treatment from his audience. Has the audience on the other hand no right to expect courteous treatment from him? In his virtuous indignation against the sins which he is denouncing, Mr Yarley may perhaps have forgotten that fact, and the letter from one of the Stak reporters the other night was a temperate and well-timed reminder which I am sure will have due weight with the evangelist. Abuse is no argument, and I am sure that when he so far forgot himself on Saturday night, as to denounce people who wore leaving the hall as driven away by guilty consciences, he was making reckless assertions for which he had neither suspicion nor knowledge as his guide, and was relying too largely on the good nature of his audience. Again, Mr Yarley’s objects may be good, but, like many others, I feel compelled to question the advisableness of saturating the minds of our young people of both sexes with prurient matter of which many of them previously had no knowledge whatever. I say both sexes advisedly,, for on Sunday night several ladies retired from the City Hall during the course of the lecture, taking their daughters with them. Their action was a strong commentary on the privileged talk with which they were being entertained.

I may be forgiven for a feeling of strong sympathy for the Rev. Mr Birch in the trouble between himself and his congregation. So many stories of his thorough goodness of heart have reached me that I feel satisfied his whole soul is devoted to a noble work amongst the poor in Auckland. Such an observation, I am sorry to say, cannot be made of some of our clergy. The latest story concerning Mr Birch i 3 as follows The other day he was walking the street and saw a woman, the very picture of dejection. He in his sympathetic manner addreseed her, asking her if she were in trouble. She replied that she could not tell him; but he pressed her and found that her husband was a drunkard, and that hard poverty had come in like an armed man. Seeing her turn towards on open door he said, “Is that your home?” and at the same time dashed in. He found a man inside, and with characteristic dash he said, “ Are you this woman’s husband ?” “No,” replied the man, “I am the bailiff.” “Oh, that is it,” said the pastor, “ what is the amount that will clear you out ?” The man told him, and straightway he sat down and wrote a cheque for the amount, which the man book and left the house with Mr Birch.

A capital story is told by one of the provincial papers, but if my memory serves me right, it is an old story with a local application. At all events, it is worth reproduction. The writer says :—A remarkably good story reaches us, the principal performers in which are a lady residing in Auckland, and a well-known and muchrespected medico whose brass plate adorns the sidewalk in a principal street. Be it here stated that the doctor is not wildly in love with any temperance movement. The other morning he was hastily summoned to Ponsonby, and, having made “ a big night of it ” on the previous evening, he felt, as the saving is, “ a trifle off.” Negotiating several sodas and brandies by way of bracing up his somewhat shattered nerves, he hied himself off. Reaching his patient he found her “ indisposed.” Taking her by the hand to feel her pulse, with the other hand he pulled out his watch, but try all he could to the opposite he saw about a dozen hands on his chronometer. Finally forced to confess to himself that he’d not got over the night before and was not in a fit state to look to his patients, he excused himself with a muttered “ Drunk again,” and beat a hurried retreat. The next morning brought him a very handsome fee, accompanied with the brief epistle—“ Dear doctor, you were quite right in your diagnosis, but for Heaven’s sake keep it a secret.” The medico retained his presence of mind and the cheque.

The behaviour of Tom Collins in the early part of the present week was almost the sole subject of conversation for a few days. If a man was seen dashing up the street excitedly, beating one fist against the other, or growling to himself, he was at once put down as a victim of one of Tom’s slanderers, and a number of men were sure to follow him around for the sport. One-half of our citizens went around sniggering while the other half spent their time swearing and hunting Collins. How men could be so easily “taken in ” was a marvel to those who were nob victims. The gullibility of human nature was very well exemplified, and the regular joker had a high old time.

Several of the cases were very curious, and if a true history of all the incidents could be collected it would be very interesting and amusing reading. One respectable tailor was told that Collins had got a pair of bags from him, which the “man with tan boots” considered unfit for a gumdigger. The man of needles and scissors at once sallied out in search of him. For two solid hours he hunted high and low. getting half drunk in the progress of his quest. Then he was told the joke, and got full drunk because he had been so easily caught. Another popular soda-water man sat for three solid hours in one hotel waiting for his supposed defamer. He said he had beeni n business in Auckland for over 20 years, and never before had such infamous lies told about his character.

; A young fellow was badly “had” on Saturday last. He was going out to the Military Sports, when he wae told that Collins accused him of taking his employer’s money. The poor fellow was quite taken aback, and went off to the Domain instead of the sports. He said he could not face a crowd of people while such a charge hung over his head. At the Domain he met a chum and told his sorrow. The chum fired up with indignation. The two came into town to hunt Collins, and spent all Saturday afternoon and evening in that pleasant occupation. Hearing that Collins was a pretty large man, they each purchased large and heavy sticks. “Now, Tom, as soon as he opens the door hit him. Don’t wait to ask questions, but let out and I’ll back you up.” Fortunately for Collins, the matter was explained.

In some cases, However, the joke was carried a bit too far. A barmaid in one of the city hotels wa3 told

of a story Collins was Bpreading around about her. She was naturally indignant and began to brood over the matter till she had worked herself up into an exceedingly bad temper. The bar was nearly empty on Saturday afternoon, when a stranger in tan boots with a light moustache strolled in for a drink. He sat down to enjoy it when another man strolled in. ‘ 1 Hallo, ” said the newcomer, *' where on earth have you been lately, Collins ?” The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a bottle whizzed past and struck the man called Collins, fortunately on the shoulder. A torrent of abuse followed from the fair but irate maiden behind the bar, till a satisfactory explanation was given. But the real Collins “ laid low ” for a few days in case of more trouble.

The tailoresses having demanded an increased rate of pay, and their demands having been almost invariably acceded to, it is just what might have been expected that ray tailor, when I favoured him with my last order, ehould have informed me that “clothes have riz.” I was not the first wearer of male apparel who had been politely informed of this change in the tariff, and I was pleased to learn that we were ail of one mind—at least, so said the knight of the scissors. “ Well, if the girls are to have the benefab of the rise in prices, well and good. Send the suit along and I’ll pay for it under the new log.” Nothing could be more satisfactory, and on principle, and for the sake of the girls, I heartily fell in with the reform. The worst of it is that I cannot worry out the difference between the old log and the new log, and I shall not know whether my tailor does nob make more than a fair profit out of that which at first sight might be looked upon as a misfortune to the trade. However, if the worst comes to the worst I'll invoke the aid of some of the strikers and have the matter settled once for all.

Everybody knows how easily a word slips out of one’s mind just at the moment it is most urgently required on the tip of his tongue, and all efforts of the will fail to coax it back again. A rather amusing incident of this kind happened at the opening of the Cosbley Home for the Aged Poor. The Chairman of the Charitable Aid Board, who, by the way, has been a Sunday-school scholar and teacher pretty well all his life, was relating to a large and fashionable audience how it was proposed to occupy the minds and energies of the old men by setting them to work out their own vegetables on a spare patch of ground at the rear of the institution. He gob on very nicely indeed until ho ventured to illustrate his remarks by a quotation from Watts. The Chairman evidently had that quotation on the tip of his tongue a moment before, but when most required it had fled.

For you all know, ladies and gentleman, as Watts has it, that “Satan finds,” and there he stopped. The hall was half filled with parsons and Sunday-school teachers, and it seemed as though everyone had with one consent been converted into a prompter. “ Mischief still,” they reiterated, but the Chairman was too busily thinking out the problem himself to hear their kindly promptings, and, getting tired of what he found to be a hopeless bask, he improvised thus : “Satan finds some work still for idle hands -to do.” This brought down the house, and one irreveranb spectator whispered, “ better draw his sable majesty’s attention to the unemployed.” Then one prompter, bolder than the rest, called out loudly, “ Mischief still,” and the Chairman “caught on.” He admitted his error, bub observed that it took a clever man to create a hearty laugh, and he supposed he must accept the exuberance of mirth just displayed as a compliment.

By the way, since we have heard so much from Mr Varley and others anent the fulfilled prophecies of the old Biblical worthies, it may be worth while to remember that there are some mosb successful living prophets extant. One—the bestknown—of these edits an almanac under the nom de plume of Zadkiel. Last year he foretold to the very week the Duke of Edinburgh’s illness at Malta, and, what is even more singular, described the exact symptoms which would manifest themselves in the Ducal constitution. This year in the almanac for ’9O, published early in the December of ’B9, he says, “In February the Compte de Paris will suffer from Saturn to the place of the sun at his birth”—which being interpreted, meansthat some evil would happen to the young prince in the cauntry of his birth. February has passed, and the count is in prison for entering his fatherland, or rather ought we not to say his mother country ? as a republic is feminine. Saturn, as an English paper remarks, may mean a government which inhumanely devours its own children.

Can the millennium be at hand? is a question that has excited the minds of true believers for some time. Zamiel was at first disinclined to think that such a consummation of happiness would be likely to come within the scope of his short career. But now he has hopes, seeing that the stranger in our midst is so positive upon the subject. Even without his assurance, not Zamiel, but the evangelist’s, there are now many signs that would tend to prove that something extraordinary is approaching. For instance, look at the Kaiser William of Germany, who in a short period has been transformed from a breather of threatenings into a lover of the working man. No doubt, it will be remembered how he sent a deputation of miners to the right about shortly after his accession to the throne. Now we see him earnestly seeking after the welfare, promoting labour conferences, and indulging in all sorts of praiseworthy methods for the public good. This is of itself a significant fact, for when kings attend to the poor rather than the privileged classes, it would seem as though the climax had been reached.

Then, again, we see the Kaiser, who was predicted as a probable military conqueror, practically shaking hands with France, apparently eager for peace, and presumably willing to disarm. Truly when the lion lieth down with the lamb the millennium must be at hand, although the American humorist has prophesied that when such a thing does happen the lamb will be inside the lion. No one can, however, expect such to be the case in this instance ; therefore we must conclude that the Kaiser like a sensible man wishes for peace because armed expectancy of war is a somewhat expensive game to play at. Whether the millennium approaches or not, Zamiel hopes that the Kaiser will continue as he has begun, and that wars and rumours of wars shall cease.