THISTLEDOWN.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1772, 21 September 1895, Page 2

THISTLEDOWN.

“A man may jest and tell the truth.” • • —Horace. Scene. A bush camp. Interlocutors : Messrs Bernard Do Courcy, from Belfast, and Patrick Daly, from Limerick; Chorus, Messrs Cassilloe, Pomme-de-terre, Plumby and Leishlia. * ■» * * De C.—Don’t you think, Mr Daly, it would be a great advantage to you to take up a hundred acres or so and try to make a home for your wife and family ? D.—No, sir, most decidedly I dispute that. I could not stay at home but should have to go away for work, and what is the good of land to a man if he doesn’t work it properly? De C.—Still, if you should get a few cows together your wife could milk them and supply the factory, and you would be building up a house for the children. D.—No sir, that’s where I must differ from you. A girl marries for her husband to keep her, and he has no respect for her if he makes "her slave to make him a comfortable home.

De C. —That’s quite right, but not what I mean. Should not the other contribute her share to making a .home for the children, and will she not be -anxious to do so if she is worth her salt ? -

D.—Only too anxious, but how is she to attend to things out of doors, when perhaps, she has a sick child, and has to do the cooking and the baking and the washing and the mending ? ‘ ’ De C.—Shure, and she can do that and milk a few cows too.

D.—Yes, and be up to her hips in mud nine months in the year. Thank you,' no. No man should ask his wife to do that. That is not what he married her for.

De C.—Well; I /married to get a help meet, (Chorus. So we are told Eve was given to Adam), and if she won’t take her share in helping to give the children a home and a start in life I wan’t none of her. I wouldn’t give a fig for one of your blessed colonial piano-thumpers. Afraid to soil their boots in the stockyard or roughen their fingers with the scrubbing or in the wash-tub.

D.—There’s where you make the blooming mistake, sir, there’s no create 1 being ■ can beat the. colonial girl. Good at the wash-tub or the scrubbing bush, she can cook an appetising meal, superintend its consumption in a neat and becoming dress, and sit down to the piano and entertain her guests in a manner to which no one can take exception- She is good for the kitchen and good for the parlour. Where can you beat that, sir ? De C.—So is the Irishwoman, good foi? the kitchen and good for the parlour, and good for the cow shed too. D.—For the kitchen, yes, and the cowshed too, but for the parlour, pardon in’e, Sir, if I laugh at yoh there.' Here the discussion threatened to get a bit warm as some of Ihe chorus were bar-, racking, for the stranger, but the peace element prevailed tilbagain endangered by a new subject.

D.—Yes sir, I am an Irishman, but I must say I don’t think much, of my fellowcouhtrymen out here. If a Irishman gets a job to which he is inexperienced, I can’t w sh him a worse fate than to join a gang of his fellow countrymen. The first swear and the first unkind word comes from the Irishman. «

‘ Perhaps,’ suggested one of the chorus, * I can explain that. In all probability he is a first-class worker and there is nothing disputes competence more than to be matedwith incompetence. That is why you see incapable daughters of good housewives; the mother would sooner work herself than see her girls going to sleep over it.’ ; / D.—l perfectly agree with you there, sir, but that does not excuse unkindness and an Irishman a’ways has the first unkind word for a broth-r Irishman. So and and so told me the other day if. I worked for him he’d think me dear at two shillings a day.- Well I’ll eat his number fourteens if I am not seventy-five per cent a better man;.. - ’ ■

Chorus.—ln that case you must he the florin which still maintains its par value as one-tenth of a sovereign, while she is the rupee depreciated to one and twopence. - The'Dairy Factory question came now on the hoard, but being anxious to get an hour or two’s sleep I left the House sitting. Further particulars as I have gleaned them in. my nest. . \ L.—P,ut going back to the block cutting you must admit an Irishman shews there.

D.—l thoroughly coincide with you, sir. There he shines and there he should stick. It’s the proper place'-for a brawny piece of beef like him. "

L.—That sounds more like an Englishman And the ruction broke out afresh.

I can match the story in your supplement of the parson whose caustic wit laid the foundation of his .preferment. When Whately was Archbishop of Dublin, it was his habit to hove periodical breakfasts for such clergymen as happened to be in town. Watercress was always on the table and as his Grace’s liking for that excellent antiscorbutic w’as ! well-known, the reverend gentlemen made a point of consuming it in large quantities, hoping, doubtless, to eat their way to the episcopal bench as embryo lawyers eat their way'to the bar. One day the Archbishop noticed one guest avoiding the vegetable as if it were poison. Not knowing him, he was compelled to seek information from his chaplain, and proceeded to inquire, ‘ Pray, Mr Fitzgerald, don’t you like watercress ?’ ‘ No, Your Grace; I don’t belong to; your Diocese,’was the reply which so pleased Whately that he gave the first good living at his disposal to Mr Fitzgerald, who afterwards rose to be Bishop of Killaloe, and is known as one of the best editors of Bishop Buller’s famous sermons and ‘ Analogy.’

I suppose you have heard of the eminent consulting lawyer who wrote three fists, all so infamously bad that only his clerk could read one, only himself the second, and neither they nor mortal man the third. It will be seen what a valuable qualification this was in a man who got his living by-solving difficult legal questions as he could always escape conviction for error by pleading his opinion had been misread Dan MacSlattery’s hand was of a similar character, so it came ':o pass one day that on sending an order to the store for a clay pipe he got cayenni pepper. 4 Begorra I niver saw pepper with a soldier’s coat on like that before, but we’ll thry it on the steak. Here ye are Paddy and Tim and Biddy have the laste taste of the nice red pepper. . Bad luck to ye, ye spalpeeens, what are ye crying for ?’ * ‘ Oh, be the mortial, and shure its the roof of-me mouth that’s clane burnt away altogether Bad luck to ye for pepper, its the devil’s own pepper ye are, shure its what he must be keeping for his own ating. Give me a cup of tay, May for. the love of the awnts, shure its in Purgatory me mouth must he. The curse of Cromwell on tho that made j the infernal stuff.’ 4 Arrah be quiet, Dan *

and don’t be spaking like that foreninst the child er.’ ‘Be quiet is it, and me mouth all wan blister. 111 sling th stuff in the fire. Nor waste the blessed crockery, it s the blessed mate I’m thinking it a sin to be wasting and I mortal hungry, but into the fire they goes. Shure me throats all on fire, and I’ll thry if a dhraw of the pipe won’t aise it. that ■ storekeeper, its his behind I’ll be kicking to-morrow as sure as God made little apples. Shure 1 can nayther ate nor shmoke. ■ lapyx.