WELLINGTON ECHOES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 376, 29 April 1910, Page 7

WELLINGTON ECHOES.

(From our Special Correspondent). 25th April, 1910. Now is the winter of our full content Made glorious I) 3' this music of the sphere. In other words, the football season lias set in and we are a new •There are sounds of revelry in the gloaming ami the voices of barrackers make the daylignt comely. The talk is of the battle, and the number of champions that have emerged into the lierce fight of publicity is both large and unexpected. The average man has now something to live for. He listens with conviction to the words of Mr. Millar who as we reaxl in the papers is telling the Australians that this is the best country under the sun, that we have a far better climate than anything on the other side of the Tasman Sea, that we breed better men by far, and that for the boasted smartness of the "cornstalk" we are not deficient in either brains or "push." These words uttered in the festive, sacred football season give a specially dulcet sound to the music of the sphere.

The golfer likewise is out, and from this out will be absorbed in ''putts'' and "long drives.'" There was a big crowd at Trentham on Saturday, with the usual hospitality, gossip and matches. Strangers were much interested to view the scene of the "tragedy" which figured bo prominently in the Law Courts a few weeks ago. The Prime Minister was present and naturally the crowd diseussed the speech of the right honorable gentleman lately delivered in optimistic description of the good times we are having by reason of the plethora of cash and the abundance of the exports. As OS is to 9(i, so is the credit of the Dominion to the credit of the Commonwealth—that was the burden of Sir Joseph's proof at his Rangitikei stoppingplace last week, and it was the burden of the song of conversation in town about the Premier when he went abroad.

Town at the same time was full of accounts from the various northern districts, telling of plethora, and they spelt the word in as many ways as there are items of export. From Napier, from Taranalci, from the Kangitikei, we have printed statements that the labor market is in tile condition of demand transcending supply. The citizen weary 01 the futile jargon of the suburban land markets to which the bottom has not yet been restored, lends an attentive ear to these stories. Not having the best reasons for being enthusiastic about his own surroundings he loves to dwell on the optimistic side of the country reports. He has forgotten Powelka entirely, probably is ready to declare! that lie never heard of the name, laughs when the newspapers public columns ol mysterious prognostications about the late doings in Palmeiston, with awe-inspir-ing details about linger prints discovered and bullets found to match with certain revolvers and clues of various sorts criminal and compromising witli the names of criminals straining like hounds on a leash to get to the public but held back firmly by the strong hands of the police to be slipped anon wlieu tile right moment arrives. All of which is, I repeat, like the idle wind in the ears of superior Wellington.

It is time, too, for listening with pleasure to the hunting stories from the country. These are started by the reports of the pleasant first meets of tin hounds in the Wairarapa and elsewhere and we all talk as if the British pastime of cross-country galloping was our very own speciality. The Briton 011 arrival in a new country builds a fence to keep all sorts of stock at bay; and the first thing he does when that fence is completed is to teach his horse to jump over it; and the horse once over takes kindly to the exercise, in the train of which many pleasant things follow. We are all that Briton. Therefore we read all about the "meets" with much gusto. When the hunt club events are with us then shall every man see ivnat Nimrods there are.

Who does not remember the lectures of Mark Twain Dack in the nineties—a little far back it looks now. Very few of us cared for the style of these entertainments, not understanding tlic stvle of the man. It was too dry, too slow, too drawly. Where Americans listened s,pell-bound, the Britisher, of this part of | the world at least, felt inclined to go to sleep. Nevertheless, the great humorist left behind him a very good impression. He had been invited out a good deal and the people who took pains to entertain him very quickly discovered the charm of his talk and the secret of his ( popularity. No public entertainer ever I left our shores so thoroughly admired and so well liked. The latter effect apparently pleased him wherever he went [ more than any other. At all events, 1 that was the leading point of the speech lie made in returning thanks for his last reception in London. "I thank you for your affection," he said to his hosts and he proceeded to enlarge on the amount of affection he was proud to say lie had everywhere received during his career. That revealed the serious side of his character. The fact reminds us that man can be a humorist who is not more serious than he is of the opposite way. A man who looks out upon lifes eriously and speaks justly of its light and its shadows, never forgets in spite of the wildest acclamations that life is serious, earnest, purposeful, of deep significance. Such a man when he talks at large is a humorist. Without the serious cast of a joker degenerates quickly into the mere buffoon. Mark Twain caused so much laughter in his time that wnen he came hero to lecture people expected buffoonery and prepared for sore ribs. When he did not give them what they expected they began by voting him dull and slow, but they ended by appreciating the depth of his character. It is what the world at large lias done. It was not mere buffoonery that enabled Mark Twain to achieve the great exploits of his record. Early in life he made a fortune off his pen straight; later ho lost it by the bad business of those with whom he was associated; quickly be recovered what he had lost and now that he has gone his ymbiishers are telling the world that he leaves something more than £200.000. The -world has not done that for a buffoon.

It has treated the wit well because of its recognition that with the wit of the man there was mingled much wisdom. The wisdom was bound up with the wit so closely that it required some effort on the part of the unfamiliar to separate them. But in the end everyone recognised that the sparks so nnieh admired came from an inexhaustible fire of sympathy, knowledge, experience, geniality, justice and all the virtues, especially to men who are honorable, generous and manly. The world will understand well how he was so successful with tlft pip'"'? pen Ii:.« T* w'll ta'-n no doubt to heart the noble lesson iie

gave of manly determination to pay his debts bv the sweat of his brow. lint when it is asked to consider the earnings of the writer its course ought to be clear. It ■will be useless to talk of the vast superiority in earning power on the side of the humorous pen for the simple reason that there was only one Mark Twain. If what the publishers tell us is true, he must have been making something not far oil £'20,000 a year in his last years. In 1894 when he was lecturing in Wellington he had not got rid of his liabilities. These indeed he went on mowing at for some years after that date. Say he was clear by 1900. Then as he seems to have been fairly quiet in the last year and si-half the calculation of £20,000 a year for ten years brings his fortune out about where the publishers put it. Compare the £IOO,OOO left by Charles Dickens after his strenuous life work; consider the extraordinary luck of Trollope, who made £OO,OOO by describing bishops and deans in the spare time lie had from his duties at the Post Office, where he was a hard-working official, and his K>.vhunting, of which he was an ardent devotee; picture tne success of llacaulay's, history, with its cheque of £25,000; j take oIT your hat to the pretty Trilby i that brought £IO,OOO to Du Maurier; I rend the golden stories of the elder Dumas who coined money by those marvellous feats of creation; admire the velvet coats of the late Mr. Black and the lordly castles of Mr. Hall-Caine; ransack all the literary histories of the past, and you will find nowhere so tremendous a wage as that drawn by Mark Twain from his combination of wit and wisdom.

Were I inclined to advise any humorist what. I should feel inclined to say to him would be this: "If you have the necessary combination go to America, for no other country will ever pay anybody the Mark Twain rate.'' But even this would hardly be correct, for the buyers of Mark Twain's wit are found in every country. Anyway, in the midst of our grief at his departure we can safely declare that we shall not look upon his like again for many years, if ever.

, » * * * We have had an extraordinary exposure of the methods of the Harbor Board —of, that is to say, its method of deciding what is reasonable and what is reasonably near the thing ordered by the Arbitration Court. An award of the Court fixed as the maximum truck loads five hundredweight for one man to push along the wharf, and for two, twelve hundredweight. One can understand that the, reasonable idea of the Court was to make sure that no man should he overstrained by his employment. Now the slings of the ships are not bound by awards of courts; they pick up what they can si one grab, and dump it down anywhere, if the place happens to 'be a truck which a man or a couple of men have to wheel into a stove, the natural impulse of the stevedores is to dump the whole load of the sling into the truck. But you cannot exactly determine the weights of siings. Therefore there is a clause in the award which savs that the weights as declared by the Court must be adhered 'to as nearly as .possible. The custom therefore grew up of loading up the trucks by 50 per cent, more than the award allowed. After a while the men, not being able to stand the strain any longer, invoked ® Magistrate and at once the bottom fell out of this little strange complication. Fifty per cent, said the Magistrate, is not a reasonable reading of the provision, and the affair ended in a nominal fine. But the men will not have to run any further risks from overloads. We may wonder at the moderation which did not press for more than a nominal penalty on the ground that there was a legitimate difference of opinion. Where is the legitimacy?

The Court of Appeal lias given the Australian journalistic importation a i pretty firm demonstration of the fact that it is not in the best odor at Court. The keeper of the Court had got £IOOO out of the paper through a. jury for libel and the owner wonted a new trial. Leave was refused in the most peremptory fashion. The morals of lawyers is, •'Don't go back on your line of defence; after pleading justification, do not come into the Appeal Court and say that you did not attempt to justify." And "for the newspaper it is, "Don't mistake abuse for fair comment. To call a man a Herman galoot is not fair comment anyhow, and it is abusive." 'Nobody, of course, knows what a galoot exactly is. But that renders the judgment all tlia more impressive. This decision, together with the decision to uphold the conviction in the criminal case against one of the staff of the same paper, makes the world somewhat too hot to hold that publication. Public opinion is not satisfied, however. There are peonle' who are hinting that when a journal is convicted of 'bad behaviour there nre precedents in the law for shutting it up altogether. That would, of course, be the ideal way of getting at a proprietor who lives afar off on'"the garbage his servants publish for him here. It is worth considering, chiefly for the reason that nothing less than suppression -will prevent a perverted public from revelling in garbage.