THE PENALTY OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 228, 24 January 1885, Page 3

THE PENALTY OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH.

A delightfully verdant correspondent in Parnell "writes me tlmt '• Auckland society is not all that it should be.'' that it " contains; many humbugs, hypocrites, and chains," and that " ono of its most prominent characteristics is a species of weak-tea-sj'rup-and-stale-cake morality, which protends to iind heroism in howling- fanaticism and elevates sacerdotal cadging into a sterling virtue."' The young man who sends this during philHpic, and who has doubtless insured his life /'or a substantial amount against assassination or insiduous death by the deadly tea-urn and indigestible plum cuke, signs himself "Jupiter/ 1 Jnpio. lad, you must be in the green and tender leaf of youth. I warrant me not a score of summers have ripened the down of that microscopical fluff Avhich your immature vanity deludes you into calling a moustache. Take then, from yours truly at second hand, the calm reflections of sad experience, nor walk longer in the paths of folly. What, you will tell the heroic truth r You will become a rising young satirist ? You will take society by storm, lash its frailties and follies with a gall-laden goosequillV L\o to, young man; get thee to a nunnery. Jupe, look at me. Fix for a moment your eagle glance on this wan and worn visage, this bald head, these shoulders bending undo- a weight of woe? Dost thou know what did it? Kot years, though lam older than yon ; not virtues, though I am better; not knowledge, though in a Civil Service competitive examination I could wrest from you the glittering prize of an appointment us head whisky-taster to the Great Panjandrum of the Biggest Wooden Building in the World. Jupe, I tell you the ghastly truth — for eighteen weary years I have written and published the naked verities of wholesome censure, which is why this melancholy thusness ; why, in short, not the

ghost of a solitary condemned copper token lingers about the recesses of these shrunken and thread-bare pockets.

Oh, Jupiter, Jupiter, Had I but served the Devil with luilr 1 the zeal That 1 have served the people and the right, He would not have left me in my old ase Without a big- bank credit balance. Take the advice of a. broken-down old man, June, get the billet of cashier in a bank and do the Pacific slope with the posh ; start a new sect and rake in the piles from the offertories; commit a successful burglary on a jeweller's shop ; join the Salvation Army and run for a field marshal or treasureship ; in short, do anything but be honest, and the world will rear itself on its land legs and call you blessed, poets will sing poeans in your honour, and when you pass in your cheques you will have a leviathan funeral and a gorgeous tomb.