SCRAPS FROM OUR NOTE BOOK.

Tuapeka Times, Volume I, Issue 34, 3 October 1868, Page 6

SCRAPS FROM OUR NOTE BOOK.

NO. H.— "ELTJSH."

Ho ! waiter ! serve up to me tS .delicate £>*#<? defoie gras, adorned sJB fragrant iruffles ; pour out to me t}9 royal Johannisberg and imperial ym kay, for I have bathed in PactokM and lined my pocket with its goliS sand.^ Dainty maidens flutter tomß me with caress and compliment ; Scil B in-law seeking mammas offer incej^B at my shrine. The Church winks my " pecadilloes," which are the hci^.l ous sins of the hard-up. Jus%B herself, through veil and, bandage, iM dazzled with the glitter of my goMeJ attributes. Nor intellect;, nor worth ■ nor learning dare contend with me. ' ThQ ttrongest castle, fortress, town, ' The golden bullet knocks them doivj. If I am an ass I am brother to % G-olden Ass of Apuleius ; the adoial tion of the Hebrews was faint compard with modern worship of the Golden Calf. My life seems one triumph progress ; the very bulrushes of modem days will not insult the ears of Midas. Yet all is not gold that glitters ; even the couch of the sybarite is not free .from a ruffled rose-leaf. I am public property j_~ my < time belongs to my admirers, who prove' the cruelest taskmasters. There are no quiet hours spent happily with good old friends, No rambles through the gay green! wood, or over the soft, daisy-bejewelled meadows, with somebody dearer than all the flatterers in the world. None of these delights are left me. The postman— accursed be his knock— delivers a daily hundredweight of corresponderice at my door. Widows with nineteen small children under tie age of seven ; curates with impossibly small incomes ; inventors of perpetual motion ; missions ©f more than Exeter Hall absurdity ; hospitals, dispensaries, schools, and the thousand and one crotchets which so-calledphilanthropists start, appeal to "your well-known liberality." You scarce have waded through this mass before your visitors arrive->ifriends anxious for a hundred or two for a fortnight; old college chums, who call you by your Christian name, though you never saw' their faces until then, whom a fiver will content. Sycophants, tradesmen, dandies, collectors, and heaven knows how many else, pour into your jaded ears their complaints, or wants, or wishes. Night offers no respite ; the crowded ball-room, the uncomfortable "reception," or, most fearful instrument .of torture, the fashionable conversazione, fill up your time and weary you into crawling thankfully to a restless couch. What wonder a man tortured thus should, like Timon, quit the gilded scenes of pride and pomp to seek in communion with nature the happiness denied to wealth, And thai; content, surpassing wealth, Tho sage in meditation found.