PEERYBINGLE PAPERS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 295, 25 September 1873, Page 7

PEERYBINGLE PAPERS.

Dickens' worried in death. — some people's pretensions. — improving nature —the PREACHERS. Another newspaper fight over a dead lion. They're worrying Dickens now, and trying.to make out that he wasn't a tame angel on earth. This all comes of the folly of forgetting that the best of us are only men, with human vanities, and weaknesses sticking fast to us as limpets stick to a worldly rock. We begin by setting up our idol, whether Dickens, or any body else, and end by making a cockshy of the same. There's some kind of a heathen savage somewhere, that makes bis god out of a plug of wood, and whacks the harmless timber when things don't go right with him. These Dickens people had better go and read about that savage. The way most of us cut it fat on small pretensions is enough to make a cat laugh. Only the other day I was speaking to a young person, who is a nurse-girl, where I deliver parcels — otherwise a baby-hawker. She dresses d la Yarra-Bend Lunatic, and gives herself as many airs as a retired female grocer. So, says Ito her, says I: "Hast gotten a father, and didst ever have a mother, my deluded child?" " I should rather think so, mt word," she made reply. "Father keeps a ■risk up country, and mother she takes nr washing." Having all my life been on the most affectionate terms with Bankers ; having loved them all, because we're taught to love all men, no matter of what colour ; and having stood up for this down-trodden class, through thick and thin, I couldn't, for the life of me^remember a Banker's wife that had ever taken in washing ! The thought troubled me. "Father keeps a Bank up-country, and mother takes in washing!" The short and long of it was that I sent a telegram to the place, in these words : " What does old Cheeryman do at the Bank of Madagascar?" Answer, "He fills the ink-bottles, when business is brisk, and they want ink; he calls the branchmanager when a customer comes round the corner of the street; he, makes the toast for the clerk in tfcfet morniug ; he sweeps out the bank* every Saturday, and he mostly gets drunk at night, and thrashes his wife, who takes in washing!" This mystery, like others, was settled at once, as soon as you got hold of the right end of it. "Now, see here," said a rather scrubby-looking man, looking over my garden-fence t'other day. "Don't you believe you can improve upon nature — no fear." At the time I was pruning my trees, and felt hurt at the remark of the scrubby-looking man. Presently I answered : " Don't you think that you could improve upon nature by going home, and washing and shaving yoursell." He departed sadder, and wiser ; but hasn't yet washed himself ; so hard a thing it is to improve upon nature*

Many people have been asking me of late what I thihk of she-preachers. I answer that she preaching is one of the wrorigs of woman, that no amount of talk can ever make right. From Mrs. Caudle at home to Mrs. Chatterbox in the pulpit there's only a step. Both must talk, both must abuse something, 6"r somebody ; and so one pitches into* her husband, while the other takes a wider sweep, and turns her tap of wrath on Satan, and the poor, benighted folks that don't happen to be going aloft in her particular gas-balloon. If it wasn't for the Liberty of the Subject and all that sort of thing, my clear boys, I should be for preventing the she-preacher from making a " silly female fool" of herself; and for fining the wretched apologies for Men that go to hear her drivel, just as I'd fine a " drunk and incapable," — especially an incapable. No, no, take my word for it, the woman wasn't intended to preach, except to her unhappy husband (if she has a turn that way), or to the younger children. You don't want "boiled sermons," hashed sermons, twopenny, stolen sermons, sham Christian sermons, pagan sermons, heathen sermons, or boarding-school-miss sermons from the bonneted sex. That's to say, you dont care to bear the same in public. At home, if you're such an unfortunate wretch as to have a longtongued shrew for a wife, you can't well help yourself without running away, and it isn't always convenient to do that. But I say again that the Men — the electro-plated Men that go to listen to tbe she-preacher are — bah! they deserve to be henpecked to death. — '" Melbourne Times."