TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7964, 15 February 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

After the chorus of very proper denunciation of the microbic mode of the trailing; skirt, we are now warned by tbe .London Daily Express of other dangers which threaten lovely women. These are the "tonsilitis stole" a&d "the neuralgio bat." A throat specialist has informed the Express that there is great danger in the fashion of wearing a wrap with one end tossed over the shoulder so as to cover the throat. We have not the least dourt, says the paper, as to the correctness of the prognosis that this fashion will lead to "a vast increase in diseases of the throat," for nothing renders the throat more susoeptible to cold than the practice of muffling it up in cold weathor, and •uncovering it at the first rise in tbe temperature. Then is "the neuralgio hat," so called because its weight induces neuralgia.

It is interesting to speculate as to the probable feelings of a Ger man officers' mess, for instance, if some member were to communicate to it the incident recently related by tbe Daily Telegraph's New York correspondent. A lieutenant of the U.S. Coast Artillery is at present ostracised by bis brother officers, and has to face examination on the charge of •'snubbing a soldier" It is alleged that he went into the orchestra circle of the Lyceum Thaatre, where he had booked a seat, and found a' sergeant of his oompany seated not far off; whereupon the lieutenant went to the ticket office and got himself transferred to a seat further apart from suoh humiliating oompany. It is flagrant violation of the healths sprit which, it is pleasant to note, an American does not lose when he becomes an "officer and a gentleman."

Several of tbe members of Qthe British Cabinet have resigned their company directorships, in accordance with the dictum of Mr Gladstone which was supported in later years by Lord Rose be ry—-that no statesman can with propriety continue to manage or share in the management of a private business while acting as a Minister of the Crown. At one time tbe members of the Ministry held between them as many as 60 responsible posts in public companies. One of the prinoipal arguments relied upon by Mr Balfour in answering criticisms on the subject was that many able men would refuse to take any part in State administration if they were compelled to "saorifloe" established private .interests, especially as the sacrifice might be rewarded by unly a very brief tenure of office. This contention carried much weight in the House. J Mr Swift M'Neill suggests that a Bill should be passed rendering the holding of directorships by Cabinet Miaisters impossible in future.

. Mr John Burns, Leader of the Labour Party in the British Parliament, on Christmas Day, visited Wandsworth Workhouse, and delivered an address to the inmates. He said: Some time, in this country of ours, we may be able to solve in a more excellent way one of the problems that have brought you and me here together this morning. In the solution of that problem w« shall want just aa much your help as we shall want intelligence and improved laws and better administration. Institutions like this, if they were as you and I would like them to be, would be only places of resort for the halt, the maimed, the sick, and the blind, instead of, as they now often are, a refuge for the able bodied labourer, throngh bad conditions, cruel environment, and man's inhumanity to man in tbe past. In your sons and old companions outside, when they come to visit yon, you must inculcate steadiness of character, purity of thought, abstinence from drink, freedom frpm the temptations of vice and gambling, that too frequently are the downfall of your class and that to which I belong."

W, Bird, the Inspector of Native Schools, states that the fate of every successful Native School is to become a Board School. He says: "we bring these sohuols along until we oan hand them over as a going concern to the Board of Education. The latest instance is the school at Te Kuiti, which passes to the oontrolj of the Auckland Board of Education. - The most intelligent Maoris wno have children attending school are themselves fully alive to the advantages their children reap by being able to understand Euglish beyond Standard It. Attention is also paid to instruction in the laws of health as far as they specially apply to Maoriß. In thirteen Maori Schools there are carpenters 1 shops, at which i the boys are taught to make articles of furniture most in demand among the Maoris, and in at least five of these thirteen schools the workshop buildings have been supplied by the Maoris themselves. With regard to secondary Maori schools, Mr Bird pointed out that carpentering has been for years exceedingly well taught at St Stephen's School, in Auckland, where the boys of the school constructed the new building after the old one was burned down.