THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8260, 13 October 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1906.

When the last mail left England the new law enforcing Sunday closing was about to come into operction in France, for while the English Sunday is being more and more devoted to recreation and amusement, France, having just disestablished her Ohuroh, has adopted a legal day of rest. The new law meant little less than a social revolution in Paris, and yet the public were not at all excited about it, perhaps because they did not realise the extent of the obange. The closing of the restaurants was expected to cause the greatest inconvenience, for nine Farisianß out of ten have been accustomed to give their servants a holiday and go and dine at restaurants. All places where one feeds, says a correspondent, from those where a bouillion oosts two-pence-halfpenny to those where no peach is to be bad under four shillings, are crammed on the Sabbath, and no one pho can help it, and who wants to dine [decently, dines elsewhere but at a restaurant on Sunday. This correspondent regarded the universal closing of restaurants as almost unthinkable, and prophesied a revolution if it were carried into effe-jt. Up to the time the mail left, however, the revolution had not arrived, so one may conclude

that pettled down. resignedly to the new order of tninga, Interesting evidence was supplied by the employers themselves o£ the need for the law. They admitted that they preferred to shut up once a week rather than to give their employees a holiday and keep opeu, for they could not possibly find oapable substitutes. "If substitutes for these servants are not to be had," it is remarked pertinently, "when do the latter unfortunates ever get a holiday at all?" Apparently tbey_ a"e given half a gdozen days in the off season out of the three hundred and sixty-live. Parisians were also threatened with the abolition of Sunday theatres, a blow only less severe than the closing of their restaurants. The question was how tr* oarry out the law. The managers of theatres presently may find themselves in a quandary, having to decide between closing one day a week or giving the company and hands one day off weekly all round in rotation. The former course might irritate the public. The latter, besides costing money, might vex the actors. One manager ingeniously asks whether stars will like to be replaced once a week by inadequate understudies, and whether the public will like it either. On the other hand, suppose the understudy, instead of proving inadequate, makes a hit? The star will probably be no better pleased, says the manager, vtho knows histrionic human nature.