THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9101, 29 May 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Mjrton.)

So MB RjHfl/K JTION.3 AMD SuiIMISE i Thk French Revolution—A Rook and A I 1 LAY—Weather AND A "Walk.

Mr Julius Knight has opened hia Wellington season in "The Scarlet Pimpernel." I have not been along to tee Mr Knight this time yet, because I am feeling a little depressed and unwell. But I have been reading the booK in vhich tips play is founded, and the i.ook is of such undoubted tudness tmu I incline to the opinion tnat the play must of necessity be good, as it unquestionably is popular, i have read a good many books ol ! fiction dealing with the troublous period of the French Revolution, but never any book that strained the bounds of credulity so far as this book of the Baroness Orczy does. We have as huro a gallant Englishman wno undvjr various disguises, and assisted b.v a band of various other gallant Englishmen, smuggles aristocrats out of Paris and out of France tluiing the very rage of the Terror. The gallant Englishman is physically so huge, and striking a pei'son that it is extremely difficult to disguise him ; but he is so amazingly clever, an 1 lie speaks French so amazingly well, that l>y all his disguises the simple French are cozened utterly. Necessarily, the band of gallant Englishmen associated with the hero—some twenty of them, in all—are also adepts at tiisgaises, and speakers of perfect French. It is all very quaint and very unconvincing. There is positively no reason at all why the gallant Englishmen should do the things he does, or why the band of his associates should risk life and liberty in the same cause;v-but there you are! In the book, this hero is an extraordinary person in other ways. He is, to start with, never quite the same person on two consecutive pages. He has married (the dog!) one of those incomprehensibly beautiful women in whom the cheaper sort of lady-novelist delights: which incomprehensible beauty, being a French actress and a friend of wits and rufflers, is at the same time incomprehensibly virtuous. Roughly splushed in fire and smoke, there is also, of course, the wicked French revolutionary. He, equally of course, is a sinister and revolting person (many of the great French revolutionaries were among the handsomest and most charming men of their day: but never mind) —a person who loves wickedness for the sake of wickedness, a most insensate and disastrous villian. This everlasting English clap-trap about the French Revolution -pish! how essentially revolting and silly it all is! The horrors of the Revolution were such as still make the gorge rise; but why should | we in these "free democracies be so eager to forget the gross and beastly and most infamous abominations from which the Revolution sprang? _ Why should we, free people, so obstinately ignore the obvious fact that the terrible episode of the Revolution still stands as the noblest and most blessed landmark along the path of democracy—at worst the great pang of a glad new birth? It is so easy to pity the fashionable rakes and wantons that minced in finery through their gilded stews, and so easy to forget the great heart of the nation that for centuries had been outraged and shattered half to death, "iou pity t.{ie plumage, but forget the dying bird," wrote a notable American of the Revolution to a protesting English bis- • hop. We want a play showing the pity and the terror of the Revolution, while not stooping to foul the memory of the people ignominy aroused to the pssionate revolt that shook the world and made strong the hand 3 of liberty for all the years to come. And so, I say, I am prepared to find "The Scarlet Pimpernel" quite excellent among plays of the popular sort. All the situations the book are recklessly dramatic; just the sort of situations that the footlight atmosphere can invest with a certain adventitious glamour of reality. Mr Julius Knight, who is really a clever actor, will make the heroine effective shape; and Miss Ola Humphrey will make the heroine lovely and alluring enough to please everybody. I always enjoy these plays that are so utterly unlike life, and withal (perhaps tor that reason) so dehciously amusing. There was a time when I used to take exceedingly long walks, and enjoy them. If you get out, of almost any city, and walk far in the right direction, old Mother Nature will get her gracious arms about you, and you shall find yourself walking right into the heart of things, with some glimmer afar of the very walls of the City of Dream. Walking in any actual city is like reading in a 'bus: thare's no comfort or sense in it. To walk with genuine pleasure, and to gain genuine refreshment, you must walk h".rd and far. You must get well a y from the cramped suffocation . the streets. My friend Paddy vJough (who is staying with me just now, and steadily acquiring an E.iglish accent) often strolls out and walks round the Queen's Di'ive: taking the thirteen miles cheerfully to get an appetite for dinner. Thfcn he tells me anecdotes of the Irish Bar and the big world away yonder, and id really happy for the evening. A friend in Tasmania—somewhat of a champion in his class, both as friend and walker, bur. now, alas! wallowing in politics with the submerged tenth—to this friend, fifty miles tramp under g>,od conditions was a merenothmg, a datail of the week's amuiemen'. One morning very early, hj.! set, ojt from a place away south, walked uvur hill and dale sixty-five ni iljs into H)bart, reached home, bathed a id dined, and then wentgayly to his el ib and played billiards till ihid.ugrit. Exercise like that strikes 'ins as a sort of extravagance; but

every man t:> his humour. I once - walkad ovec the Blue Mountains in Njw South Wales', from Bathurst to S,d ey:; but I spent five days over tne irip, and had "many meditative iricervuln by t':o way. To walk is gund (or th • bo ly and the spirit; but yoj iioed tj walk wisely, with an eager <>v around for the stray

brother tunl the lame dog. All this by of leading up tojthe fact that in »£<ltw Zealand I have not walked much. In Dunklin, to start ■with, I was troubled by the gout; in liwrcargill, the wise man atays

resolutely indoors, «ifiA so avoids repining and grim despair; in Christchurch it is too hot and dusty to walk; and in Wellington—well, in Wellington one has no time. I did know a man once who walked two miles for exercise inAshburton; but he was a somnambulist, rest his soul 1