TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3051, 23 November 1908, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

WHO WILL THEY BE? There can be no doubt that both Mr Hall-Jones and Mr McNab will be greatly missed, and that it will be an exceedingly difficult matter to fill their places satisfactorily, writes the Wellington correspondent of the Christchurch ''Press.'' The possible Ministers most frequently mentioned in the party last session were Messrs Baume, Hogg, Field, Wilford, R. McKenzie, Buddo and Laurenson. The opinion was generally expressed that Messrs Hogg and Laurenson would be out of court on account of their well-known Socialistic tendencies. Mr McKenzie, it was thought, would have to be content with his Chairmanship of Committees. That

would leave four others in the running for the vacant portfolios, and of these Messrs Baume and Buddo should have the best chance. Mr Baume would make a good Minister of Education, while Mr Buddo would at all events be conciliatory as Minister for Lands and Agriculture. From whatever point of view you look at it, however, it is extremely difficult to make a choice, and the issue will not be simplified by the result of the second ballot, for amongst all the Government candidates whose fate still hangs in the balance, there is riot one single man who is equal to Cabinet rank.

COMFORT FOR CANDIDATES. The youthful candidates for parliamentary honours who thanked sundry constituencies for rejecting them last Tuesday evening, need not feel down-hearted because their oratory and gestures were received by the public with amusement. The late air Henry Irving, when at 18 years of age he made his first appearance on the stage, completely forgot his words, utterly ruined the last but one, and was compelled to walk off the stage amid a shower of hisses. Mr Rufus Choate, one of the world's greatest orators, was once referred to by Wendell Phillips, another great orator, as "a monkey m convulsions." Mrs Siddons, regarded as indisputably the greatest actress of her time, made no impression when she first played Portia to Garrick's Shylock, and she failed to secure a re-engagement. Yet the first monument London ever raised to a player was to Sarah Siddons. Said a critic, "Garrick sputtered, Mossop inflated himself like a bellicose turkey, Edmund Kean croaked • like a raven, John Philip Kemble had chronic asthma and spoke in a high falsetto, Macready stammered and grunted, Holland snuffled." In politics, of course, numbers of such instances could be quoted. Disraeli's is probably the most famous case. The House of Commons would not listen to him whep he made his maiden speech, and in his irritation he told them that the time would come when they would listen to him. How many men have made a similar prediction to themselves and have not seen it fulfilled, is another question. All these people, however, had either genius or great talent.