Clippings.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 173, 9 July 1901, Page 3

Clippings.

TOASTING THE QUEEN. The following is a verbatim report of a speech in giving the toast of “ The Queen ” at a recent agricultural show dinner in Scotland. The chairman began : “ Noo, gentlemen, will ye a’ fill your glasses, for I’m aboot to bring forrit ‘The Queen.’ (Applause). Our Queen, gentlemen, is really a wonderfu’ woman, if I say it; she’s ane o' the guid auld sort. Nae Whigmaleeries or faldenls aboot her, but a douce, daecent body. She’s respectable beyond a’ doot. She has brocht up a grand family o’ wellfaured lads and lasses—her eldest son being a credit to ony inither—and they’re a’ weel married. Ae daughter is nae less than married to the Duke o’ Argyll’s son and heir. (Cheers.) Gentlemen, ye’ll maybe no* believe it, but I aunce saw the Queen. (Sensation.) I did. It was when I took my auld broon coo to Perth Show. I remember her weel —such colour, such hair 1” (Interruption, and cries of “Is it the coo or the Queen ye’re proposing ?”) “ The Queen, gentlemen. I beg your pardon, but I was talking aboot the coo. However, as to the Queen, somebody pointed her oot to me at Perth Station, and there she was, smart and tidy-like ; and says I to mysel’—‘Gin my auld woman at ha me slips awa’ ye needna . remain a WidoWer anither hour langer.* (Cheers.) Noo, gentlemen, the whusky’s guid, the nicht is lang, the weather is wet, and the roads are saft, and will harm naebody that comes to grief. So afi! wi’ yer drink to the bottom. ‘ The Queen 1’ ” (Cheers.)

the outcast journalist. lii every city of the land the newspaper man is an.outcast, says G. S. Lee, in a recent number of of the “Atlantic.” He- knows more people to be a stranger to than any other being in the world. He has no holidays. His Christmas is the record of other men’s joys. His thanksgiving is a ceatau*

taut. Even the Fourth of July and Sunday, servants of the commonest man, refuse him their cheer. The Fourth of July is the day he must be in every place at once, because everything is happening; and Sunday is the day he must make things up, because nothing is happening. His labours are our pleasures. He gets his vacation by doing another man’s Work, and earns his living by watching other people live. The very days and nights turn their backs upon him. The lamp is his sunny night, and the curtain his light by day, and he eats his supper in the morning. His business is the reflection of life. He is the spirit behind the mirror. What is left to us is right to him, and fight is left; sometimes right side up is upside down. The world is all awry to the newspaper man. It whirls across the hours in columns, now in one addition and now in another, but he heeds him never in return. He is a spectator. The show passes before his face —a shut-out, unsharing face. He lives as the years go on, a notebook under the stars, and when the notebook is scribbled out he dies. . .

Men who might be immortal, morning after morning, week after week, year after year, fighting to be allowed to live in tho current of a day, reaching in vain for something that lasts longer than a day to hold to, only to go under like all the rest - a few bubbles a two-inch obituary at the bottom of a column, by the man who is going under next, and the story is told. The man who can furnish quantity and quality at once, who can thrive on the impossible, who can swim in the whirlpool instead of being carried with it, is a man who sums up in himself not only the definition of what the problem is, in literature, to-day, but the answer to the problem. WOMAN, THE QUEEN. Max O’Rell is never happier than when writing about the fair sex, and in his recently published book, “ Her Royal Highness, Woman,” he says much that is amusing as well as gallant. He does not attempt to disguise his dislike for the new woman, the woman who contrives to make herself prominent. His hatred for her is as intense as his love for the ideal “female 1 woman,” whom he knows so well bow to describe. She need not be beautiful, but she should be pretty, with a good figure. Then she should be clever, very cheerful, as punctual as a military man, not very serious, just a little frivolous, artistic, and with literary tastes. But she must not be scientific ; the mere thought of it makes the genial Frenchman shudder. Above all, this ideal woman should be a “ keen, sensible, tactful little woman, who would make it the business of her life to study me, as I would make it the business of my life to study her—a woman who could be in turn, according to circumstances, a housewife, a counsellor, a ‘ pal,’ a wife* a sweetheart, a nurse, a patient, the sunshine of my life, and always a confidante, a friend and a partner.” According to Max O’Rell, there is no poetry in an Englishman’s married life. He cannot make love, and he behaves before his wife as he would not before any other woman. Contrasting English and American women, it is plain that his sympathy and admiration are reserved for the latter. They despise their English cousins, and while they envy their beautiful complexions, think them silly, sat-upon, Ignorant creatures, seedy and 'dovtfdy, badly dressed, and able to talk only of their babies and their servants. English women, for their part, have no great love for American women, and, while they admit their smartness and freedom, think them “ bumptious, vulgar, overdressed, loud, indifferent mothers, selfish wives, and bad housekeepers.” Max O’Rell agrees with none of this. “If I could choose my sex and my birthplace, M he Says, “ I would shout to the Almighty at the top of my voice : ‘ Oh, please make me an American woman ! ’”