The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1879.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 313, 12 November 1879, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1879.

Life in England was pronounced tolerable by a lute statesman " were it not for its pleasures," Life in New Zenland might also be pronounced tolerable were it not for its holidays. We do not object'to holidays, far from it! We know that, like washing days, they arc' necessities of existence; but it is the extreme irregularity of their recurrence which makes them intolerable, "iiurin« one season of the year they will come in showers, following one another with startling rapidity, tripping up each other's heels, and leaving but brief intervals for work and reflection, At another time of the year we go for months without sighting one, and the wayfarer is weary and exhausted before a solitary small holiday oasis is reached. Holidays, ton, have an unhappy knack of falling on inconvenient days. They take a delight in coming on a Sunday and having to be transposed, and if they can't tumbk on to the first day of the week, they love to turn up right in the middle of it, and have to be pulled back to the beginning or pushed on to the end of it. Occasionally they fall on wrong days in the month.' We have known them to pick out the 4-th as a day of rejoicing in horrid mockery of business men whoso heartstrings are wont to be drawn out and rasped mi that malign date. Jlow can a man be merry and joyous on such a holiday ! At proper times and seasons holidays are good for us, so is whiskey ; but if during one part of the year' we were surfeited with Long John and at another portion of it we did not »ei- a taste of it, wo should deem ourselves badly used. A good many of our public holidays are regulated by law but not by wisdom, We would gladly see a little of the legislative wisdom which his Excellency so vainly prays for at the commencement of each session manifested in this direction. Why should not a Parliamentary Commission be appointed, not to find out howmany more tens of thousands of pounds orhundredsof tliousandsofacirsof land are necessary .-to keep going the livescore Gamaliels who are annually graduating the five score neophytes com-, mitted to their care and the colony's charge, but to discover -Ist (he nii'in ber, 2nd the frequency, and 3rd the duration of the public holidays best fitted for the health of the community, due re«ard being had to the convenience of our colonial trade. If on sucli a report a bill for the redistribution of public holidays were framed, a popular iustitucion might lie brought into harmony wi.h good sense and modern civilization.