The Wairarapa Daily. MONDAY, MARCH 19, 1888. ST. PATRICK'S SPOT.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2851, 19 March 1888, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. MONDAY, MARCH 19, 1888. ST. PATRICK'S SPOT.

In our issue of Monday last appeared a somewhat innocent and well-mean-ing paragraph, which ran as follows:

A petition is being circulated m Masterton to-day, which has as its prayer a request to the Mayor to declare a partial public holiday on Saturday next, St. Patrick's Day, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. We' can hardly recommend our friends to support this movement, as closing on a Saturday for any Saint in the calender, is a bad bargain for business people, It will bo observed in the above paragraph wo simply pointed out that it was inconvenient for business people to close on a Saturday in Masterton, and really wo said nothing derogatory or offensive to St. Patrick or any other personage. As a matter of fact, the business people of Masterton won't close on a Saturday without very urgent reason, and it was simply an error of judgment to try and coerce them into doing so by a petition. However well-meaning our paragraph might be, it did not find favor with our local contemporary, who. promptly replied to it. He did not dispute for one moment the position we laid down, because this was incontrovertible, but with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause, endeavored to represent that we intended, by our plain and unmistakeably reference to a purely business question, to tread on the tail of the coat of the traditional Irishman, In the next issue of our local contemporary appeared the following characteristic letter :

CHEAP ADVICE. [To the Editor.] Sin.-Your contemporary the Daily is great on advising, Some time since he condescended to offer advice to the Right Honorablo W. E. Gladstone, Euglandj greatest statesman, but it is not on record whether the 6.0.M. returned thanks, Yesterday he advised the inhabitants of Masterton against signing a petition for a few hours holiday on St. Patrick's Day, but whether the Irish population will thank him for his kind interference, is a matter of conjecture,—l am, etc, Irishman. We will not insult the intelligence of our roaders by assuming that the writer of tho above epistlo is a genuine son of Erin, Our friends from the Green Isle are fairly outspoken, and aro wont to sign their names to any contributions they make to the press. Tho Irishman who capers in the columns of our local contemporary on this occasion is merely a stage gentleman, one of those mysterious persons who form the very complete letterwriter which is kept on the premises by our local contemporary. These men of straw are extremely useful, because when it is inconvenient to aim a direct straightforward blow at an adversary, it is so easy to stick him in the back by means of a fictitious epistle. Now, why should the Irish population have been dragged into the question, unless our contemporary, with characteristic benevolence, desired to sot them against us by representing that we had done them an injury. Fortunately, the Irish population are a little too wide awake to be gulled by pimple traps of this kind. Our local contemporary has frequently flourished a shillaleh, and called out "come on boys!" but the boys knew the difference between blackthorn and bunkum, and only laugh at_," the wearing of the Green," as exhibited by our local contemporary's pocket Irishman. The little letter w,e have reproduced waa intended by our contew-

porary as a " St. Patrick's Spot" for us, and we have much pleasure in acknowledging it as such. An old song says that "St. Patrick was a gentleman, and came of decent people," and fully believing that the good samt knows a clean potato from a dirty spud, we leave, to him or to his followers to say whether anything we uttered was intended to bo offensive and also to ask him his candid opinion of the conduct of our contemporary. And now we would explain to St. Patrick and his friends all about the petition business. We were asked this day week to sign a petition for a holiday on Saturday, and we objected to do so on this ground, "thatbusiuoss

people could not afford to close on a Saturday and we could not conscientiously give our employees a holiday on that day; we pointed out that we were not going to ask other people to do that which we were not prepared to do ourselves." It was then shown to us that our local contemporary had signed the petition, We saw his signature in black and white, and thought we would wait and see whether he would be consistent—whether he would put up his own shutters on Saturday, or whether ho was willing to shed his brother's blood—whether ho was generously giving a holiday to everybody but his. own employees. We grieve to say that even though his patron saint, Mayor llenall, publicly called upon him toobserve last Saturday as a holiday, he did not respond; that though he denounced us for giving cheap advice, he gave a cheap holiday—to other people's employees—and denied one to his own. We ask St Patrick what he thinks of conduct of this kind? Whether it was not better to act as we did, and say " we cannot afford to give a Saturday's holiday," or as our contemporary did, to pretend to give a holiday and yet not give it ? Let us hope that before next St Patrick's day comes round our local contemporary will have cultivated a little truthfulness and honesty, and w ; ll not again place himself in the somewhat equivocal position of humbugging a saint who comes of decent people and is also that bete noire in the eyes of our contemporary, "a gentleman,"