Our Wellington Watchman.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2872, 13 April 1888, Page 3

Our Wellington Watchman.

We are all oil the qui t'm respecting the promised visit of the English football tpam, and it is said that a match will come off on tlie Basin Roserve on Wednesday, 25th inst, I fancy, unless English football lias wonderfully improved since I last saw it) that our home team will give a far better account ol themselves than our cricketers were able to do. Football is certainly the Now Zealand national game, and it is as certainly not the national game of England. I shall make a point of attending, In fact, I always attend football matches. Some years ago, a wild-beast tamer, who fool-acted in public with a couple of Jflkjpl. man-eating tigers, noticed, iqlwrew. he exhibited, a certain redhaired, cross-eyed individual among thp audience. His constant presence" and look of eager expectancy, annoyed the tige?-tampi', who eventually interviewed his ' Constant subscriber,' and asked the reason why he followed him up and down the country. "Sir," replied Rufus, •' some day you will get mm, aucl those tigers will Jail you;

as 1 never yet saw a man killed by a tiger, / want to k there." Now, I have soon every variety of accident at football matches, but nevor a man killed outright, I don't want to seo a man killed outright. But, if one is killed -and it's only a matter of time-/ want to be there. That's why my beautiful and familiar form graces all football matches,

The Evening Post had a very good leader the other night, headed " The New Zealander of the Future." The Post is satisfied with the prospects, moral and physical, of the coming man, but is rather crushed because Young New Zealand of the present cms don't take much stock in Jack the Giant Killer, Puss in Boots, and fairy lore generally. To me, this seems one of the most encouraging signs, a sign that superstition does not find good rooting ground on New Zealand soil, that the young people have a more logical cast of intellect than their forbears, that tliey will revere nothing unless it be worthy of reverence, not simply because it is ancient and moss-grown. Our fairy lore, and much, very much, of our religion, are simply old Aryan sunmyths, once full of esoteric moaning to those who first taught through symbols or parables those great truths of nature which time and tradition have Mrrupted into fairy rubbish and the like. I cannot see that the blood and slaughter with which such stories as Jack-the-Giant-Killer, David and Goliath, and others teem, can be of real benefit to the youth of this or any other country. British children imbibe, or did imbibe, so much mystical flapdoodle with their mother's" milk, that many of them, their whole lives through, never quite knew where the real ended and the ideal began. Surely, in the vast story of human existence, in the episodes of human love, sufiering, and heroism, in nature's magnificent or beautiful panoramas, there is food enough for all that is loftiest and best in human imagination, without dragging the young mind through blood-stained shambles, or teaching it to grope 'mong ghouls and the tombstones and cerements of the dead. The Young New Zealander, in refusing to take his religion and superstition at second hand, is simply obeying that great natural law of evolution of thought which in the past led the travelled young men of Greece to refuse credence to the deities and doings of Olympus.

The "Sawrian Monster," stuffed with straw, is prowling round the neighborhood of Cuba-Street, Wellington, and may be interviewed, I believe for the small sum of six-pence, I have

not seen it because I dislike to be disenchanted in any mystery in which I believe audit I believe in the mysterious at all, Ido believe in the existence of mysterious monsters—like that seen and chained up in the Wairarapa, for instance, To suppose that science lias classified all the extraordinary birds, beasts, reptiles, and conglomerates on earth or in sea is to be guilty of an impertinence. Some people laugh at the Sea-serpent and thereby demonstrate their ignorance. I have not only seen the Sea-serpent but been on his back. In 1800, in the armed brig Martha and Emily," Captain Carter, in the Lyee-moon pass, we drifted bodily on to the back of a sea-serpent —or, at least, a monstrous reptile, having the appearance of a serpent—and drifted off again. The unbelieving Pharisees and Saducees of the placo and time declared we had slid over a reef, and the place is marked in charts "Carter's Rock," even unto this day, but a rock don't wink its eye and waggle its tail as that did, I am not quite sure that I have not told this true story in your columns before, If

I did and told it differently please alter this to agree with the former yarn, because I hold that a newspaper writer should adhere strictly and invariably to the simple truth.