SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1893.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4360, 4 March 1893, Page 2

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1893.

The immortal Thackeray once undertook the investigation of the" snob " man, He followed him like a sleuthhound through nil ranks and classes of society [ indeed, he could scarcely meet a single individual who was not tainted with snobbishness, andatlasthenwoke to the horrible consciousness that be himßelf possessed a touch of it, Our able contemporary, the Editor of the Catholic Times, has just given bis readers an exhaustive essay on quacks; but he has not, like Thackeray, looked for them in every direotion, but has contented himself with a diagnosis of pilgrims and strangers. The following is the prelude and keynote of his observations New Zealand is ihe Southern paradise of peripatetic 11 professors." Sooner or later a large proportion of those ingenious individuals who havo a patent nostrum to vend, or a fad or fancy of any sort to communicate to tho people at so muoh por head, find ihoir way here. And, as another demonstration ot the equality of the sexes, there are as many female as maleperipafetio "professors." Each finds here a happy hunting ground, human game in abundance, and no laws for tho preservation of that simple quarry, Hero come gaily the "phrenologists," tho" palmists," lhemesmorists,"the "electrical healers,"tho "fortune-tellers," the "astrologers," the "herbalists," tho "magnetists," the "clairvoyants." Ono and all they descend on these shores carrying a vast assortment of bad grammar and little else save impudence the most consummate and a perfect unscrupulousness. The idea that New Zealand is a special paradise for itinerant bliow mon is a mistaken one. Milner Stephen after spending a few months in the Colony practised for several years in London and several others ta whom our contemporary obviously alludes bavo done better business in Australia and England than in this colony. After all what does the invasion of peripatetic pro* feasors amount to, They do not oarry mj as muoh money as a circus, and on the whole they afford as muoh [jippemont and interest. Very muoh o£' tjipy earn in a place they ; spend, Ir» some jngtapces people who : jStrouiSi them are of {heo_ ijiion that ihey set yalue for their money, jn jthera dirippointmCDt crowns hope, i md tho nati who has bee'' too san- | juine finds thst lie has gained a j joatly experieneo. We know, tor • Instance, that a certaip palmist, Mrs i SlcOallum,wbo has spent a week or iwointhio town has toested and ' I ) ■ -

astonished a large number of local residents, who neither call her qunok, nor grudge the money they havepaid toiler. On the other hand, we have known a poripatotio professor, like a Yankee dentist who visited Maslerton some years back, to leaye groaning victims behind hiin. To condemn all peripatetic professors iB as absurd as to believe in all, However, oar friend of the Catholic Timis completely gives himself away, On the very same page on which he challenges quaoks he has occasion to reler to lawyers and this is what he says of that eminently respectable profession Tho funny thing is if you get hold of a lawyer who is in a candid mood, which is not often, he will admit the stupendous fraud of the whole system by whioh ho gots his llvingl But the lawyer, to make such admission, must not be exactly Bober. Perhaps oiu'contemporary will agree with us that there is roguery in all trades-excopt printing.