RELIABILITY. (Queen.) FEARFUL EXPLOSION OF A TORPEDO IN SYDNEY.

Waikato Times, Volume VI, Issue 309, 7 May 1874, Page 2

RELIABILITY. (Queen.)

FEARFUL EXPLOSION OF A TORPEDO IN SYDNEY.

Fevered with doubt, racked with dread, feeling in the grip of the stronger, and that we are being made the prey of the '.mprinciplecl we know that, left to ourselves, we are lost, Tuis is especially true if we are women cast into the crooked paths of business for which we have no natural aptitude and no special education. We are robbed with our eyes open, yet cannot help ourselves j like those hapless creatures of old romance who wore always being met by banditti in the fore-it, and put to strait? of the most direful kind. Then com 3 ono who offers to help us out of our distress, and to meet our rogues on their own common ground of* business.' Ho is like the gallant knight who was sure to turn up at the* right time, cutting the cords that bound the tender fair one to the tree, and then start ing in pursuit of the robbers, whdni he defeats, no matter what the odda in the fight. So with our modern Great Heart, our trustworthy friend reliable at all points, when he takes our affairs in band. He goc» through the account! wherewith we have been overwhelmed* and docks our rogue of his ill-earned fifty per cent. The flittering tradesman who has robbed us with a smiling face while professing his special desire to serve us rather thaft himself; the genial trustee who sends us hams and grapes out of the proceeds of our own fortune, which he has used to build up his own ; the scampish lawyer who has traded on our ignorance — each and all are like the ugly spectresmasquerading as noble thanes and knights when touched by Ithuriel's compelling spear. lie reveals the hideouaness of their villany, and their is no way of escape for them. He releases our entangled affairs and rescues us from the jaws of the lions ; and whatever he purposes, to that we assent joyfully, sure of his wisdom as of his fidelity, sure that hef is reliable all through. Of what good the most ardent, the most poetic lore that ever lifted dull humanity to the rapture of the divine, if ib is not accompanied by that staying quality of reliability ? Poetic lote, however glorious for the time, if of that fluid character whereon no reliance is to be placed, is only a snare for the unwary, and a sorrow to come for the one who professes as well as for the one who accepts. It maj be true enough at the moment, and there is no question of intentional deception ) it is simply unreliable ; and the mischief wrought is all the same as if it had been a -voluntary «in and an intentional deceit* But the love that can be trusted ? It may be duller and more prosaic than this rapturous possession, but it lasts. It is of the kind that Wears ; that may bo relied on to stand the strain of life — the deadening influence of habit, the jarring shocks of temper, the searching trials of misfortune. That beautiful poem of the unreliable kind withstands none of these things. By the very law of its own fluid being it drifts away from one object to another ;' and to trust to it for stability is to lean on a broksn reed and to make one's bed on the shifting sand. But the one that is reliable is as the staff that no power of life or death i can break, the granite rock that even time itself leaves practically untouched. So with alt the circumstance* of life and! all the relations in which men stand together. The unreliable temper— wbat a perpetual misery that is ! To live with a person who is never two days alike — who goes to bed' as an angel, and gets up like a fury ; who is mild and com* plaisanb on Monday, wrathful and full of opposition on Tuesday ; who plays with the children in the morning, and" orders them out of his sight for troublesome noisy little wretches at noon ; who it hand-in-glove with the A.'s in January, so that the house is possessed by the whole tribe, and there is no hour in the day wh?n there it security from them, and who has quarrelled with them past reconcilement in February — what can you do with such aProteus ? How can you trust him or make sure of hit liability for a week together? Utterly unreliable) his sweetness of temper, like his friendship, isof no value, because rootless and not to be trusted. Of what good is vis temporary urbanity or his sincerity when the mere force of hi* own fluidity changes him from day to day, and his friendship becomes enmity and his enmity enthusiastic admiration for no better reason than the law of change under which he was born ? What liability, the very thing in which he is deficient, and without which do ardours and no smiles of to-day are worth the disappointing coolne.s and frowns of tomorrow. It is the quality, too, that we need in our man of business. An unreliable lawyer, stockbroker, agent, bailiff — whaUoever functions he fulfils — how can w« get on with him ? He it our ruin incarnate as well as his own ; and tLe very fact that he cannot be trusted in his work is condemnation enough for all the rest. He may be thoroughly honest and yet unreliable. Herein is tper the value oi tl.e word. He may be" forgetful, indolent, impulsive, impressionable, unpunctual. Any one of these fault?, which aie nut moral sins, unfits biin for his work as the care't«ker of our fortune*, and disqualifies him for the office because of his unreliability when in it. An unreliable physician, too, digs the grave for hi* own success. To trust ourselves and the lives of our dt-iire»t to a man whose punctuality of visits is a fond belief nrver trun.lated into ad actuality, whoso sharpness of perception in u thing that comes and goes with the weather and the state oi bis liver, and lets liniisell be drawn nwaj from the arduous dulie* of his profession by any passing fnntasj or pleasure, is to trust ourselves, perhaps to the bi<«t natured fellow in the" world, but to a man so entirely unreliable as to be almo»t ixeloss for thi» nork. Of wuat u«j to it »k-k v.an the lightning quicknesb of diagnosis at one time, when the dull biain 1 lacks even the ordinary power of u second rate nlellret of another? What we want in our plijfriuan )e emphatically reliability — reliability all tLiuu^h, Hot in fnijimciitc, nor by fits and starts, but a stea<ly-g<Mng quality ot tri.ttworthi* ness from end to end, and to the extent to which his natural pow ers may reach. In fact, there is not a function nor a position in life in which reliability is not the mutt valuable characteristic. Genius which sends scamped work as often n noble effort, aud the mainstay of an undertaking not to be trut>ted for time or punctuality; energies which aie heroic on one occasion, then sink below the measure of a child's strength on another ; love that burns like the aun to-day, and'is de&d and cold at mere heap of ash** to-morrow— who caret for such gifti as these ? Beautiful u they are when they come, they are intrinsically worthless, because so entirely unreliable ; and qualities which have not half the show and shine us these have twice the value because always to band when wanted, always to be trusted in and relied on» when they have work to do and responsibilities to fulfil. Yes, it is a grand quality ; 7ft know none grander. It is the very crown, the gathering in of so many notable virtues which without it are of no account, that we might part with many a, good gift bestowed by nature upon man rather than with this which gives vitality to all— this supreme excellence of reliability. With it a boor has his worth ; without it, ft demi-god his dangers and his valuelessness. It means everything that is solid, everything that is trustworthy, and no one is so great that he can do without it, no one so humble that he is not ennobled and n ado of value with it.

Our telegrams a few days ago announced the occurre nee of an accident from the explosion of a torpedo in the ■ hop- ofMr George Benthien, plumber, Phillip Street, Sydney. The circumstances connected with the explosion are narrated as follaw* : — A few days age some person connected with what isknown as the Torpedo Corps, a branch of the Naval Brigade, sent to Mr Benthein a torpedo case, which had been nad» some time before for the Government of New South Wales. This torpedo Mr Benthien had instruction* to render watertight by pitching and soldering. Mr Benthien, who states that he had no idea of any portion of a charge remaining in the case, says a little before seven o'clock, he put on the fire in his shop on the ground floor, facing Phillip street, two vessels, the one containing solder, the other being filled with liquid pitch. The torpedo, he says, he put within a few feet of the fire, so that it might become so far heated as to receive the more readily the pitch and solder. When the explosion took place Benthien says that Forster was standing over the fire and near the torpedo stirring one of the vessels in the fireplace, and that he. (Benthien) was standing alongside his bench, on the other aide of the door from the floor, collecting his tools preparatory to setting to work at the torpedo, which he mentioned he had just touched with bis hand, and found to be warm enough for the purpose. Near Benthien stood a boy eleven years of age. While the three occupants of the room just mentioned were in the position described, the house was violently shaken, as if by an earthquake, and Forster was observed by Benthien amid a shower of pieoes of brick and a cloud of dust, to be violently repelled from the vicinity of the fireplace, with bis clothes all torn and covered, to* gether with his face and hands, with pitch. Benthien, who does not appear to have received the slightest injury, when he had recovered from the consternation into which he had been thrown, picked up Forster, whose clothes were smouldering, and carried him to the water-butt in the yard, into which he thrust him to quench the hot pitch which had been thrown over him by the exploiion. The boy who ■tood beside Benthien had, like himself, an almost miraculousescape from death. He escaped with a bruise on one of his legs from a flying piece of brick. Some notion may bo gained of the violence of the exploiion from the results. The front and sides of the chimney over the fireplace fell to the floor. Both windows were blown out, and portions of the glass, frame, and shreds of window-blind were to be found on the opposite side of the street. Portions of the bricks from the chimney were propelled violently against theopposite « all of the workshop, bringing down the platter, and leaving indentation! in the wall. Hue platter was dislodged from the ceiling. The window of a back parlor which opens from tile shop was alto broken. Upstain, plaster wai brought down from the ceiling, and ornamentt knocked down from chests of drawers and tables, and broken. In the front parlor o»er the shop, the mantle-piece— over the down-stairs — was broken to pieces, and tire plaster all' round it was rent from the floor to the ceiling. It is considered fortunate that the front door of the workshop was open ; had it not been so, it is coujeotured that the explosion,being more confined, would 'hare rent the house from top t<v „ bottom.