Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 18, 7 May 1908, Page 22

Notes

Kind Appreciation

Our native modesty prevents us publishing in full the kindly remarks addressed to us this week by an esteemed non-Catholic reader in, North, Canterbury. ' May I ', says he in part, ' as a non-Catholic reader of the " Tablet ", express my delight with the paper ? It is only for the' 1 last month or two that I have been reading it, and it gives me great, pleasure. Your quotations are wonderful. . . As a reader who would like to know more, let me thank you for the pleasure your papier has given me, 1 by its wide knowledge andi its literary excellence \

Misfit Names

The South African war has left us many a ' young idea 'that carries* its date-label in such names- as ' Maf eking ', ' Kimberley ', • Baden-Powell ', and so on. But there is another- phase of child-naming that forces unfortunate units of humanity to carry intolerable burdens throughout life. It takes, for J instance, a good deal of trouble to live up to such a name as George Washington. ' God-paxents ', says the ' Irish Independent \ '• in naming children after illustrious persons, : unfairly pledge them to a career of greatness before they are of an age to understand v the magnitude of the obligation. .The result is seen in the extraordinary roll of offenders reported in Marylebone Lane Police Court recently. Oliver Cromwell (drunk and disorderly) was followed by Horatio Nelson, (defaulter in education rates), ; and a line of namesakes recalling Gay the lyric poet, Green the historian of the English people, Liv-

ing-stone the explorer, and Gore the Bishop, comes next. Copyright 'in names is . urgently needed. Not merely for persons, but for places, too. While the gold boiomi was vigorous some years ago, a Dublin builder called his two-storey houses " Klondyke ",, " Coolgardie ", etc. And the misuse to which music halls put great names is typified in the misunderstanding which led an 'inexperienced London" cabman to drive his fare t 0 Marlborough House when he wanted the " Prince of Wales ".'

* Romantic Abduction '

Strange things get smuggled past the Customs officers at times, and stranger things sometimes, by the necessities of the case, elude the vigilance of the edlitor of a large daily or weekly paper. Last week's Christchurch ' WeeHy Press ' contained a venomous absurdity that, we believe, would never have marred its columns had it passed under the editorial eye. We refer to a grotesque ' snake-yarn ' headed ' Romantic Abduction '. It tells of two ' loviers ' who, after many melodramatic absurdities, were successfully united in matrimony. One was ' a beautiful nun ' with the amazing name of ' Sister Geneva '. She lived in a convent that was situated Nowhere. The other was a Mr. Dye, who also lived at No Address. Dye was a lover of ' Geneva '. So, we presume, was the inventor of the stony. When ' Geneva ' decided to bottle herself up (so to speak) in a convent of Nowhere, Dye disguised himself as a workman, entered that extraordinary convent, found his way to the novitiate, and succeeded in ' urging his suit ' upon ' Geneva ' ! Geneva ' listened to his passionate protestations and agreed to fly with him '. But Dye l was discovered by the Mother Superior and ejected '. And ' Geneva ' was corked up once more. * Then Dye ' burglariously entered ' the convent of NoA\tere. It was midnight" ; ' a blinding snowstorm was raging ' ; ' Sister Geneva ' ' crept barefooted downstairs and escaped by means of an open window '. But the nuns were ready for them— they charged in a body (also, probably, barefooted) out in the snowstorm. The flying couple were ordered to ' halt ' by that military community ; there ensued ' a hand to hand struggle ' ; the nuns captured Dye ; Sister (Old Tom) Geneva got away, but the nuns searched for her all night till, finally, they located her at the 'Kiel Hotel, in the city of Nowhere, and brought her back, by a ' stern command 'to the convent of Nowhere. Having bottled her up, they let go Dye, who forthwith tricMed out of the convent. Having secured his liberty, he, with the aid' of an obliging p'leecemaoi, 'rescued his sweetheart •' ; they went off and got married by a Judge at Nowwhere. And so tne story ended 'In the triumph of love '. As usual in the anti-convent romance, we have here the energetic ' lovier ' who scales lofty walls and barks his shins without the y smallest necessity ; and! the ' beautiful nun ' to whom it never occurs to go o,ut by the customary way— the open front door; In the present case, however, the clumsy fabricator struck upon an unfortunate, but (in the circumstances) probably very appropriate, name for his heroine. By all the rules of the anti-convent* romance, Dye ought to have- brought her down from the top storey in his strong, manly arms, by a rope, ladder two hundred feet long. But there was probably too iriuch •' Sister Geneva ' in him —or Sister Beer-andVWhiskey— to think of that "customary detail. He made up for it somewhat, however, in the delirium-tremens fight in ' the snow-covered fields ' and in the. midnight chase to the * Kiel Hotel. There are probably- some people even still who "believe in these Munohausen ' yarns '. If so, the schoolmaster hats not by any means succeeded in expelling all the ignorance that there is about. "