Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 10 September 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

'jTaperiog Oft [' : /From a letter" by Mrr H. H. Driver in our local evening contemporary, it is made clear that the British and Chinese ' Governments are dealing with the Indo-Chinese opium traffic * on the method (not -altogether sensible of scientific, we think).;, which, in the case of delirium-tremens, is known as * taDerin« : * off.' . T _ ** The Oratorical Geyser ■, Parliamentary reporting is, it appears, carried, on under considerable difficulties in the temporary Parliament Buildings in Wellington. Mr. Wilford's 'verbatim' transcript of a speech (with a motion) by Mr. Mander is said by thc^parliamentary reporter of the Oiago Daily Times to have read as follows :-- 'To carry out,' ' town property,' ' present rate,' ' two and a half,' 'sanitary,' 'yes, yes.' In Western Australia the recent strike of parliamentary reporters resulted in a -notable diminution of the flow of members' oratory; and, in like manner, the difficulties of the shorthand men in our own Legislature may have, had something to do with the. remarkable expedition with which a large class qf estimates was recently carried through the House. After all, it seems that the parliamentary report' is the soap that actuates the geyser of parliamentary oratory. Drunk or Sober ? ". On Friday of last week a stipendiary magistrate (Mr. Bishop), a medical man (Dr. Orchard), a solicitor (Mr. Leathern), and seven policemen tangled themselves up in a Gordian knot of discussion in the Christchurch Court-house. This was done in the course of a well-meant effort to determine whether a woodenlegged man was drunk or sober on a particular occasion on which he stood charged with having been (as Artemus Ward phrases it) ' under the affluence of the intoxicatin' bole.' • There has been unfortunately no lack of subjects, for many a generation, on whom to determine the knotty problem, When " is a man legally drunk? For, like the poor, there has always , been with us the sturdy soaker whose prayer is that of the Maltworm's Madrigal : ' Oh, would that I were fish, perdy, and all the sea were Ale !' has there been any lack of the foul-tongued bibber "of more /ardent spirits, ' One part whisky, three parts mud, The kind that chews the devil's cud, And chews it to excess.' Several provisional tests have from time to time been adopted with a view to determining the question of legal drunkenness. Walking a chalked line is one of these — an awkward test for those living ' pottle-pots ' whose legs go ' lap-tappety like men that fear to fall.' The other tests consist chiefly of tonguetangling phrases, which seem to be a favorite with the Glasgow"" police. The ' suspect ' is liberated if he can utter such sentences as theSe: 'The British Constitution,' 'Pope Sixtus the Fifth,' ' truly rural,' or 'shoes and socks shock Susan.' In an Edinburgh police-station, the men in uniform required the ' suspect 'to pronounce the phrase, ' Burgess's fish-sauce shop.' Even a Good Templar might, be pardoned if he failed to negotiate "~ that tongue-twister. Some years ago the London Chronicle reported another very" suitable test phrase jvhich Lord Ranfurly accidentally coined in the course of a speech at the Royal Colonial Institute in London. Describing the geysers of the North Island, he- essayed the phrase, ' From which issued hissing steam.' His Lordship was as innocent of any form of alcohol as a Rcchabite lodge, but it was not until the third attempt that he succeeded in getting the h's properly located. Rival Forest Giants ' - A cable message in. our daily papers -some days ago ranas follows :— * The forest fires in California have reached me mammoth grove of sequoia trees in Calaveras County." ."There ." is little hope of saving them. One of the largest has already^ been, destroyed. ' The message refers to > the gigantic sequoias^" (better known among us as Wellingtonias) which constitute one of the 'attractions of the beautiful State domain of the Yosemile , Valley in California. What the fate of the historic forest giants has been, we have not yet. been .told-r-the cable-man having acted

'US S* ■■"''I 0 ' ° f UIC SC - sa - 1 StOry Who > hayi "g la »<ied his hero and heroine m a most terrible pickle, leaves them stewing there for a week or month b ww 1 ? 6 'I*?/? °! thC ForestKoi Calaveras County, (now ringbarked and hfe ess) rises to a height of 327 fce'C'the < Father •1 V J°/ eSt ~- (n<W fallen) must have faeen somewhat over four -hiindred feet when it came toppling down, and inside its vast ■ trunk runs a tunnel .thirty-five feet long and from eight io ten feet m. height That was the king of the giant trees of Ca'iforma s mammoth grove. In the matter of height, Gippslar<i (Victoria) may probably claim the monarch of the forests it was a specimen of the eucalyptus anxygdalvm. known locally as he brown and white peppermint tree, idle giant gumtree, -an.l I the swamp gt-mtree. In his Select Extra-Tropical Plants, Baron I von Mueller, F.R.S. (late Government Botanist for Victoria), saw (P. 145) that 'Mr G. W. Robinson, surveyor, measured a tree at the foot of Mount .Baw-Baw, Which was 47 , feet high Another tree,' adds the distinguished scientist, ' was found to be 4,15 feet, high and 15 feet • in diameter, ' where cut in felling, -at a considerable height above the ground.' The 471 feet giant eucalypt represents probably,' says Baron von . Mueller, • the loftiest tree on the, globe.' The karri of South-Western Australia is another of the colossal trees of the Commonwealth reaching, exceptionally, a height of 400 feet. • Mr. Muir ' says Baron von Mueller (p. 149),. '-measured stems nearly 300 feet ..long without a branch; widths of timber as much as 12 feet can be obtained. ' The * Mother of the Forest ' of Calaveras County , has an enormous ' hoult ' on the ground— its circumference there running to nearly 80 feet. The 'Father of the Forest' has a girth of no feet where he meets mother earth. But vast a< these ground measurements are, . they are far surpassed by the rotundity of the periphery ' 6f one of. the famous sweet chestnut trees of Mount Etna which has a stem of no less than 204 feet in diameter. But whether even .this phenomenal girth represents an existing ' record ' in -.vegetable corpulency this present deponent saith not. J

Cardinal Logue .The New York ' cable-cram '", about Cardinal Logue furnished a fresh and striking evidence of the uses of prudent doubt in regard to news messages affecting Catholic persons and institutions; it likewise proved how advantageous Hvet towels wou- have been for binding the brows of some hot-headed Australasian politicians, and how necessary an ice-bag may be as a regular piece of office-furniture, in the- sanctums of some of our daily papers. In. the course of a recent letter to Mr J W McNeale, of Rangiwahia, the Cardinal worked in another r' his neat ' upper-cuts ' upon the sundry precipitate politicians and newspapers that poured such fine furies of invective upon him in connection with the bogus 'interview' credited to him by an Ananias of ,he New York • yellow ' press. His Eminence said in part : I have long since sufficiently contradicted the' .assertions attributed to me (in ah, alleged interview -given Tt6 -an American paper). I accused the colonists oF New Zealand or Australia neither of disloyalty, rebellion, nor a trend'towards rebellion. By the way,'. adds the. Cardinal, with his customary touch of dry humor, 'if the loyalty of. some of the Australian politicians and newspaper writers^be as' strong as their language it is very enthusiastic indeed. ]f;|trfees me a more practical proof of their interest in the Empire and its welfare than strong • language would be to pay their due quota towards the Empire's defence, and not leave a poor country like Ireland to bear mv h more than her due share of the .burden 6i defending their Australian shores against the. Japanese or any other Power whicn may take it into its head to make a descent uporiihem.'

The Gospel of Work . The idle person tempts the devil; and the devil retorts in kmd. • Work,' says Abbot Snow, 'is the protection of moral and spiritual well-being.v Idleness, says Holy Writ, is the enemy of the soul, for it leaves , the. soul open to the enticement* of passion. Envy and anger, -gluttony and lust find their opportunity in times of .-indolence- Crimes .are hatched idleness. -There is much truth. in the , olcl proverb :. Idleness is the mother of mischief. When the body is occupied, the attention of the is fixed, and all the grim spectres" gotten by thought have no chance of entry. Protect a miri "during intervals .of leisure and you secure his well-being, for in time of work- he is safe. Those who are eminent for holiness are always men full of worfe of mind or body; an idle saint is an impossibility." As with individuals, so is it with nations : the evils of society arise from absence of work, from the idle rich or tie idle poor. Decay

and effeminacy, oppression 'and corruption, spring "from the affluence, luxury, and profligacy "of an unoccupied upper class, revolution and rapine and destruction from an unemployed, 9ullen>, ill-fed lower class. Work is a protection alike to the State and the individual : it brings peace to both. A busy people is a thriving people, a busy man is a healthy man, healthy in soul and body.' x

A Wise Verdict In one of his moments of relaxation, Robert Louis Stevenson ' worked off ' a poem which begins as follows :~

' Some like drink In a pint pot, Some like to think, Some not. • Strong Dutch cheese, Old Kentucky rye ; Some like these ; Not I.' . Format least the second time within two or three years, American courts have awarded exemplary damages against saloon-keepers who supplied topers with pint-pots of ' old Kentucky rye ' to an extent which twelve . ' good men and true ' deemed responsible for the tipplers' degradation and death. A -few weeks ago (as we learn from the Milwaukee Catholic Citizen of July 18) a Chicago jury awarded damages to the extent of 1000 dollars (^200) against a liquor-dealer named Abrahamovicz, as the man in whose saloon one Stanley Chullek (a laborer in the South Chicago steel mills) had, for months previous to his suicide, spent most of his time and wages. • Mrs. Julia Chullek,' says our Milwaukee contemporary, ' had vainly pleaded with the saloon man to refrain from selling liquor to her husband. Her pleadings were ignored, and she was ordered to leave the saloon. Three months before his death Chullek lost his .position because of habitual intoxication. The small savings of th* couple are said to have been used by the man to purchase liquor in the place. Only when the last penny of the family had been spent did soberness and a realisation of his actions come to the husband. After a few days spent brooding over his acts and futile efforts to secure work, Chullek committed suicide by shooting himself. Mrs. Chullek (who is a janitress in a South Chicago school) was left without support for herself and two-year-old child. Friends brought the case to Attorney Ossian Cameron, who instituted suit against the saloon-keeper and the brewery which sold him beer, asking 10,000 dollars damages for the death of her husband. Similar action had been brought in New York and damages awarded, but the case was without precedent in Illinois. ' The jury in Judge Gibbons' court was out only a few minutes ' before returning a verdict against the saloon-keeper.'

Suicide— Curious Figures True courage carries its cross even to the top of Calvary And theirs are the coward hearts who

' Fainting under Fortune's false- lottery, desperately run To death, for dread of death ; that soul's most stout lhat, bearing all mischance, doth last it out.'

Pagamsm, and (among professing Christians) an^enfeebling of religious faith and a weakened realisation of what lies beyond death and the, grave, are conditions that favor the faintness of heart, the 'bastard valor,' which yields the fort of life to thfirst bluffing enemy that comes the way and cries • Surrender "' Among our own Maori (as the late Judge Manning tells us in his Old Netv Zealand) suicide was formerly very common The brown men perpetrated self-destruction for all sorts of slight pretexts-such as, for instance, the nagging of an aching tooth. The weakened bond of religious faith has, in our day, be»n marked by an alarming increase in suicide. And it is*' by no means strange to find that it is specially prevalent among those who set the divine law at defiance , through' what has been called 'the vice of the" twentieth century.' 'Among 1 ,000,000 suicides of all classes,' says the^Pftiladdphia Catholic Standard, it has been found that '205 married men with children destroyed their lives, 470 married men without children, 526 widowers with and 1004 widowers without children. With respect to the women, 45 married women with and ii S 8 without children comrmtted suicide, while 104 widows with and 238 wjthout offspring completed the list. On the face of things it would 'appear that in childless marriages the number of men suicides is doubled and in women trebled.'

♦Uncle Remns' '- " ' . -. . . :. - Our secular newspapers that conduct a literary supplement y ' have -been -publishing interesting and sympathetic references "to the r work of Joel Chandler Harris, who recently ' passed but 'i^ut ' Atlanta, in the United States, at the age of" sixty- years. The 1 ""' s thing which they did not tell was this: "that, sometime before '• his death, he was received into the Old Faith, and that hi» J mortal remains were brought on theit last journey from -St." Anthony's Catholic Church in Atlanta. • Printer, lawyer, journal- ' ist^and author, that gentle wiiter's fame will hang by his delightfully original Uncle Remus books, which are things cf beauty and joys for ever to the student of folklore and to children alike of the lesser and thd larger growth. He jumped' into fame in 1880 with his collection of plantation stones, -Uncle ' Remits? His Songs and His Sayings. He worked pretty freely the rich vein of ore that he had struck, and produced in 1884 " Nights With Uncle Remus, Mingo and Other Sketches (1888), Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1898), Daddy Jake, the Runaway, and Short Stories (1889), Balaam and His Master ' (1891), Tales of the Home folks in Peace and in War (1898). Numerous other works were produced by his busy pen, and fnto some of his fiction he wove delightful strands of old plantation folklore.— R.l. P. • Neutrality ' in French Schools ' On the 30th of March, 1904,' says a writer in the Academy (quoted by the A-ve" Maria), the heads of the Lodges ' (in France) ' congratulated themselves upon their success in the schools. It is enough, they said, to mention the late works of Herve", Aulard, and Bayet to show that the school-books now used are written in a scientific and rationalist spirit. Among the works which were thus praised by the avowed enemics'bf the Christian religion, the Corrcspondant refers especially to the Manual of Civil Morals of M. Bayet,. of which more than 60,000 ■ copies were used by children from six to thirteen years of age. "We do not think," says M. de la Guilloniere, "that it would be possible to bring together in the same number of lessons more direct attacks against God and His ministers, calumnies against Catholics, inversions of historic truth, and hatred of France, and to display at the same time so much spurious science." ' And yet there are people who wonder at the great increase of juvenile crime and of unpatriotism in France ! The writer of ' Foreign Affairs ' in a recent issue of the Fortnightly Re-view has a paragraph which is worth quoting in this connection. ' Looking back,' says he, ' on the past eight years, during which the Socialists have been a predominant influence in the^State, the French are suddenly made aware that, while many useful reforms have been accomplished, the discipline of their Army has relaxed, their Navy has visibly deteriorated, their finances have been placed in yet further jeopardy, the possibility of a general strike has come very near a reality, the withdrawal of French capital and its investment in foreign securities has startlingly increased, an extremely formidable and reckless power has been organised in their midst and threatens to tyrannise over the life and .labor, of the country, and a propaganda has_ sprung up which is , warring to the knife against the very idea of nationhood. It is ' as the opponent of die creed which has. .produced these results that M. Clemcnceau sees before him a new and unlooked-for lease of power.'