Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 19 November 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

Men and Maids and Marriage A shrewd priest in Baltimore has been giving the following counsel to young men contemplating marriage >-' Don't always call in the" evening, when she is dressed up. Call -around in the morning, say about 10 o'clock. Go in the bacfc gate and see If she is helping her mother or playing the piano.' Which moves the Milwaukee Catholic Citizen to remark : ' This advice was not, of course, intended to be literally followed. It was mereJy enforcing the suggestion that a young man should see to it that his future wife is something of a homemaker. In the romantic time of courtship the prosaic facts of married life are apt to be ignored. But young men can observe, even while they admire. Are there the indications of tidiness? Is there "the disposition ~ to do helpful tilings? Handy, heady, and deft?— or merely a chocolate-eating butter-fingers? Any incontrovertible evidence that she can bake bread?— you know she can eat cake. She can - dress— but can she dress-make? . Don't be too critical; don-'t • expect too much; but don't "go it blind," either.' Our National Debt In Disraeli's Tancred, Fakredeen says : ' You cannot judge of a man by only knowing what his debts are.; you must ue acquainted with his resources.' This ought to be the, readv answer to those who groan in spirit at the contemplation of New Zealand's bulky public debt. In a recent issue of the Glasgow Herald Mr. Gilbert Anderson replies in part as follows to an editorial lamentation on the subject in that paper : ' It is true that the public debt is but you do not mention -the - fact that this is invested in profitable undertakings— railways advances to settlers, purchase of land for settlement— all of which are self-supporting and remunerative. The balance spent on roads and bridges, if- not paying directly, cannot be said to be unre- ' munerative. The exports, which are per head of population, are the largest of any country in the world. The land laws are framed on the most liberal basis to encourage settlement The farmers are noted for their prosperity. The people earn wages from two to three times greater than is paid here. The cost of living to the working man is less than in Scotland or England*' It is true that the population is little mVe than "Glasgow, but "" whose fault is that? Is it not owing to the apathy of the present generation in Scotland? There is room in New Zealand for plenty of people of the right class. But to my mind what is lacking is any organisation as formerly to advise and encourage the betterment of the people.' Converting a Wife-beater There is a wife-beater resident in the Beech Forest Vic•Tf' •,/r iS -* i f hSbit ' whenever I* an overdose of hckwid hte,un" (which happens occasionally), to belabor his wife .with his ; unmanly fists and turn her out of doors. Sundry of her female relatives threatened vague reprisals. ' But the menace was deemed' by him to be a brutum fulmen; and the pot-vahant lord of creation took his drunken amusement as usual-ac ting as did Joe Miller's bibulous rustic, who con! scentmus ly thrashed his wife whether he found her up or whether he found her abed. A week or two ago the Beech Forest rustic Got. on a spree And went bobbing around ' on his corkscrewy homeward track. •As his wife was ill,' says the Melbourne Argus report, 'some neighbors . carried her away for C . ,?•3 *? S ° me diStanCC ° ff - ' Meantime, three sturdv female relatives of the ill-used house-mother had prepared stout scourges made of inch rope, two feet six inches long They m T *" U " ex P ected ev «"i"g call "upon the returned < drunk ■ and, with their Manila arguments, proceeded to convince him of he leT/and b7 ayS \ '?"" ***** Um S ° Severe * ab °" ' the egs and body with the rope ends,' says the that he cned for mercy. They desisted only when they became wan, '/? " 0 ' UntH thrCe dayS later that the ma was able to leave his bed. The women who took the work of chasing h,m m hand were two spinsters (whose brothers are reputed to be good boxers) and his sister-in-law. He has since stated that he intends to prosecute the women, and "white he is being urged to do so by some of the residents, it is not thought likely that he will bring the case into court.'

A couplet in Hudibras runs as. follows:— ' Women, you know, do seldom fail To make the stoutest men turn tail.'_ - - , Those sturdy Beech Forest women are evidently made of the • stuff that sent the gallant women of Limerick to the^ defence of their beleaguered city walls. Tea Thousand Warriors Bold John Bright's strong point was' not by any means a well developed sense of humor. He wrote, for instance, regarding the book of the noted American humorist, Artemus Ward : ' His narratives lack consecutiveness, and some of them, I 'fear, are not faithful to fact.' Equally bright (no pun' is intended) is the writer of a belated .correspondence in a Wellington contemporary, who takes quite seriously the ponderous ' humor ' of the. threat of ' 10,000 Orangemen ' to break up the proposed Eucharistic procession through the quiet "streets around the Westminster Catholic Cathedral. This is one of the old red sandstone jokes of the Orange fraternity ; and the brethren— and. non-brethren who are acquainted with the history of the society— know ' where the lafture should come in ' and giggle, as in politeness bound, even though the flavor of the jest be decidedly chestnutty. Those' ' 10,000 Orangemen ' must be rather worn and wilted by the amount of work that has been thrown upon their' throats and bootsoles during the past hundred years-and more. They form part of" the army of 50,000 brethren who (winking the other eye) threatened the Crown and the British army full many a time and oft before the first suppression of the society by Act of Parliament in 1825. They hurled melodramatic at ' the Empire before and after the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1829. We also find the 50,000 comedians « tearing around considerable ' against the extension of (partially.), equal civil rights to Dissenters by the repeal of the Corporation and-Test Acts. They threatened to throw the Queen's crown into the Boyne if Catholics were relieved (as they were in 1869) of the obligation of- maintaining the Protestant -Established Church in Ireland. warned Father Mathew that he must not, at the peril'.of his life, carry his temperance crusade north of the Boyne/ But" Father Mathew went and saw, and conquered— and among his^arm admirers and disciples were many wearers of the saffron, sash. The rank " and file of the brethren can do a bit of blood-letting at times— te at the massacres of Dolly's Brae, Carrowkeel, Maghery Tullyoner, Tanderagee, etc But the swords of the 50,000 are of boiled leather, and they do all their killing, and' their other deeds of valor, with their mouths.

In the eighties, they increased the strength of their standing . army by a second 50,000. During the Land League and Home Kule agitations the whole 100,000 spent most of their time vowing that they would ' line the ditches ' north of the Boyne, and wipe out the British army if it dared to say them nay. The' big yellow ' comic-opera standing army has fallen so far below its old peace strength, that only 10,000 'true blues' were ready' to perform deeds of derring-do against law and order—and Popery— during the Eucharistic Congress -in ' famous London town ' The recurrent jest pf the 50,000 valiants was from time to time taken seriously by sundry Irish Nationalist newspapers— during temporary lapses from the true Celt's polite appreciation of even .an attempt at a joue. Thus, in *8548 54 and 1857, they invited the invincible 50,000 < loyal I rebels, not to go all together— for a considerable garrison of those ready volunteers "would, of course „be needed to check the progress of Popery at home— but to send a mere regiment or even a battalion of their picked BobadUs to battle for the Empire on the hard-fought fields of the Crimea and of distant India. But not so much as a corporal's secretary did the gallant 50,000 pasteboard warriors send- against either Russian or Sepoy. And just so many-and no more-of those voiceful but cautious braves would have been found to do battle with the 150,000 Catholics that would have defended from insult with their very lives, the Sacramental Presence of their Lord' Ihe 50,000 are, in fact, like another famous army that was • ml -vincible in peace and invisible in war,.'

A writer in the Glasgow Observer tells how a number of enthusiasts— a good deal more valiant than the 10,000, since the former at least ' materialised '—assembled some fifty years ago to burn the Blessed Virgin in effigy in a public square! Can you imagme, asks this writer, • the uproar that would have followed * f T If p w, ttoh o Pait ° f Cath ° liCS concern5 "g the mother of the Prince of Wales? . . . However, the inevitable Irish-

men had heard of the scene to be enacted, and assembled in great force near the appointed spot, with short, thick sticks thrust up the sleeves of their jackets. When asked for what purpose they were carrying the sticks^ one of them replied: "Why, then, avourneen, we were afraid you wouldn't have wood enough to burn the Blessed Virgin out and out, and so we brought these little kippeens, asthore, to keep up the blaze." The valiant organisers of the bonfire suddenly changed their minds, and found that they had urgent business elsewhere, and the Irishmen had to carry their kippeens home again without making any additional blaze, saying to each other as they returned : " Naboclish, avic." The race has not died out.' Thank God ! The race has not died out. Mixed Marriages In one of his happiest punning epigrams, Samuel Lover wrote : ' Though matches are all made in heaven, they say, Yet Hymen (who mischief oft hatches) Sometimes deals with the house t'other side of the way, And there they make Lucifer matches.'

Some of the gravest trials that afflict the Church in most English-speaking countries are the evils (domestic and religious) arising directly and indirectly out of mixed marriages. In these, of all wedded unions, Hymen has mischief most oft hatches. The bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Milwaukee (United States) have lately been legislating on the subject. The October number of the Ecclesiastical Revie-w states that the bishops wen; inclined to refuse all dispensations for mixed marriages, 'as apparently the only method of lessening the tendency to contract such marriages, but finally agreed, before taking this extreme step, to suggest to their priests a course of action which, whilst rendering the obtaining of dispensations more difficult than heretofore, would operate beneficially in producing conversions. '

Here are some extracts from the Instruction which resulted from the meeting of the bishops, and which is now in force throughout the province :—: —

'In future no dispensation for mixed marriages will be granted unless the non-Catholic party has taken instructions from the priest twice a week during six weeks on Catholic doctrine, as well as on the Sacrament of marriage in particular, and the duties connected with married life. Therefore application for a dispensation should be made only after the six weeks' instructions have been given. . .'

In addition to this, ' all marriages between Catholics should be solemnised at the nuptial Mass, and pastors should insist on this.' And 'no marriages of any kind are allowed to be performed in private houses.' Penny Cables and Penny Post Penny-a-word cables are a consummation devoutly to fte wished. But it looks as if the agitation in their favor has a long road to travel before it reaches its goal. Still thornier, perhaps, was the progress to penny postage. Within the last two years of the reign of Charles 11. one Robert Murray, an upholsterer, inaugurated in a system of penny postage which must be regarded as very generous for the time. Sydney, in his Social Life in England from the .Restoration to the Revolution (pp. 227-8) tells us that 'all letters which did not exceed a pound in weight, and any sum of money which did not exceed ten pounds in value, and any packet which did not exceed ten pounds in weight,' were ' conveyed at a cost of one penny within ihe city and suburbs, and of two pence to .any dlStanced 1S tance within a circuit of ten miles.' The same author tells the sequel. The city porters stormed against the innovation The system was denounced by the Protestants as a contrivance on the part of notorious Papists, to facilitate the communication of their plots of rebellion one to another. The infamous Titus' Oates assured the public" that he was convinced of the complicity of the Jesuits in the scheme, and that" undeniable evidence of it would certainly be found by searching the bags.' The upshot of the agitation that wagged its tongue so volubly against the penny post was this: William Docwra (into whose control the business had passed) was mulcted in damages and costs " the postal system, with its profits and emoluments, became part and parcel of the royal establishment; and the penny rate was forth with abolished.

In 1708 one Charles Povey established a halfpenny post in London. But the Government of the day smote the new enterprise at high velocity and broke it to pieces. , Nearly seventy years later— it was in 1776— a private firm inaugurated a penny post between Edinburgh and Leith. After some years (in 1792) it was absorbed by the General Post Office. Till Rowland Hill got his big shoulder to the wheel of reform, exorbitant prices were many times charged for the carriage of postal matter. Postage on a letter from London to the provincial towns cost ninepence and even more. ' The captain of a ship,' says a historian of the time, ' arriving at Deal, posted a 320Z packed for London, and the person to whom it was addressed was charged as postage upwards of £6.' The Rowland Hill of the submarine cable may, and probably will, have an arduous fight; but the movement for penny cables, having begun, is not likely «) be easily checked. And time and invention, as well as public need, are on his side. Tipping The Sydney Freeman is ' out ' against tipping on travel. It is, however, a forlorn hope. The custom is ingrained beyond the power of any reform less energetic than an earthquake or a revolution. It is bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of railroad and hotel-life in Australasia, in the British Isles, all over the Continent of Europe, and even in ' the land of the free and the home of the brave.' After his lecturing tour around the world, Max O'Rell said in his book of confidences, Between Ourselves : ' Tipping is universal. You find the custom even among the aborigines of the Antipodes. I once gave a copper to an Australian native. " Sir," he said, "it is not a coin of my color I want; it's one of yours." I like a good repartee,' adds Max. ' I gave him a sixpenny-piece, and I never saw such a beautiful set of teeth in all my life.' We have before us a record of a clever young Frenchman, Frangois Dumon, who left Denver City (United States) some years ago to return to his native country, having in his possession which he had received in tips during five years' service as a waiter under the Stars and Stripes. Of this tidy little fortune, no less a sum than was raked in during the year of the St. Louis exhibition. And before us is an extract from the London Daily Telegraph of July 28, 1898, which gives the decision of the High Court of Vienna, confirming the judgment of the Lower Court, that tips are in Austria a legal claim, enforceable at law. Oliver Wendell Holmes recommends his readers to tip the itinerant music-grinder by dropping a button in his hat. He would be a bold traveller who would treat with such levity an evil thar is so riveted' into our social order by tyrant custom as that of tipping. Catholic Freemasons Some time ago a Freemason, of some prominence in the craft in New Zealand, informed us that the bulk of the brethren of the mystic tie in these countries view with disfavor the admission of Catholics to their ranks, and look with deep distrust upon the motives which led to their initiation. And well they may. And now from across the Pacific comes a statement, from a high Masonic source, that the brethren in America also ' hae their suspeecions ' about Catholics that seek to cross the portals of the well-' tyled ' lodge. Joseph W. Pomfrey is a thirty-third degree Mason ; he is likewise editor of an organ of the craft entitled Five Points Fellowship; and in its columns he has recently delivered his soul upon the subject of Catholic Freemasons in the following outspoken way : ' His Holiness Pius X., following the noble example of the long line of illustrious Pontiffs of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, has recently issued an Encyclical forbidding the laity of the Roman Catholic Church uniting with the Masonic fraternity. For so issuing, he is entitled to the everlasting gratitude of Masons the world ovsr, for the very good reason that the Encyclical will have the effect to keep out of the Masonic order an undesirable class of men* A Roman Catholic becoming a member of the Masonic order, and claiming to hold his membership in the Roman Catholic Church, cannot be true to both, and if false to either, he cannot be true to either. It is fair to infer that it is not the sublime teachings of Freemasonry that attracted the Roman Catholic, vbut only the substantial benefits he hoped would accrue to him by becoming a Freemason.'. - • "

The ' sublimity ' of Masonic teaching apart, Brother Pomfrey has spoken well and wisely.