Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 - 1901), Wednesday 16 November 1881, page 2


'COSMOPOLITE' LECTURES 'THE PILGRIM.'

TO THE EDITOR OF THE INQUIRER.

Sir,— It is very consoling for me to reflect that no man is wise at all times. I have not been an exception to the general rule, so far as I can recollect. For instance : when I dwelt at a celebrated hotel at Wash-ington—a palatial residence, with dinners fit for a prince, and thought that I might survive there, and not pay "fifty cents

for a word with the landlord" ; half that for looking at him ; ten cents for "a word with a waiter" ; ten cents to be shown to the dining-room, and exactly one dollar to get to my room in the tenth story —when, I say, I had foolishly imagined that I might breathe there and not be charged for it, it turned out that these things couldn't be done, except at the regulation price, and I had to leave Washington, or stay, and be ruined. Further, when, some months afterwards, in the gay French capital, I hoped to "hang out" at a fashionable Hotel, and be lit up of an evening at something like an "honest light," I found that my landlord had a knack of putting down deux chandelles

in his little bill, when I had only had one, and that one a villainous, sputtering "piece-of-mischief ;" and furthermore that the said candles had a knack of being spirited away ere they were used ; and that lastly the enterprising landlord had another knack of charging a franc a piece for all candles retailed to me during my stay—a proceeding which cost me some moments of grumbling. Also, when I imagined that the Turkish bath was Dante's ninth heaven, when administered by real, original Turks, I found it a mean, sneaking subterfuge for a middle-class Inferno, and nothing more. When people talk to me now about

Turkish coffee and Turkish baths, I go home, straight, and take a bath, of my own, to wash off the sensation. As I go through life I find that I acquire wisdom. I have not met any one yet who was, really, born with it. But I have met with a good few who believed that they were, and who, at the same time, were ever anxious to administer this birth-right to others. When I wrote my chapter about the blacks I knew that the West Aus-tralian Aboriginal is a sand-groping vagabond; that he doesn't comb his hair, nor wash himself— the last he dosen't do because he is a foreigner ; he is as innocent of soap as a French hotel ; that he don't masticate snail-patties, like Parisians, saur-kraut like Germans, or tallow "flare-ups" like Muscovites; but that he does cook

meals that he couldn't always describe, except by making wry faces, to show their degree of excellent vileness; I knew also that he was great at painting his body, especially the face, the cheeks whereof are often-times ornamented by a blush; I knew that his 'belief in anything' was perhaps as doubtful as that of many of his white compeers who believed in social common-wealths of the aboriginal cast. I knew all these trite things, and a whole lot more with which I might have lent my hand to throw dirt at the blacks ; but it didn't cine in my line to perform that pleasant pastime. So I had to strike

an opposition chord and keep in with my rote of palmer. I might have to lie like the "Old Travellers," but I would be a Gulliver at it, and the blacks should be 'touched up' with transparent paint. I was a Pilgrim, and travelling under respectable credentials ; and besides, the clothes which I wore were once nearly purchased by an eminent philanthropist — at least, so my shopkeeper told me. What, then, could I do, under such circumstances, but hunt around for theories and "dress up" the blacks ? I found them a history ; I dwelt upon their manly 'buzzums' and highly intellectual traits ; and I undertook to scoop out new things in science to help them look "respsectable," and not so "ily" and "wooden-headed." I succeeded. The blacks looked well in print, for once; the Pilgrim's utterance became public, and his facts were doubted. Wise men shook their heads at his logic, but snickered over his sentiment; and this was just what the Pilgrim had expected ; and he fell thorough-ly gratified to know he had made his mark, and that his 'big words'' had

"knocked up again people," and made people reckon him a Shaker. If "Cosmop olite" had known about those clothes, to which I referred, and if he had stopped to consider that "bathos," or "cant," and a snuffle in the nose, are always on hand in Pilgrim journals of travels, I opine that he would have left unwritten a good deal of the funny criticism—funny to me—with which he attacked my "Don-Quixote of a chapter." Surely, he is not afflicted with joke-blindness ; and though, seriously spoaking, there are parts of the i-hapttr on the blacks which arc cfiimn in-pl&co and sincere enough, still I should have thought tiie picture wn-? height--n-*l too tar to mislead so learned and s'- pli-as;int a writer as ' Co.smop- liu-,' and to caii«« him not to porceive a caricature, with real 6hadings. — Youis vfiry taiilr, MARCUS. A. BROWN.