The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-06-27 00:00:00

COMMENTS ON CURRENT THINGS.

THAT was a sad case at the Central Criminal
Court the other day in which a young woman,
whose avocation in life was that of a teacher under
the London Scho el Board, pleaded guilty to a charge
of frauduleetly altering and uttering a cheque.
She had, by diligence, ability, and good conduct,
made consieleraVe advancemnt in the favor of the
Board, and had just been granted an increase of
salary. A cheque was sent her for five pounds
odd, which she dishonestly altered to read fifteen.
and drew the money acc.rdingly. A strange pro
ceedinee for a young woman of twenty-two, who
seems to have been otherwise a very worthy person.
The exp!anation is, however, that there was a lover
in the case; and love has ere now often before
blinded those lost in its passion to the obligations
of integrity. The poor girl had, it is said. taken
the ruinously false step entirely to raise money for
a young man who was "studying for a veterinary
surgeon," to whom she was engaged to he married.
And the man for whom she had given up even her
honesty has since abandoned her! A sadly romantic
story. and one not without its warning. The Board
School teacher new suffers the law'e punishment,
and the eharper pangs of wasted love; and all
because of her unreasoning passion for what has
proved an unworthy object. But her own fall
from the high estate of strict integrity was none
the less reprehensible and none the less mad. We
would not condone her offence, but pity the offender,
full sure that "Heaven has left some remnant of the
angel still" within her. We can only trust that in
the time to come, when the crime and its coast- quences
have been lived down, this erring one may pass out
of the fiery furnace into which her rash step led her,
made strong for rightful purpose through the
suffering which ever follows indulgence in delusive
sin—sin against self or others.

THE lessons of the County Court are sad enough
at times; and there is happily a pretty general
desire to desire to keep as much as possible outside
the portals of that admirable institution for the
coercion of recalcitrant debtors, But none of the
many ca.es .hich reach hie Honour the judge of
the district for selution from time to time are
bigger with warnine, to the great wajoiity of the
community than those which have to deal with
loans of money, aid the Lire system of furnishing.
You can scarcely pick up a newspaper withou-
finding sotnewheie on the sheet the record of the
hardships which have been communicated through
the medium of the county court of some new victim
of these systems o delusive credit. The people
who are so unwise as to believe the specious promises
and assurances of tradesmen and adventurers re-
duced to the necessity of loan mongering and the
new-faugled "hire-purchase" plan of business,
cannot well expect anything other than disappoint-
ment, and often bitter trouble. Loan societies
have been denounced times out or number ; as to
hire-purchase, the whole system is rotten It forces
false sales It induces s ruggling Hale families to
take into their houses showy furniture and grand-
leoking, bat unsubstantial and often worthless
pianos on credit, wite;t they cannot at all afford the
outlay. Let your clerk or warehouseman, or
mechanic have hi s nicely-furnished home by all
means, if he likes. But let it be his own. Itetead
of runidne. the risk of losing :his all on account
payments by a breach of the "Airing agreement,"
ind so 6fin:ling himself without either cash or
furni.ure, 1.,t him begin humbly, but on a sound
basis, uy buying, cash in baud, and little by little,
in the cheapest marker. What he thus obtains
wid be all his own, and in his eyes and those of all
sensible men of tenfold value and satisfaction as
compared with the gilded shams which remain in
his dwelling .on sufferance only. "Hiring agree-
ments" should be eechewed as placing the grantee
entirely at the tender mer..y of the grantor, and
samples of the beneficence of that philanthropist's
nature may be seen in any county court on court
day.

How many people are prepared to face the
exigency of a night fire, which, springing up in the
darkness in the rooms below, burns its way into the
bedrooms of the sleepiug inhabitants of the
house, and wakens them to find that escape by the
stairway i impossible? Not many, we fear. And
yet some simple contrivance, such as woukl suggest
itself to any ingenious pater-familias. might be
made at home, and kept in the upper stories ready
at all times for such an emergency. The public
fire escape may come too late, and prove unavailable
at the critical moment, and precious lives be lost,
as has too often, sad to say, been the ease. No
prudent householder should wait until these truth:,
are forced home upon him by sorrowful personal
experience; but rather follow the example of the
shopkeeper in Peckham, who, the other day, having
equipped himself before hand to defy the devouring
element, saved the lives of himself and his family
by means of a handy tire-escape of his own con-
struction, the cost of which was but fire shillings,
There are some noticeable and simple little fire--
escapes on view in the International Inventions
Exhibitions, which would, we suppose, be procur-
able from the makers; but everyone should have
his own fire escape, even if it were manufactared
at home; and a home. made one could, doubtless,
as we have said, be put together in almost any
housacold, which would serve the purpose of pro
tecting life. tien i it did not admit of the com-
fortable escape from the flames.

SAD to say, there is often displayed among
Englishtnen a dispusition to shirk the duties
attaching to citizenship. A tradesman wiil often
resort to almosF any Pxpedient to escape serving on
a coroner's, or tssizas, or even quarter sessions, or
county c.urt jury. - But this grand institutLn of
trial by jury must have careful attention if it is to
continue the bacAone of our judiei .1 system, and
those who attempt to evade their oblitriti ins to the
State in this direction are very properly punished
Ly law. Thr3 was a cas the other day in Londou
in which a jaiyicau was fined £l.O by the Common
Serjeant for an ingenious att-napt to evade his
duty. He retur ed his summons markei • 'dead,"
and con,istently kvt away from the Court. The
explination that his father, of the same Christian
nania, and lately of the same residence, had recently
died, did not avail this sharp objector to jury duty,
As the Common Serjeant said, he had no right,
being qualified to serve, to assume that the sum-
mo:ls was rc,t intended for him. The man would
have been wiser, and a better citizen, it he had
responded to the call of duty, and s') saved his £lO
penalty.