The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-03-27 00:00:00

Our F. Man eGrrtspoOent.

070 deem it right to state that we dr aot at all tkv,lfi
ileatify oursclveß wiLh our C'orrespuadent's opinions.)

At last it would seem as if we had turned the
corner of our unusually long winter, and that
spring was fairly within sight. It is a season
which has been sung by poets of all the ages as
that most delightful to the human race. The
earliest English song, the words and music of
Which have been handed down tons, is that
beginning "Spring-tide is y-curnen in ; " and it
needs no large store of literary knowledge to
remember many a verse from our older poets
celebrating the season which parts summer from
the snow and ice of winter. Chaucer's immortal
poem has its scene laid in the sprint?, for the very
first lines—" When that Aprilres with his
schowres swoote, The droughte of March had
perced to the roote "—indicates with precision
the time of year the father of English poetry
-had in his mind. It cannot be all pretence, all
• aflectation, all desire to be in the fashion that has
led to so many celebrations of spring. The very
name of the scason.has a refreshing sound; it tells
of an uprising of nature afterthe winter's sleep, of
the growth of trees and flowers and luscious
frnits, of the pairing of birds, and of the first
smiling of earth towards harvest. The dweller
on the countryside sees a thousand evidences of
this quickening into life; the dull earth,
furrowed with the plough, and staring blankly at
the sky,, becomes covered with verdure, the
woods, silent in winter but for the crack of the
sportsman's gun and the barking of the dogs, are
now melodious with Nature's songsters, and
growth and vitality are visible on every side.
It is with something of an envious pang that
a dweller in town thus paints the delights of
springtime in the country. He knows the
songsters of the grove only as they appear in
cages; the growth of the corn is to him
evident only in market reports; and there
are for him none of the keen delights of
watching Nature put on her new garment.
To the townsman, in fact, spring often
resents itself not as the most delight-
ful, but as the most treacherous of
seasons. It is a time of east winds and unex-
pected showers, and although he may try to
comfort himself with the old distich that,
"March winds and April showers bring forth
May flowers," the comfort does not greatly avail
when colds are taken as the result of these
visitations. The prolonged spell of east wind to
which we have lately been subject Las
strengthened the old feeling of antipathy
towards it. From the Princess of Wales down
through a long list of persons, the east wind has
had an evil effect upon health; and medical men
tell us that it has peculiarly irritating qualities,
which most of us had discovered for ourselves,
but which we had not known how to put into
learned language. But whether the language
was learned or not, it was certainly strong it its
condemnation; and even those who have not
suffered greatly under the recent infliction will
join with those who have been victims in
hoping that we have seen the last, for this
spring at least, of any prolonged visit of the
east wind.
Easter this year falls at a later date than has
been the case for a very long time, and it will
not fall so late again i ntil most of those now
living are numbered with the dead. One con-
senuence of this will be that three of the four
• statutory Bank Holidays will come within a very
little larger compass than three months. Easter
Monday is on April 26, Whit Monday on
;Tune 14, and Lammas Monday—the first Mon-
day in August—on August 2. There is thus a
better chance this year than usual that good
weather will attend the public holidays, for when
Easter and Whitsuntide fall so very early, as
they sometimes do, unsettled atmospheric con-
ditions are often their accompaniment. Every
well-wisher of his kind, though he may not par-
ticipate in Bank Holiday amusements himself,
should hope for good weather on the statutory
days. If he thinks of the hundreds of thousands
to whom these holidays are a definite and very
real pleasure, of the eager expectation with which
they have been awaited, and of the keen
disappointment which is caused if anything unto-
ward occurs to mar the day he :cannot but
wish for propitious weather. There is no more
miserable spectacle that one of our large towns
on a wet bank holiday. Thousands of folk have
poured in from the adjacent country, and they
wander in the rain up and down the streets,
already of an unusually bleak appearance because
of the shutting of the shops, wearily waiting for
rain to cease and the day to end. Such an out-
ing is provocative of bad temper, ill-health, and
oven worse evils; and the harshest cynic could
not wish a more unhappy fate for his fellows
than that their efforts at enjoyment should thus
be tunaed into bitterness.
To dwellers in London and the home counties
the Easter holiday always suggests a volunteer
review, and although this year, in accordance
with the custom which has in late times grown
- upethere will be no such vast gathering of the
auxiliary force at Brighton, Dover, or Ports-
mouth as of yore, there will still be
certain manceuvres undertaken in the neigh-
bourhood of the metropolis, which will
e-ive our volunteers an opportunity for bettering
• their knowledge of actual military works. It
used to be objected to the Easter reviews, that
they were mere picnics, mere pieces cf show which
• could lead to no practical good. This ' was
altogether an exaggerated view, but it contained
a sufficiently large grain of truth to make it
worth attention. No one will contend, however,
that the Easter manceuvres which are undertaken
in these days are of the nature of picnics, or that
they do not lead to any practical end. Under
existing conditions the volunteers do not travel 1
by train in the morning to the place of review,
and return by the same means at night; they
- march for days beforehand, bivouac as best they
can, throw out their vanguard, and post
their rear guard as if marching through
an enemy's country ; and, on the day
of review, are not content with the shadowest
of sham fights, to be followed by a showy march-
• past, but they undertake operations which a few
years ago would have been thought impossible
for volunteers to attempt, much more to accom-
plish. This is the kind of training which will
make the auxiliary force a real help to the regular
army; and it, and all who participate in it,
deserve the heartiest encouragement.
- One consequence of Easter falling so late this
year is that the old date at which the University '
-Boat Race was accustomed to be rowed has had
to be changed. Years ago it was so regular a
_ tbing for the race to be held on the Saturday
t4ll immediately. preceding Good Friday, that it
eani would have been looked upon as something little,
if at all, short of heresy for it to be rowed on
- any Other date. But the custom was broken
through in 1883, because or the fog which came
down like a thick pall over the river, and caused
the postponement of the struggle from the
• Saturday to the Thursday; and again in 1884,
. -•- when, owing to the Duke of Albany's death, it
was rowed on a Monday. As Easter fell so very
late • this year, it was resolved to have
° • the race some weeks instead of one week
before that data. It cannot be said that the
change or, in fact, the race itself, attracts as much
attention from the general public as once it
woulchltave done. Londoners always like an ex-
▪ cise for a holiday, and, as long as the race is in
eistence to furnish them with that excuse, so
long will it be patronised by a large section of
• the community. But the immense crowds which
• 'r - . used to line the banks are now no more. For-
merly, as soon as the crews put in an appearance
--mt. London waters, throngs used to gather daily
on the towpath to watch their practice, and the
.. • . ..xiewspapers had a column each day in description
e of the varying weight and style of every man.
All that is changed now; we no longer wax
- delirious over the acquatic performances of the
sixteen young men from the Universities ; and,
though the race is still popular, it is popular
aetwithin reasonable limits, and London does not
anannually break into a blue fever which once used
•to render it almost ridiculous as every spring
came-round.
A very important decision' which affects all
• who ever have occasion to send a valuable
animal by train, has just been given in the
superior courts. It appears that a gentleman
recovered £6O in a county court from one of our
t
• great railway companies for injuries to a grey-
hound, although the value of the dog was not
declared, and a special assurance rate not paid
upon it. - The company did not acquiesce in the
decision—and, as a matter of fact, it is very
'•• -seldom that a, company does acquiesce when the
•.deCision is adverse—and it carried the matter to
• the Queen's Bench. There two judges held that
their lesser brother of the county court was in
' • •
the wrong, and they accordingly reversed the
;-•• e 4 decision, upon the ground that the company
were not responsible as common carriers in the
conveyance of valuable animals. It does not
need many words to show the import-
ance of this ruling to the public; and
although, as a general thing, popular
feeling is not on the side of the railway
eompanies when there is a question of litigation,
not many will be found to dispute that this
ruling is in accordance with common sense. If

.•

a person sends a valuable animal by train it
ought to be assured against accident, or a rail-
way company might be subject to many claims
and much imposture. An animal stands in de-
cidedly a different category to a human being,
and if would not be fair to apply the same prin-
ciple to both.
There are so many people who are fond of
oysters that the information which has just been
vouchsafed to the effect that, despite the recent
exceptionally severe weather, the young oysters
that were laid down on the Whitstable fisheries
during February and the early part of the
present month, do not appear to have suffered
any harm, will come as an agreeable piece of
news. For years there has been a periodical scare
of an oyster famine, and lovers of the "luscious
bivalve," as some of its admirers call it, have
been sorely distressed lest the rumours of a fail-
ing supply might prove well-founded. The im-
portation of foreign oysters has done something
to diminish the fear, but to the connoisseur none
but " natives" are truly acceptable. The trade
in American oysters is, however, so brisk that the
price of " natives " has been forced down to a
point which not long since would have seemed
imponTbly low. Best natives, for instance,
which twelve months ago were reaising eighteen
shillings per hundred, are now fetching only
eight; and though this may be good news for
oyster-lovers, the people of Whitstable are by no
means as well pleased. But one may hope that
an increased supply may compensate these
worthy folk for a decreased price, and then
fishers and eaters will be equally content,

A. F. R.